Thinking, Doing, Talking Science (TDTScience) aims to make science lessons in primary schools more practical, creative and challenging by training teachers in a number of strategies to encourage pupils to use higher order thinking skills.

The project has been funded and evaluated by the Education Endowment Foundation and has been created and is being delivered by Science Oxford, in partnership with Oxford Brookes University.

It was first developed and evaluated during 2013-15 with 42 Oxfordshire primary schools in what is called an efficacy trial. This trial showed that overall, pupils in schools using the TDTScience approach made approximately three months progress in science. The programme had a particularly positive effect on girls and on pupils with lower prior attainment. There were indications that the approach had most impact on pupils eligible for free school meals.

Evaluation of the trial finds “the available evidence indicates that the programme can be implemented at scale through a train-the-trainers model, that it is valued by teachers exposed to the programme, and it changes their teaching practices in a manner consistent with the hypothesis.”

The evaluation showed that all pupils’ interest in, and self-efficacy towards, science increased. TDTScience made a small impact on progress among children eligible for school meals although there was no apparent impact across the whole sample when the programme was tested at scale. The EEF classifies TDTScience as a low cost intervention. The report is available here.

We continue to see far-reaching, lasting impacts in the schools that worked with us in the trials and in subsequent Strategic School Improvement Fund projects in Essex and Herefordshire.

As a result of the success of the efficacy trial, the Education Endowment Foundation funded two effectiveness trials, to assess the impact of the approach at scale. The most recent of these included 180 schools across England, and was completed in 2024. Results will be available early in 2025.

Whilst Science Oxford continues to deliver TDTScience courses in our local region of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, under an exclusive licence from The Oxford Trust, the Primary Science Teaching Trust is now the lead national partner for the ongoing delivery of TDTScience courses in other areas of the UK. For details for upcoming courses nationally, contact [email protected] .

For more information about TDTScience, visit TDTScience.org.uk. 

Watch our video below.

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