20 Jun 08

Applied Science focuses on the people who use scientific knowledge in their work

The Nuffield Review of 14-19 education and training has described the newly introduced GCSE in Applied Science as a ‘recent success story’ in meeting government aims to increase the nation’s supply of scientists.

The Review’s latest Issues Paper even goes so far as to suggest that the experiential and practical mode of learning illustrated in Applied Science could have implications for other areas of the curriculum. It argues that this approach could be used elsewhere so that ‘we might equally talk of “applied maths” or “applied humanities”'.

In the paper, the Review, led by Professor Richard Pring from the University of Oxford’s Department of Education, says the number of students choosing to study Applied Science at GCSE demonstrates how the qualification has turned young people back to science since it was introduced in 2003 (and later revised in 2006).

The number studying Applied Science at GCSE has sharply risen in the last four years, from 9,000 (in the first cohort) in 2004 to 32,000 in 2007. The Review also points out that this number is set to increase significantly in 2008, as many more students take GCSE Additional Applied Science; with possibly as many as 150,000 taking the equivalent of one GCSE Applied Science. Furthermore, the number taking Applied Science at A Level is also increasing, rising from about 1,600 to 3,700 in 2006 and 5,000 in 2007, as a result of the considerable increase in the number taking the GCSE.

The Review outlines why it believes there was a decline in the number of young people choosing to study science before the introduction of Applied Science. Among the reasons given was that, despite the fact that much scientific activity is practical, practical work played a relatively minor part in the assessment of science in the upper secondary years at school and students do not know enough about careers in science.

Applied Science, it suggests, tackles both these issues as it explores science through authentic work-related contexts, for instance how a doctor or nurse deals with cystic fibrosis, or an epidemiologist understands the progress of a disease. It focuses on the people who apply the scientific techniques and knowledge, looking into the thought processes and skills involved. The Review argues that the key concepts of understanding science are embedded in the practice and techniques, and understood by the students as they get deeper into the problems.

Professor Richard Pring, from the Department of Education at Oxford University, said: ‘When everyone is rightly concerned about the decline of interest in science in schools and in universities, the quite remarkable growth of interest in Applied Science should be noted.  Applied Science, stimulated by the developments at the Nuffield Foundation, is found to provide the much-needed motivation for young people.  It provides a route into science in higher education. At the same time, it emphasises practical and experiential learning and points to the relevance of science to future occupations'

The Review warns that unless care is taken, Applied Science could become a vocational qualification, and points out that it is ‘not a second best route for those less able to pursue the single subject sciences of physics, chemistry and biology’. It says the demise of much practice based scientific understanding is due to these pursuits seeking respectability by ‘aping the “academic science”. The Review welcomes the fact that Applied Science has managed to overcome the ‘historic and intractable divide’ between the academic and the vocational.

The Review stresses that Applied Science appears to answer its central question of ‘What counts as an educated 19-year-old in this day and age?’ The paper asserts the belief that all young people can, and should, gain scientific understanding of things which affect their everyday lives, which is why the case for Applied Science is important to the Review. However, the Review also believes that Applied Science shows that understanding can be attained at different levels – from the very practical to the highly theoretical.