Hodgen, Jeremy; Hardman, Mark; Bretscher, Nicola; Gandolfi, Haira; Lawson, Helen; Anders, Jake; (2023) SMART Spaces: Chemistry Teaching - Pilot report. (Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) ). Department for Education: London, UK.

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Abstract

The SMART Spaces Chemistry Teaching programme (SMART Spaces Chemistry Teaching) aims to improve the factual recall of pupils in order to free up lesson time so that teachers can spend more time on pedagogies that embed and extend knowledge—such as practical work and discussion—to improve pupils’ abilities to analyse and evaluate science. This project aimed to see if the programme leads to teachers being able to change the content and practice of their teaching so as to increase time allocated to application and evaluation in chemistry teaching. The programme is a whole-class programme delivered by GCSE science teachers to all pupils undertaking AQA combined award science in Year 10. It is an adapted version of SMART Spaces: Spaced Learning Revision programme (SMART Spaces Revision). SMART Spaces Revision is conducted in the weeks before GCSE examinations whereas the teaching version is conducted during science lessons throughout the year. Delivery is timed to prime pupils in new content and reinforce recall of taught content through ‘spaced learning’. This involves using a scripted presentation to deliver three lots of condensed chemistry content, each lasting 12 minutes, with ten minutes of spacing activity in between. This is repeated in three consecutive lessons, a day apart, termed ‘blocks’, three times across the year. Professional development training is delivered to heads of department and teachers of chemistry by a trainer experienced in the delivery of SMART Spaces. It involves a half-day workshop followed by an in-school coaching visit. Teaching resources are provided, including scripted slides covering the entire GCSE combined science chemistry curriculum, a SMART Spaces manual, and guidelines to develop teaching to maximise the benefit of the additional time created by improved pupil recall. This evaluation was a pilot, which commenced in September 2018 and finished in December 2019. Due to initial delays at start up, during the pilot the project was extended from one academic year to four terms: three in Year 10 and one in Year 11. Some schools were not able to continue with the pilot and new schools were recruited to replace them. This meant that some schools were unable to deliver a fourth block of sessions in the fourth term and some could not complete delivery of three blocks as they started the project later. In total, 12 schools were recruited and undertook training of which nine delivered the intervention. Within these nine, 26 teachers and 714 pupils were involved in the project. The evaluation followed pupils as they moved from Year 10 into Year 11 (ages 14 to16). The evaluation aimed to assess the promise of the intervention according to the theory of change, feasibility, and readiness of the programme for trial. UCL’s Institute of Education undertook the evaluation, which involved a mixed-methods implementation and process evaluation (IPE) using surveys, interviews, and observations with teachers and pupils. The intervention was developed by a team from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and Hallam Teaching School Alliance (HTSA). The project was co-funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Wellcome.

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