MORE SCIENTISTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS’ SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY Thelma de Jager Tshwane University of Technology (SOUTH AFRICA) dejagert@tut.ac.za Abstract The ever-increasing population experiences an enormous shortage of skilled scientists that are needed for economic prosperity. Science teachers are important role players to equip students with the skills they need to address the science challenges of the 21 st century. The term ‘science process skills’ was propagated by the Science A Process Approach (SAPA) curriculum project to change the emphasis of science from a knowledge based subject to a skilled based curriculum. Basic process skills such as observing, inferring, classifying, measuring, predicting and communicating can be considered as prerequisites for the integrated (higher cognitive) process skills when teaching science in the higher grades. Mostly disadvantaged secondary school science teachers (n= 85) of various provinces in South Africa participated in this study. The research was based on quantitative and qualitative data. A questionnaire consisting of both closed and open-ended questions was constructed for secondary school science teachers to determine: their teaching experience and academic qualifications; if they use the process approach to teach science; what strategies and methods work best to develop students’ process skills, where teachers are encountering a lack of equipment and teach large class sizes. The findings of this article highlighted teaching methods such as group work, the inquiry method, guest speakers, fieldtrips, workshops, rubrics and DVDs that work best for secondary school teachers to develop students’ science process skills. Keywords: Science, process skills, lack of resources, lifelong learning, secondary school teachers, basic process skills, integrated process skills. 1 INTRODUCTION South Africa is a country with enormous potential, however people are not developing the skills they need for economical prosperity. Only a few scientists of the 47, 8 million people in South Africa have developed high quality technologies that are used globally, such as, to mention a few, the Creepy Crawly (used to clean swimming pools), ultra-deep mining techniques and the CAT (Computed Axial Tomography) scanner. Of a total of 184 052 science students only 55 216 (30 %) passed the final Grade 12 examination in 2011 (Department of Education, 2012). These statistics indicate that science education might be ineffective as many school-leavers are not sufficiently equipped with skills needed to contribute to the economic growth of the country. The following challenges are often blamed for poor science skill development: 85% of 24 717 schools in South Africa lack laboratories, 79% lack libraries, 79.1 % lack desks and chairs and 95% are taught in their second language, English (EduSource Data News, 2011). The student-teacher ratios in 1173 schools are 45:1, while 309 of these schools have more than 50 students in a class. (EduSource Data News, 2011). The lack of these facilities increases the teachers’ workload, and demands creative teachers when planning and preparing class activities for science education. Science teachers are important role players to equip students with the skills they need to address the science challenges of the 21 st century. Therefore, science teachers need to be sufficiently trained in using teaching and learning strategies that will ensure that all students will develop science process skills, regardless of their barriers and the lack of resources in classes. Many teachers often argue that they do not have time to develop students’ process skills by conducting experiments, or do not have laboratories to do so. Research of Lombard and Grosser (2008) and Muwanga-Zake (1998) point out that some teachers do have laboratories, but do not use these facilities as they do not have time or do Proceedings of EDULEARN12 Conference. 2nd-4th July 2012, Barcelona, Spain. ISBN: 978-84-695-3491-5 4326