Teaching science in a meaningful way: striking a balance between 'opening up' and 'closing down' classroom talk

Abstract

This article makes the case that teaching to support the meaningful learning of science must involve both dialogic ('opening up') and authoritative ('closing down') approaches. Attention is drawn to the underlying teaching skills involved in such teaching and this is illustrated by reference to a sequence of lessons on forces with 10-11 year-olds (year 6). Teaching science involves introducing pupils to the ways of talking and thinking of the scientific community. Take the case, for example, of teaching a group of key stage 3 pupils (11-14 year-olds) about the basic working of electric circuits (including the concepts of current, energy and resistance). How do we move from a situation where the pupils understand little or nothing about these ideas to one where they are able to talk and think about them for themselves? The intervening teaching sequence is likely to include various different activities, such as pupil practical work, a teacher demonstration, maybe use of a computer simulation, and so on. Whatever the activities used, however, a central feature of the lesson sequence must be the interactions, or talk, between teacher and pupils. It is through this talk that the scientific story is introduced. This may seem obvious! How else can we teach science apart from interacting with pupils? However, these interactions are all too often ignored or taken for granted in a teaching sequence. Particular approaches to teaching electricity are spoken of in terms of this activity or that, but rarely in terms of the ways in which the classroom talk is developed over a sequence of lessons, employing a range of different approaches. This article attempts to redress the balance a little by offering a report from an ongoing research project (Mercer, et al., 2006) focusing on the different ways in which teachers frame classroom talk in introducing new scientific ideas to pupils. In particular, we argue that, in order for meaningful learning to result from a sequence of science teaching, teaching must involve both dialogic ('opening up') and authoritative ('closing down') communicative approaches. The argument builds upon these theoretical ideas (Mortimer and Scott, 2003) and is illustrated with empirical data from a sequence of lessons on forces with 10-11 year-olds (year 6). First, the idea of the communicative approach is introduced, before turning to the analysis and discussion of the forces lessons. The communicative approach