Learning to teach science as practice

In this article, we propose coteaching as a viable model for teacher preparation. Coteaching, working at the elbows of someone else, allows beginning teachers to experience appropriate action at the right time. Coteaching provides beginning teachers with shared experiences that become the topic of their professional conversations with other coteachers (including peers, cooperating teacher, and university supervisors). We articulate our model within a phenomenological framework and exemplify each concept with vignettes from our ongoing research on coteaching. A teacher preparation program that is situated in two urban schools provides the context for our research.     

师生交往：彰显教育主体间性的基本途径

教育主体间性以其在认识教育主体与处理教育主体间关系中的优势,实现了对以往教育主体观和教育活动观的超越,它的提出不仅使我们对教育主体的理解获得了新的突破,也使我们在处理教育活动中主体与主体间关系的问题上获得了崭新的思路,因此有必要创造条件使之充分得以彰显,并成为认识与处理教育主体间关系的准则。在分析教育主体间性及师生交往等关键概念的基础之上,可以揭示师生交往作为彰显教育主体间性的基本途径之必要性与可能性,同时,对教育语言在师生交往彰显教育主体间性中的功用也可以进行必要的分析。     

Learning to Teach About Ideas and Evidence in Science: The Student Teacher as Change Agent

A collaborative curriculum development project was set up to address the lack of good examples of teaching about ideas and evidence and the nature of science encountered by student teachers training to teach in the age range 11–16 in schools in England. Student and teacher-mentor pairs devised, taught and evaluated novel lessons and approaches. The project design required increasing levels of critique through cycles of teaching, evaluation and revision of lessons. Data were gathered from interviews and students’ reports to assess the impact of the project on student teachers and to what extent any influences survived when they gained their first teaching posts. A significant outcome was the perception of teaching shifting from the delivery of standard lessons in prescribed ways to endeavours demanding creativity and decision-making. Although school-based factors limited newly qualified teachers’ chances to use new lessons and approaches and therefore act as change-agents in schools, the ability to critique curriculum materials and the recognition of the need to create space for professional dialogue were durable gains.     

主体间性与师生关系

主体间性扬弃传统哲学中的主客二分模式，强调多极主体间的理解和融合。主体间性哲学要求突破二元对立的师生关系模式，建立理解和对话的新型师生关系。     

Schools as Learning Organisations - Effects on Teacher Leadership and Student Outcomes

This article examines the nature of organisational learning and the leadership practices and processes that foster organisational learning and, more importantly, the impact of these variables on teacher leadership. A path model is used to test these school variables as well as school characteristics such as availability of resources and community focus against the impact of SES and school size on students' views of teachers' work in the classroom and student outcomes such as attendance, and participation in and engagement with school. The importance of reconceptualising schools as learning organisations to promote successful school change is discussed.     

Student and Teacher Perspectives in Computer-Mediated Learning Environments in Teacher Education

Rapid advances in technology, particularly with the Internet, have led to the availability of numerous tools to support teaching and learning. This study involved the use of an Internet application, Connecting Communities of Learners (CCL), in courses for prospective teachers. Unlike earlier studies involving the use of the CCL, the context of this study related to full-time graduate students who used the CCL to augment weekly face-to-face instruction. An interpretive study was undertaken to ascertain student and teacher perceptions of the learning environments associated with the use of the CCL. Through the use of the CCL, students were able to be autonomous in regard to their own learning, co-participate with their peers and the instructor, and establish and maintain a community of learners in which participants could interact with others as co-teachers and co-learners. The CCL was perceived as a useful tool for building learning environments in which all participants can contribute written texts as evidence of what is known and as objects from which others can learn. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teacher Learning in Mathematics: Using Student Work to Promote Collective Inquiry

The study describes teachers' collective work in which they developed deeper understanding of their own students' mathematical thinking. Teachers at one school met in monthly workgroups throughout the year. Prior to each workgroup, they posed a similar mathematical problem to their students. The workgroup discussions centered on the student work those problems generated. This study draws on a transformation of participation perspective to address the questions: What do teachers learn through collective examination of student work? How is teacher learning evident in shifts in participation in discussions centered on student work? The analyses account for the learning of the group by documenting key shifts in teachers' participation across the year. The first shift in participation occurred when teachers as a group learned to attend to the details of children's thinking. A second shift in participation occurred as teachers began to develop possible instructional trajectories in mathematics. We focus our discussion on the significance of the use of student work and a transformation of participation view in analyzing the learning trajectory of teachers as a group.     

The Relationship Between Teacher Behaviours and Student Talk in Promoting Quality Learning in Science Classrooms

This paper distils 24 years of classroom research into promoting quality learning in science classrooms to develop an overall framework for better understanding and describing both the learning and the teaching approaches that stimulate and support it. For me, quality learning is characterised by adjectives such as informed, purposeful, reflective, intellectually active, metacognitive and independent. Central to quality learning is the role of talk, and central to promoting talk which promotes quality learning are certain teacher behaviours. I first focus on the ways that teachers behave in the classroom in order to promote, react to and use student talk. These behaviours are summed up in a list of twelve principles for quality teaching. Each of these principles requires, as well as appropriate teacher behaviours, the use of effective teaching procedures. I then focus on four kinds of student talk that exemplify informed, purposeful, reflective and intellectually active thinking. These variously involve students’ existing ideas and explanations; increasing student ownership of practical activities; constructive challenges to the teacher (or text’s) idea, and lateral, reflective ‘thinking’ questions.     

ISI:一个师生共建的个性化学习服务平台

个性化学习是现代教育技术领域的一个重点研究课题。单纯靠软件技术来帮助学生实现个性化电子学习十分困难。为此,设计了一个师生共建的个性化学习服务平台,由教师、系统共同帮助学生完成个性学习。对该平台从功能结构、软件结构和物理结构三个方面进行了描述,然后对该平台的特征进行了讨论和分析。实践表明,此平台对学生和教师都有很大帮助。     

我国某地区中小学教师构建师生关系状况调查

文章从师生关系模式角度调查了我国某地区中小学师生关系规范性的状况,分析了导致我国中小学师生关系不规范的主要原因是教育理论在这个领域研究的不深入、不具体及中小学教师这方面教育理论修养低的问题     

试论教师引导学生刍主学习的观念变革

社会的发展和教育变革强烈要求学生的学习方式从被动学习转变为主动学习，相应的教师的角色功能也必须随之发生从支配学生到促进学生的根本变革。从内容上看，教师的变革包括学生观、学习观、教师角色观的改变，从性质上看，教师观念的变革对教师而言将是一场无疑会给教师带来阵痛的革命，会在实践中遭遇到阻力。     

Learning to teach teachers

This paper reports on a study of the practices of a cohort of traditionally appointed teacher educators with the responsibility for facilitating teacher learning and learning teaching. The approach used in this investigation involved a practice-to-theory field experience (PTE), a reflective paper analyzing the PTE, and a shared set of readings on pedagogy for facilitating teacher learning and learning teaching with the PTE as context. The participants in this study were 21 students enrolled in an education doctorate program at a Research I university in the Western United States. The findings from the study revealed that the number of years of experience as a teacher educator was not related to competence or effectiveness. Further, it was found that the combined processes of documenting practice, writing a reflective paper, and engaging in focused dialog with peers based on a shared set of readings, and incorporating the PTE as context enabled participants to think critically and co-construct deep knowledge and understanding of the role of the teacher educator and practices for facilitating teacher learning and learning teaching.     

Learning Together: The Student/Parent/Teacher Triad

This report contains an analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data on participant perceptions of the co‐production of learning. It constitutes a refinement of the working model of the triadic relationship between parents, students, and teachers which was the basis of previous reports (Coleman, Collinge, & Seifert, 1992; Coleman, Collinge, & Tabin, 1992; Coleman & Tabin, 1992; Coleman & Collinge, 1991). Given our earlier findings the focus in this paper is upon the theme of collaboration, which is emerging as one critical element in the relationships within the student/teacher/parent triad.

The analysis shows that there are sharp differences in perceptions of collaboration between different triad members. Collaboration between parents and students is perceived to be both strong and balanced in initiation. Teachers show little awareness of its strength. Collaboration between teachers and parents is perceived by both to be one‐sided; each party sees the other as unresponsive. It is invisible to students. Collaboration between students and teachers varies between classrooms, and seems to be based upon the teachers’ perception of student acceptance of responsibility; parents are very keenly aware of this collaboration where it exists. Classroom level differences are also strong; teacher attitudes and practices clearly determine the extent of collaboration.

In British Columbia parent and student attitudes towards classrooms and teachers are affected, sometimes strongly, by teacher practices of parent involvement. These attitudes contribute to parent and student rating of particular schools.     

Becoming Teacher: Student teaching as identity construction

This article presents an autobiographical qualitative study. A former elementary school teacher describes how her work as a university supervisor gave her an opportunity to examine her own construction of self as a teacher and teacher educator during two semesters of undergraduate student teaching. Research related to teacher individualism and isolation provides a lens through which to explore socialization experiences of both the author and her students. The analysis finds that some programs and schools do not allow for or value the critical dialogue and narrative discourse essential for the formation of the self. The author makes several suggestions for teacher education programs which will help prepare teachers to take advantage of agentive moments, creating spaces for discourse and collaboration.     

Disconnections Between Teacher Expectations and Student Confidence in Bioethics

This study examines how student practice of scientific argumentation using socioscientific bioethics issues affects both teacher expectations of students’ general performance and student confidence in their own work. When teachers use bioethical issues in the classroom students can gain not only biology content knowledge but also important decision-making skills. Learning bioethics through scientific argumentation gives students opportunities to express their ideas, formulate educated opinions and value others’ viewpoints. Research has shown that science teachers’ expectations of student success and knowledge directly influence student achievement and confidence levels. Our study analyzes pre-course and post-course surveys completed by students enrolled in a university level bioethics course (n = 111) and by faculty in the College of Biology and Agriculture faculty (n = 34) based on their perceptions of student confidence. Additionally, student data were collected from classroom observations and interviews. Data analysis showed a disconnect between faculty and students perceptions of confidence for both knowledge and the use of science argumentation. Student reports of their confidence levels regarding various bioethical issues were higher than faculty reports. A further disconnect showed up between students’ preferred learning styles and the general faculty’s common teaching methods; students learned more by practicing scientific argumentation than listening to traditional lectures. Students who completed a bioethics course that included practice in scientific argumentation, significantly increased their confidence levels. This study suggests that professors’ expectations and teaching styles influence student confidence levels in both knowledge and scientific argumentation.