Research taster
Increasing the time and attention given to points of known learning difficulty pay off in better students’ understanding of the explanations for the phenomena being studied. Identifying in advance areas students find difficult in science can help teachers plan their lessons more effectively. Evidence from research may help teachers do this.

 Your evidence
You might find it useful to analyse the learning demands in your science lessons. During a session or series of lessons try to note down how much time you or your students spend on areas of learning difficulty. The results could be recorded on a matrix for the lesson(s). You could jot down the learning task in the matrix. You might even involve your students in doing the  recording as a mini research activity! 

Having collected the data, is it then possible to consider the range of learning experience students encounter and the demands these place on them? What were the particular learning difficulties in the lesson? How far did the learning difficulties relate to students own conceptions of science based on their everyday lives?
Adapted from Reflective Activity 13-1g

Moving forward
When you plan your lessons you might like to identify areas of likely difficulty in advance? Would it be helpful to construct a table with common student misconceptions in one column with the accepted scientific explanation in the other so that you know where these areas are likely to occur when you are planning your lesson? Could you then spend more time on those areas, particularly probing the ideas students bring to your lessons and why they believe them?

Find out more
To find out more about students’ alternative conceptions in science you may find the following useful:

Leach, L., Ametller, J., Hind, A., Lewis, J., Scott, P. Evidence-informed approaches to teaching science at junior high school level: outcomes in terms of student learning
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in
Science Teaching, Philadelphia, March 2003. It can be accessed at:
http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/research/cssme/NARST2003Leeds.pdf

Reports of the Towards Evidence-Based Practice in Science Education (2000-2003) project. They are accessible at: http://www.tlrp.org/proj/phase1/phase1bsept.html