The development of pupils´ Science process skills at secondary school
The object of the article is a description and development of selected pupils´ science process skills. We focus on the planning stage of the physics experiment and on the age level 14-16 years. We aimed at possibilities of developing selected pupils´ science process skills such as predicting and formulation of hypotheses. We describe also the process of preparation of specific activities for the development of selected science process skills. We present our experience with the utilization of specially designed activities we have designed and used in physics education at grammar school. Science process skills are inseparable from the conceptual understanding of phenomena studied - we examine the theoretical background, pupils use in the formulation of their predictions and hypothesis, and also we examine the clarity and deepness of their argumentation. Besides, we discuss the role of social learning – we examine the role of teamwork in the planning of experiments, and also we discuss the differences between the planning of laboratory experiments and out-of-door experiments. In the second part of our contribution, we present our experience with the implementation of physics experiments planned by the students themselves, in which the task for the pupils is also to formulate the problem itself. In the last part, we present a Hypotheses quality scale, a tool for comparison of students´ hypotheses, to compare how they formulate hypotheses in the first, second and third activity in a series. We did also a comparison between hypotheses formulated in activities prepared by the teacher and hypotheses formulated for experiments planned by pupils themselves.