Addressing primary school science problems through materials developed by science educators and drama in education specialists

This article describes the script development process used by the Handspring Science Education Project in the development of a video script aimed at encouraging children’s interest and pleasure in science. The process is a multistage one involving a science education researcher and a reference group composed of other science educators, a drama in education specialist, the script writers and the puppeteers. The stages in this collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach in addressing primary school science problems are described in the article using a selected physics topic, force, as an example. The role of the researcher in eliciting primary school pupils’ ideas in the selected topic and how these ideas are debated by the reference group and finally incorporated into a script are discussed. The complexities which arise when such a multi-disciplinary approach is employed are also highlighted. Finally the potential of this approach in contributing to some of the objectives of Outcomes Based Education (OBE) and the responses of teachers to the videos produced are outlined.