‘What’s going to happen in the eclipse tonight?’: rethinking perspectives on primary school science

The current wave of dispute focused on appropriate content and effective teaching styles in primary school education is making it difficult for classroom teachers to ‘professionally position’ their work. This paper suggests that considerable insight may be gained by the analysis of even quite a small section of classroom interaction using multiple perspectives. To illustrate this, part of a lesson in a sequence on ‘space’ for a mixed class of nine‐ to 11‐year‐olds in England is looked at as an example of narrative, through discourse analysis, as knowledge being socially constructed, and as a phenomenon being modelled. The collaborating group of researchers (the authors) then examine the separate outcomes to evaluate the overall worth of the approach. Finally, insights that it gives into the possibilities of education for a postmodern age are reviewed.