Learning science through contexts: helping pupils make sense of everyday situations

The study explores ways in which Swazi junior secondary school pupils who have been taught a contextualized science course deal with everyday science-based situations. In particular, this paper documents pupils' written explanations of everyday actions in terms of an awareness of the social and economic implications of science; their skills in designing an experiment to solve an everyday dilemma; and their abilities to draw on relevant science concepts to serve everyday problems. For all responses, pupils are asked to indicate the source of the knowledge they draw on. The findings show that considerably less than half of the sample display any of these abilities. A large majority of those displaying experimental design skills claim to have gained these from school science but only a minority of those showing social and economic awareness and problem solving skills relate these to school science education. Suggestions are made to increase the effectiveness of contextualized teaching in dealing with everyday situations.