Discussion in Science Teaching

Teaching approach. This resource is aimed at developing student teachers’ skills in working with discussion^(ta). It can be presented to them as a hand-out to accompany an activity or read as reference material. See it online at BEEP website. Although it uses a science context, the real focus of the resource is managing and organising discussion-based activities. It provides guidance on:

• Starting and structuring a discussion
• Organising group talk^(ta)
• Role Play/drama^(ta)
• Ground Rules for discussion and handling difficult discussions

Resource details
Title	Working with discussion as a science teaching strategy
Topic	[[Topics/Discussion|Discussion]]
Teaching approach	[[Teaching Approaches/Group talk|Group talk]],  [[Teaching Approaches/Drama|Drama]],  [[Teaching Approaches/Discussion|Discussion]] Property "Teaching approach" (as page type) with input value "This resource is aimed at developing student teachers’ skills in working with discussion. Its main focus is on managing and organising discussion-based activities. It provides guidance on: </br>• Starting a discussion</br>• Structuring discussions</br>• Organising group talk</br>• Role Play</br>• Ground Rules for Discussion</br>• Difficult Discussions" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.[[Category:This resource is aimed at developing student teachers’ skills in working with discussion. Its main focus is on managing and organising discussion-based activities. It provides guidance on: • Starting a discussion • Structuring discussions • Organising group talk • Role Play • Ground Rules for Discussion • Difficult Discussions ]]
Learning Objectives	Objectives are that student teachers learn a range of pedagogical techniques for promoting and managing discussion and about some of the issues relevant to teaching in this way. A science context is used for illustrative purposes.
Subject	[[Resources/Biology|Biology]],  [[Resources/Science|Science]],  [[Resources/Cross-curricular|Cross-curricular]]
Age of students / grade	[[Resources/Secondary|Secondary]]
Other (e.g. time frame)	The BioEthics Education Project site: http://www.beep.ac.uk/content/592.0.html
Files and resources to view and download	Teachers Notes (Word doc - 6 p) File:SC0032 - Teachers Notes.doc

Pedagogic Rationale

This online activity for A level Biology students comprises resources to support a virtual investigation based on a field trip to the Dartmoor National Park. It is intended to engage the students both in discussion about and investigation of the conflicting natural science issues such as biodiversity that have to be considered when managing a national park so that it is attractive to both wildlife and people. Background reading, photographs and interactive dioramas are used, together with word frames, scaffolds and open-ended questions, to stimulate students' ideas for a scientific investigation into the impact of national park visitors on its biodiversity.

The virtual investigation itself centres on ways of using transects to collect data on plant species in heavily visited areas of the park. Exemplar data is provided for students together with prompts suggesting ways of analysing it. A class teacher could therefore use the virtual investigation as homework to prepare students for the activities that will need to be planned for their own field trip or use it in class with small groups to replace a field trip. Once the analysis is completed students are reminded that the purpose of the investigation was to inform the National Park conservationists about any possible losses in biodiversity resulting from footpath erosion. A range of possible follow-up activities are suggested to stimulate further discussion and/or action. Finally, students are encouraged to identify ways in which they could conduct a similar investigation locally.