22 Raising attainment
The Thinking Science activities were originally trialled over a two year period by the authors (The Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) Project 1984–1987. We taught them in schools which were designated as ‘laboratory’ schools. With those classes very significant gains in cognitive development were achieved by pupils using the materials compared with control groups. More important were the results obtained in the main experiment. Over that period the experimental group showed a significantly greater gain on measures of formal operational thinking, compared with a matched control group and when experimental groups were followed up for two and three years after their exposure to Thinking Science, they were found to perform significantly better in GCSE Science, Mathematics and English. Since that original research we have continued to collect and process data from a wide range of schools using Thinking Science over a two year period. For up-to-date details of the results, contact the Centre for the Advancement of Thinking at King’s College London for the latest reports (address on p. 16).