Examining the diversity of scientific methods in the South African National Senior Certificate chemistry papers

Background: The importance of scientific methods has been given considerable attention in a range of curriculum policy documents around the world. However, there is a long-held notion of ‘the scientific method’ as a stepwise, linear procedure scientists use to collect evidence. This account of ‘the scientific method’ as a linearity of steps to test hypotheses and verify conclusions through experimentation has been debated in the last four decades. While there have been research efforts to debunk this myth of a single scientific method, discussion on promoting what scientists do in practice in science teaching and assessment, particularly high-stakes assessment, is yet to gain traction. Purpose: To examine how the diversity of scientific methods is represented in the South African National Senior Certificate (NSC) chemistry examination papers between 2012 and 2022. Method: Content analysis was used to analyze the chemistry examination papers based on Brandon’s categorization of scientific methods as analytical framework. Results: A major finding is that the non-manipulative parameter measurement (non-MPM) category of Brandon’s Matrix was the predominant scientific method portrayed in the chemistry papers. At the same time, questions on manipulative hypothesis testing were relatively low. This finding suggests that the chemistry papers were less experimental. When we compared the different years under investigation, there were no questions in the category of manipulative parameter measurement from 2014 to 2017, and in 2021. Conclusion: The predominance of question items in the non-MPM relative to the other categories of Brandon’s Matrix has implications for how science is taught. Given a curriculum document driven by high-stakes assessment, non-MPM may be a recipe for a cookbook type of scientific investigations in science classrooms. This calls for explicit statements and a more balanced representation of Brandon’s categories of scientific methods in the curriculum and future summative assessments.