Procedures for Exploring Aspects of Primary School Pupils' Views of the World. Learning in Science Project (Primary). Working Paper No. 105.

The stand taken in the Learning in Science Project (Primary)--LISP(P)--is that primary school science should be centrally concerned with children's present interaction with their world rather than their future science education. Further, it has been decided that one of the LISP(P) foci should be on questions that children ask and how these questions should be handled in the classroom. This paper: (1) discusses questions that children raise and the ideas they have about possible answers to these questions; (2) describes preliminary attempts to probe children's thinking in these areas; (3) suggests procedures to build science activities based on children's present interaction with the world; and (4) discusses procedures for gathering data, both as part of research and part of teaching, which would examine such areas as the types of relevant science questions which occur to students, possible answers students can suggest for a particular situation, and methods students use to answer a question. These procedures include individual interviews, group interviews, and classroom observation techniques. Included in an appendix is an exploratory study of children's questions and answers about wood. Information from the study was used to propose the various methods of data gathering suggested in the paper. (JN)