Practical work in science: misunderstood and badly used?

not applicable — argumentative essay

UK school science, ages 11-18 (argument is general).

An argument, not a study: a School Science Review essay by a leading science-education researcher. No data of its own; it reasons from Crombie's six styles of scientific reasoning and from Abrahams & Millar 2008 / Abrahams & Reiss 2012. Grade D and recorded as a critique, not as evidence. Its value to this archive is that it states the cost premise and the burden of proof more sharply than any empirical paper does.

The clearest statement of the burden-of-proof case, and the source of the cost framing this topic needs: 'school science in the UK is overwhelmingly taught in laboratories – laboratories that are both expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Indeed, the provision in the UK is better than most other countries. Justifying such expenditure demands that the field of science education is clear about the role and value of practical work – a clarity that I will argue is absent to date.' Osborne's substantive argument is that science is distinguished by being a body of ideas about the material world, not by empirical enquiry; experimentation is one of six historical styles of scientific reasoning, and school science has inflated it into the defining activity. Given that the fundamental purpose of practical work is to link the world of ideas to the world of objects and events, he concludes there is little evidence it contributes to that goal, and that the failure is a failure to engage students in the talking, reading and writing that builds the connection. NOT EVIDENCE — an argument about what the evidence does not contain.

Not applicable — no empirical claim.

Not applicable. Its empirical claims are borrowed from Abrahams & Millar 2008 and Abrahams & Reiss 2012, both recorded separately.