The study is focused on biology education and addresses the following problem: What is the extent to which teachers’ pedagogic practices are conditioned by the level of conceptual demand required by national examinations in secondary school Biology and condition the examinations results of students of socially differentiated schools?  The study is focused on the following objectives: (1) compare the level of conceptual demand of teachers’ practices with the level of conceptual demand of syllabuses and of examinations; (2) compare the examination marks obtained by students of socially differentiated schools and receiving pedagogic practices with distinct levels of conceptual demand. Theoretically the study is based on Bernstein’s model of pedagogic discourse and on Vygotsky’s social constructivism and methodologically uses an interpretative model of text analysis. The sample was made up of four schools and respective teachers and students of secondary school Biology. The schools differed in their social composition and showed to be different in their results in the Biology national examinations. The results show that it is the typology of examinations that fundamentally dictates the rules that direct the recontextualizing of syllabuses evident on the teachers’ pedagogic practices. They also show that pedagogic practices with distinct levels of conceptual demand influence the results in examinations of socially differentiated students, and as such they may alter the pattern of relation between social class and success.

The study is focused on Biology education and is part of a broader research that analysed the  relation between scientific competences valued in syllabuses and in secondary school examinations and explored the extent to which  the typology of the examination influences teachers’ level of conceptual demand and the success of students of socially differentiated schools.

This paper addresses the following problem: What is the extent to which teachers’ pedagogic practices are conditioned by the level of conceptual demand required by national examinations in secondary school Biology and condition the examinations results of students of socially differentiated schools?  The study is focused on the following objectives: (1) compare the level of conceptual demand of teachers’ practices with the level of conceptual demand of syllabuses and of examinations; (2) compare the examination marks obtained by students of socially differentiated schools and receiving pedagogic practices with distinct levels of conceptual demand.

Theoretically the study is based on Bernstein’s model of pedagogic discourse (1990) and on Vygotsky’s social constructivism (1992) and methodologically uses an interpretative model of text analysis, based on a dialectical relation between the theoretical and the empirical.

The sample was made up of four schools and respective teachers and students of secondary school Biology. The schools differed in their social composition (two middle class schools and two working class schools) and showed to be different in their results in the Biology national examinations.

In order to carry out the analysis, the following sources of data were used: Biology syllabuses for secondary school (10th, 11th, 12th years of schooling); Biology examinations; Biology assessment tests  made in the schools in the course of the three years; results obtained in the examinations by the students of the selected schools. Schools tests were used as indicators of the pedagogic practices, having been assumed that the level of conceptual demand required by those tests would give a measure of the level of conceptual demand of the teachers’ pedagogic practice.

The level of conceptual demand of the various texts analysed (syllabuses, school tests and examinations) was determined in terms of the relative emphasis attributed, in these texts, to cognitive competences of a different level of complexity. These competences were discriminated on the basis of a system of categories and sub-categories, constructed through the articulation between the empirical data obtained from a previous analysis of the texts, and the concepts of the theoretical framework that guided the study.

The results of the study showed that the Biology examinations, contrary to what is valued in the syllabuses, have a low level of conceptual demand. They also show that it is the typology of examinations that fundamentally dictates the rules that direct the recontextualizing of syllabuses evident on the teachers’ pedagogic practices, in a direction of a clear decreasing of that level, as the national examination approximates in time.

The results also suggest that, although social class may have an important influence on students’ results in examinations, the pedagogic practice can change that pattern of relation. The two middle class schools obtained better results than the two working class schools, but the working class school that promoted a high level of conceptual demand obtained better results in the examination than the working class school that promoted a low level of conceptual demand. This result confirms other studies carried out within the same theoretical framework (e.g. Domingos,1989), that have suggested that a pedagogic practice that keeps a high level of conceptual demand may optimize the scientific development and the success of the students, particularly those of the disadvantaged.

 The study provides important data for a grounded reflection on the meaning of the ordering of the schools in ‘rankings’, in terms of the quality of the education they promote. If we take, as the criteria of school ordering, the level of conceptual demand schools promote, we can question the extent to which a model of school evaluation, based on results given by a national examination of a low conceptual level, may contribute to the quality of education.

References

Bernstein, B. (1990). Class, Codes and Control: Vol.IV, The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge.

Domingos, A. M. (now Morais) (1989). Conceptual demand of science courses and social class. In P. Adey (Ed.), Adolescent development and school science (pp. 211-223). London: Falmer.