ASE Futures Conference Online 2021

Practical work has long been regarded as a fundamental part of science education, despite ongoing concerns about its use in lessons, the ways in which it is assessed and the tendency for these ways to close down practice. Project Calibrate, a partnership between researchers at AQA and the University of Oxford Department of Education, has worked with secondary science teachers to explore the use of a new framework to design new GCSE-level written assessments of practical work and how these might guide classroom practice. Findings show that this approach can indeed open up classroom practice and some specific suggestions for ITE and CPD are discussed."