Teaching to investigate in Year 11 science, constrained by assessment

Abstract

School science learning aims to engage students into understanding science concepts, developing procedural understanding, and an understanding of the nature of science. In recent times, teachers of senior science in New Zealand have had to adapt to two significant systemic policy changes that have impacted on their practice. The first was a new curriculum that required the teaching of science investigation and the second, internal assessment of science investigation for National Certificate of Educational Assessment (NCEA). This paper presents findings of research that investigated the case of science investigation from the teachers’ perspective. The data were collected through questionnaire, interviews and classroom observations. The findings suggest that teachers changed their practice of teaching science investigation in response to the change in assessment of policy. The consequence of this change led to students being trained to mostly learning a fair testing type of investigation to gain NCEA credits and grades.