Vesall Nourani - Science Competencies

One school's contribution to the science show included a demonstration of the benefits of mulching on the school garden plot.

Uganda's Shift to Competency-Based Curriculum

Uganda's National Curriculum Development Centre is increasingly shifting the focus of its curriculum towards "fostering learner centred pedagogy, competence based approach, and criterion referenced assessment" (NCDC Circular, January 2020). This is a welcome, ambitious, and challenging task for any education system, let alone one where the dominant approach to teaching and learning promotes rote memorization of definitions and hierarchical and heavily theoretical approaches to teaching. In conversations with stakeholders at various levels, it became clear that it would be useful to test out various approaches that measure competencies directly instead of indirectly via written examinations. But what does this look like in practice?

Exploring Scientific Competencies

Together with the District Education Office in Jinja, we decided to focus on a single subject -- science -- and asked "how can we measure scientific competencies in the field?" Prior to exploring answers to this question, we read through NCDC's curriculum guide for P6 Science Education. In it, we found a list of expected competencies listed below:

Pupils apply correct scientific processes in investigations of various phenomena by:

identifying problems,
designing and practicing scientific investigation processes,
examining the evidence useful in inferences,
demonstrating the skills of observation, classification, accurate measurement and recording,
making predictions and formulating hypothesis for evidence, communicating findings accurately and honestly,
analyzing causes and effects,
using a variety of sources for acquiring information, and
recording information with reasonable accuracy.

A glance at most assessment tools used by schools in Uganda shows that the above-mentioned competencies are unlikely to be measured by the type of standardized assessments that normally take place in school settings (see Burdett, 2017 for a systematic investigation of this statement). However, a careful read of NCDC's guide also suggested that the Ministry of Education and Sports strongly encourages schools to host science shows so that students could demonstrate these competencies to the community. While such science shows took place sporadically in the past, there had been no systematic effort to utilize them to measure the scientific competencies articulated above.

Together, we decided that an important step towards determining whether students acquire these competencies involved asking schools to host science shows that could be assessed by an independent committee of judges.

Letter sent to schools participating in science show.

Designing and Describing Activities to the Schools

In July 2019, the DEO's office sent a letter to a set of schools, describing the intention behind the science show activity (see the link to the left). We decided to provide a bit of structure to the activity, seeing as it was the first time that the schools would be hosting science shows for assessment purposes.

First, we outlined the set of competencies desired by NCDC in upper primary students of science. Then, we drew from the second and third term curriculum for Primary 6 levels and requested each school to organize their P6 students into three to four groups (depending on the size of the class) in a manner that each group would conduct an experiment that tests the efficacy of either two approaches to conserving natural resources (term 3 course content) or two approaches to preparing clean water for drinking (term 2 course content). They were given three months to help the students design these experiments and prepare them for an event hosted by the school at which an independent panel of judges would be present to assess the degree of competencies gained.

Designing a Rubric and Training the Judges

The process we took to train the judges is described in the appendix of "Learning to Teach by Learning to Learn." However, it might also be useful to state here that we tried as much as possible to make a rubric with a one-to-one correspondence with the competencies outlined by the Ministry of Education and Sports (the full rubric is linked to on the right). For example, for the competency associated with "demonstrating the skills of observation, classification, accurate measurement and recording," we asked the judges to assess the following two competencies:

Making observations: The students captured observations in a systematic manner (for example, by using a logbook).
Making observations: The students made accurate measurements of their observations using relevant instruments.

The range of outcomes for both questions went from 1 (poor performance) to 10 (excellent performance), however we also did our best to describe outcomes that would render student group scores comparable across schools. For example, for question 1 above, the judge was guided to assess the group in the following manner:

1 = There is no evidence that the students recorded observations,

5 = Students recorded observations, but not in a structured way,

10 = The observations were recorded in a very structured and systematic way.

Rubric used by judges of the science show.

Can water be cleaned through filtration methods?

The Day of the Show

On the day of the shows, we invited community members to attend each school's science show to learn from the students' experiments. We held the shows over the course of 3 weeks with two to three shows held a day in one of the school district's "zones" of operation. In total, 33 schools participated in this activity. On the right is one group's demonstration of an experiment that shows how local materials can be used to filter water. A group that did a good job might have compared this approach with another approach to cleaning water for safe drinking, for example via the decanting method as depicted on the right. If they did not describe the process themselves, judges would ask the students how they determined whether one or the other type of water was safer to drink. If the students described their use of evidence in their response, they would be scored highly; otherwise, they would receive a low score. Again, more details of these shows, including descriptions of top and median performers are available in the appendix of "Learning to Teach by Learning to Learn."

Can water be cleaned through the decanting method?

Presenting Results and Next Steps

When all was said and done, the DEO organized a presentation of results at one of the schools in the sub-county. All schools that participated in the science show sent a representative to the presentation where the director of the DEO's office handed out prizes and honorable mentions to the top five schools. Many head teachers shared that they hope the activity will continue in the future and a few indicated that they would hold their own science shows moving forward even when the district does not organize one themselves. Word of the science shows has spread to neighboring districts who are now asking me to help them train judges and organize science shows. I am planning to extend the concept of an applied field-based assessment to more competencies, including writing, artistic expression, and community research.

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