Discussions

The findings from focus group data revealed key and common issues that they felt hampered their lessons in the teaching and learning of science. These common features included the lack of simple basic science apparatus, lack of practical work / experiment, inability to pronounce scientific terms, numerous diagrams for students to remember in science, prioritising the senior secondary level, and the mathematical nature of some parts of the science syllabus.

The lack of basic science materials in schools seems to result in theoretical teaching mainly talk and chalk method as students described their lessons. Similar comments were also made by students from schools with less resources and those operating without an equipped science laboratory. This finding was in correspondence with the

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qualitative data findings by Barmby et al. (2008, p. 1088), which revealed the lack of practical in science lessons as perceived by students. This seems to suggest that science is learnt more in the form of theory than practical work, hence the students from T8’s classroom attesting that they have never come in contact with some of the apparatus like a Bunsen burner. This student comes from an inadequately resourced school. Furthermore, practical work/ experiment is hardly conducted by teachers in schools whose laboratories were well equipped either. This is evident from the

comments made by ST2, ST3, ST7 and ST10. When I asked the students how many times they held an experimental lesson, students responded in the negative that they hardly conduct practical work. This suggested that teachers from equipped science laboratories do not seem to be engaged with their students in practical work which does not suggest much difference from their counterparts in schools that are faced with inadequate basic science materials. The adequately resourced schools each had three labs: biology, physics and chemistry labs.

In this study all the six schools involved were similar in nature and have both Upper Basic School (UBS) and Senior Secondary School (SSS) running concurrently in one school. At the UBS level, the final exam that candidates sit to known as the Gambia Basic Education Certificate Examination (GABECE) does not involve final year candidates conducting experiment in science. The science papers are theoretical and most of the questions require recall of knowledge. However, this is not the case at the SSS level exam known as West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). This exam requires the conduct of practical and for this reason some of the schools give priorities to SSS level candidates conducting experiments in order to adequately prepare their candidates. Therefore students are leaving the UBS level without much engagement in practical work due to the limited resources that the

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schools are faced with. A student in School A mentioned about the school giving more attention and priority to SSS level students because of the final year student involvement in the conduct of international practical exams. This corroborated with what the class teacher mentioned during the one to one interviews as being a result of the inadequate resources confronting the schools.

This comment was not common to all the six schools, since one of the schools was not offering pure science to students at SSS level, but unique to the rest of the school except school C. This is because school C is well equipped with an overall average of 25 students per class. However, it can be argued that students could do better at UBS level if they were exposed to practical, hence according to Osborne and Collins (2000) practical work would enable students to more easily retain what they have learnt and become autonomous learners. Additionally, taking into account Magnusson et al.’s (1999) student centred orientation involving practical work and the absence of such in science lessons would mean teachers’ use of didactic traditional teacher centred in their lessons instead of student centred. This finding concurs with Toplis (2012) who pointed out that the lack of basic science apparatus, inadequate models and limited laboratory experience could hinder the conduct of experiment during science lessons. Hence schools with laboratories were still managing with the little resources they have due to the large number of students.

Another finding students deem a challenge to the learning of science is the

pronunciation of scientific words or terms. The students felt that certain terms used in biology are difficult to pronounce and such terms cannot be found in a dictionary for them to quickly gather the meanings, thus making the learning of science difficult.

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Another challenge that the students are confronted with in the learning of science is the numerous diagrams they are expected to learn and label parts on and note their functions. It can be argued that science involves numerous diagrams and knowing their parts and functions is required by the students. During exams diagrams are drawn in which students are asked to name the parts and state their functions. Students were also quick to note physics as mathematical, and because they find mathematics difficult, students enjoy Biology more than the Physics and Chemistry parts of the syllabus. This was indicated in the data when students were asked to mention the topics they found interesting and enjoyable to learn. When asked to describe the topics they found interesting and enjoyable in their science lessons, students mentioned Biology topics more compared to Physics and Chemistry. This suggests that the Biology part of science was more popular with students than Physics and Chemistry which students described as mathematical in nature. Students’ view is that biology topics are related to their bodies which they tend to develop more interest in. The following topics were the most common that students find interesting and enjoyable to learn: circulatory system, adaptation, changes of state of matter, energy, reproductive system, force, animal, human body, unicellular and multi-cellular organism, plant and animal cell.

5.5 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter presents and discusses RQ1 findings from the focus groups data to examine the extent to which Upper Basic School students’ perceptions of their science classes relate to SCL pedagogies. The findings suggested the use of teacher centred method by teachers. This is true of schools that are both well resourced and under resourced. The findings revealed that science

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lessons were didactic, involving the teacher telling, showing, talking and explaining to students without any level of student engagement. The focus group mentioned this view more frequently than the elements of SCL practices used by teachers except group work which was not very effective due to their large size in nature. Students’ view of science was both positive and negative. The findings indicate that students view science as difficult but at the same time recognise its importance and see science as interesting and a good subject. The findings also revealed practical work as the best way in which student learn science. However, this was lacking in their science lessons but they believe that practical work enables them to remember what they have learned. Group work was seen as a preferred way of learning

science where they share their ideas and experiences during discussion and conduct of practical work, thus increasing their level of participation in the lesson. The

freedom of students to ask questions and seek explanation was regarded among their preferred learning strategies. These methods of learning as identified by students correspond with SCL principles. The final part of the findings indicated the difficulties that students have in learning science which corroborates well with the findings from the interview data with teachers. This includes lack of basic science materials, conduct of few or no practical, prioritising SSS students due to the international exams that they sit, inability to pronounce scientific terms, numerous diagrams to remember and the mathematical nature of science. These factors particularly the lack of materials resulted in use of teacher centred method by eight out of the twelve teachers who participated in this study. The evaluation of RQ1 is found in chapter 8.

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