ASE Futures conference 2019

Thinking, Doing, Talking Science (TDTS) aims to make science lessons in primary schools more practical, creative and challenging through strategies that encourage pupils to use higher order thinking skills. Teachers enable their pupils to think and talk about scientific concepts through dedicated discussion times. They provide pupils with a wide range of opportunities for creative investigations and problem solving and they focus the pupils' recording so that is there is always time for practical science. Over the past five years, this CPD programme, developed by Bridget Holligan (Science Oxford) and Helen Wilson (Oxford Brookes University), has been researched through two randomised controlled trials funded by the Education Endowment Fund (EEF). The results of the small scale efficacy trial (41 schools) published in 2015 showed a positive impact on pupil attainment and attitude to science. Between 2016 and 2018, TDTS delivery was scaled up in an efficiency trial involving 200 schools and ca. 9000 pupils. The results will be published in December, along with several other large scale EEF trials. This session will share the trial results and explore what they tell us about models for effective CPD in schools at a large scale.