Briging it all back home: some implications of recent science and technology studies for the classroom science teacher

In this paper, we support the validity of drawing from science studies to reshape science education. While true educational reform must involve alternative curricular structures, we stress that we do not propose here either a comprehensive curricular framework or a report on a pilot classroom project, as our research perspective comes from science studies rather than from education. Instead this paper is intended to encourage educators to draw from methodologies used in science studies to further their goals in education research and in classroom teaching. First, we examine theoretical connections and divergences between science studies and theories of education. Secondly, we discuss the benefits of teaching science as a social process and offer some suggestions that can be introduced by classroom teachers into pre-existing science curricula.     

Science-based laboratory comprehension: an examination of effective practices within traditional,online and blended learning environments

An increase in online education is causing science educators to evaluate student cognitive understanding after completing virtual, computer-simulated laboratories. Online education has demonstrated comparable learning gains when analysed to those of the traditional classroom, but research is mixed when reviewing students’ ability to manipulate tangible laboratory equipment after participating in online experimentation. The question remains, are students who are exclusively enrolled in online science courses equipped with the cognitive ability to operate laboratory equipment within a physical laboratory? When considering the optimal learning environment for science majors, educators have discovered the blended classroom may provide the perfect opportunity to combine the benefits of face-to-face instruction and feedback with the reinforcement of scientific theory through technology integration. New advances in virtual education provide promising examples of enhancing the online classroom laboratory in all scientific disciplines. Further insight into the blended classroom has the potential to influence the field of education towards an optimal learning environment for science majors in colleges and universities.     

Addressing the Nature of Science in Preservice Science Teacher Preparation Programs: Science Educator Perceptions

The nature of science (NOS) has a prominent role among the national science education content standards at all grade levels, K–12. Results from a national survey of collegiate science educators indicate the perception that the greatest contributors to preservice teachers’ understanding of the nature of science were science methods courses, research projects, and science content courses. Implications of findings are discussed, including connections to current research concerning teacher preparation for effective NOS classroom teaching and student learning.The Nature of Science course on the authors’ campus was initiated in the early 1990s, has evolved, and remains in the required core curriculum for preservice chemistry, earth science, and physics teacher candidates. It is the capstone for NOS insights. It adds to and refines impressions garnered implicitly from science content courses, the methods course, and, for some, an undergraduate research experience.     

Science Teachers’ Use of Mass Media to Address Socio-Scientific and Sustainability Issues

The currency, relevancy and changing nature of science makes it a natural topic of focus for mass media outlets. Science teachers and students can capitalize on this wealth of scientific information to explore socio-scientific and sustainability issues; however, without a lens on how those media are created and how representations of science are constructed through media, the use of mass media in the science classroom may be risky. Limited research has explored how science teachers naturally use mass media to explore scientific issues in the classroom or how mass media is used to address potential overlaps between socio-scientific-issue based instruction and education for sustainability. This naturalistic study investigated the reported and actual classroom uses of mass media by secondary science teachers’ to explore socio-scientific and sustainability issues as well as the extent to which their instructional approaches did or did not overlap with frameworks for SSI-based instruction, education for sustainability, and media literacy education. The results of this study suggest that secondary science teachers use mass media to explore socio-scientific and sustainability issues, but their use of frameworks aligned with SSI-based, education for sustainability, and media literacy education was limited. This paper provides suggestions for how we, as science educators and researchers, can advance a teaching and learning agenda for encouraging instruction that more fully utilizes the potential of mass media to explore socio-scientific issues in line with perspectives from education for sustainability.     

(Re)considering Foucault for science education research: considerations of truth,power and governance

This article is a response to Anna Danielsonn, Maria Berge, and Malena Lidar’s paper, “Knowledge and power in the technology classroom: a framework for studying teachers and students in action”, and an appeal to science educators of all epistemological orientations to (re)consider the work of Michel Foucault for research in science education. Although this essay does not come close to outlining the importance of Foucault’s work for science education, it does present a lesser-known side of Foucault as an anti-polemical, realist, modern philosopher interested in the way objective knowledge is entangled with governance in modernity. This latter point is important for science educators, as it is the intersection of objective knowledge and institutional imperatives that characterizes the field(s) of science education. Considering the lack of engagement with philosophy and social theory in science education, this paper offers one of many possible readings of Foucault (we as authors have also published different readings of Foucault) in order to engage crucial questions related to truth, power, governance, discourse, ethics and education.     

Reproductive and resistant pedagogies: The comparative roles of collaborative learning and feminist pedagogy in science education

The underrepresentation of women (and men of color) in science has motivated many science educators to develop innovate classroom pedagogies aimed at making science courses and curricula more attractive and inviting to all students. One dominant approach to reforming science education is to transform how students learn by implementing collaborative approaches to learning in the classroom. Feminist pedagogy is an alternative approach to science education reform that is concerned with transforming both how students of science learn and the science curriculum that students are expected to learn. This article first compares and contrasts collaborative learning and feminist pedagogy. It then addresses the implications and consequences of each for science education. The theoretical and epistemological foundations of each approach demonstrates that choosing a classroom pedagogy is not an apolitical act. Collaborative approaches to science education serve to reproduce the dominant discourse of existing science systems. In contrast, feminist pedagogy resists the dominant discourse and invites all students to learn science, but more important, it invites them also to critically analyze existing scientific systems and the relationship of those systems to power, oppression, and domination. J Res Sci Teach 35: 443–459, 1998.     

Towards Worldview Education Beyond Language-Culture Incommensurability

This article presents an axiomatic expression of science education: [SCIENCE EDUCATION] is a system of teaching [SCIENCE]. The axiom includes two indefinable terms, [SCIENCE EDUCATION] and [SCIENCE]. In the same way that axiomatics of geometry distinguishes among axioms, postulates and theorems, the axiom presupposes a distinction among the three stages of cognition: axiom, postulate and theorem. This distinction, which is properly called the axiomatics model, will draw science educators' attention to how scientific concepts are distorted, and will develop science education towards worldview education. In the context of science education, worldview education has the potential to enable science educators and pupils to liberate themselves from their language-culture prejudices. On the basis of the axiomatics model, mutual understanding of different language-culture communities will be greatly promoted in the science classroom.     

The role of classroom research projects in the preparation of science teachers

Research undertaken by educational researchers based in universities has not had the desired impact on the practices of classroom science teachers. Yet Goodlad (1990) has argued that if teaching is to be recognised as a profession there is a great need for the marrying of the knowledge of the practitioner with that of the researcher. Student teachers might learn to respect the potential for such a union by undertaking minor classroom research projects during their teacher preparation programs. This paper discusses the role of research projects in pre-service teacher preparation with reference to an inquiry conducted with teacher education students. Specializations: science education, teacher learning and preparation, teaching thinking.     

A third use of sociology of scientific knowledge: a lens for studying teacher practice

Over the last two decades, science educators and science education researchers have grown increasingly interested in utilising insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) to inform their work and research. To date, researchers in science education have focused on two applications: results of sociological studies of science have been used to define new areas of content, generally referred to as Nature of Science (NOS). This has included research into students’ understanding of the NOS, teachers’ understanding of the NOS, and inclusion (or exclusion) of NOS themes in curricula. A second vein of inquiry has been investigations that consider the classroom as a microcosm of scientific discourse and inquiry. Such research has included investigations of student‐to‐student and student‐to‐teacher interactions. In this paper, we present a third application for educational research – the investigation of teacher knowledge and practice as sociological phenomena. In addition to supporting scholarly research, we believe it can be a useful tool for illuminating the complexities of teaching that needs to be taken into account by policy makers and practitioners. In this paper, we provide a thematic review of concepts from the sociology of scientific knowledge, and their application to a case of teacher work.     

Talking about science: An interpretation of the effects of teacher talk in a high school science classroom

This paper builds on research in science education, secondary education, and sociolinguistics by arguing that high school classrooms can be considered speech communities in which language may be selectively used and imposed on students as a means of fostering academic speech community identification. To demonstrate the ways in which a high school teacher's language use may encourage subject area identification, the results of an interactionist analysis of data from a 2-year ethnographic study of one high school chemistry classroom are presented. Findings indicate that this teacher's uses of language fell into three related categories. These uses of language served to foster identification with the academic speech community of science. As a result of the teacher's talk about science according to these three patterns, students developed or reinforced particular views of science. In addition, talking about science in ways that fostered identity with the discipline promoted the teacher as expert and built classroom solidarity or community. These results are discussed in light of sociolinguistic research on classroom competence and of the assertions of science educators regarding social and ideologic implications of language use in science instruction.     

Controversial Conversations in Science: Incorporating the Science “Sex Box”

Science classrooms—and science textbooks—are proving to be challenging spaces for education that contradicts abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) sex education. However, science educators can teach against this knowledge in a way that is critical of oppressive language. In fact, having explicit dialogue about gender identities and sexual orientation can help uncover oppressive cultural attitudes and help science educators challenge universal views of the human body. This article examines two narratives that use a pedagogic practice to help them teach in AOUM environments. The first narrative discusses personal experiences of the author as a science teacher and the dilemmas faced by including what I call a “sex box” in a life science class. The second narrative discusses an excerpt from a research study conducted with life science teachers in which a participant uses this same method. The purpose of this discussion is to help expose the science classroom as a place to have meaningful discussions, even with policies and cultures that do not support the discussion of safe sex for minority human sexualities.¹ This article suggests future science teachers and present teachers alike can advocate for the incorporation of national standards that counteract overtly discriminatory policies.     

Development and application of the Elementary School Science Classroom Environment Scale (ESSCES): measuring student perceptions of constructivism within the science classroom

This article describes the development, validation and application of a Rasch-based instrument, the Elementary School Science Classroom Environment Scale (ESSCES), for measuring students’ perceptions of constructivist practices within the elementary science classroom. The instrument, designed to complement the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP), is conceptualised using the RTOP’s three construct domains: Lesson Design and Implementation; Content; and Classroom Culture. Data from 895 elementary students was used to develop the Rasch scale, which was assessed for item fit, invariance and dimensionality. Overall, the data conformed to the assumptions of the Rasch model. In addition, the structural relationships among the retained items of the Rasch model supported and validated the instrument for measuring the reformed science classroom environment theoretical construct. The application of the ESSCES in a research study involving fourth grade students provides evidence that educators and researchers have a reliable instrument for understanding the elementary science classroom environment through the lens of the students.     

Collaborative teacher learning: Findings from two professional development projects

This article discusses two projects that were aimed at enhancing the opportunities for professional development of the participants through collaboration between classroom teachers and teacher educators. The two projects, the Australian Project for Enhancing Effective Learning (PEEL) and the Canadian Learning Strategies Group (LSG), focused on the teaching and learning practices in secondary school classrooms. We examine those features that we contend have resulted in long-term sustainability and the success of these partnerships. An analysis of our own experiences and other empirical data from both projects illustrate our claims that these small-scale projects have: improved the learning environment in classrooms for students and teachers; created models of professional development for school and teacher educators; and provided valid knowledge about learning and teaching issues in classroom settings. The potential of such projects to achieve these aims depends upon: (a) a mutually held understanding of what types of classroom practices nurture good teaching and learning, (b) a setting where teachers have a strong commitment and control over the project and decide on its direction, and (c) a structure that allows teachers and teacher educators to meet regularly in an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding.     

形成性评价课堂技术的意义、支撑环境和三大转变——以科学教育为视角

形成性评价课堂技术是一个具体的策略,旨在提高课堂教学的效果。形成性评价课堂技术应用在科学教育中可以提高教学质量,对科学教育的发展具有重要的意义。在科学教育中使用形成性评价课堂技术需要一定的支撑环境,从传统的课堂向以形成性评价为中心的课堂转换需要进行三大转变。但教师在科学教育中使用形成性评价课堂技术也不是万能的,需要遵循三大核心原则,这样才能达到理想的效果。     

3Hs Education: Examining hands-on,heads-on and hearts-on early childhood science education

Active engagement has become the focus of many early childhood science education curricula and standards. However, active engagement usually emphasizes getting children engaged with science solely through hands-on activities. Active engagement by way of hands, heads, and hearts are kept separate and rarely discussed in terms of getting all to work together, although inquiry-based education and student interest have been accepted as important in science education. The current study is an inquiry-based research. It aims to describe and examine projects and activity stations for preschoolers in a Turkish preschool classroom bringing together the pieces of the puzzle of science education, called here ‘Hands–Heads–Hearts-on Science Education'. The study, conducted from a qualitative-interpretivist paradigm, reveals that activity stations and projects create a context for hands-on (active engagement), heads-on (inquiry based or mental-engagement), and hearts-on (interest based) science education. It is found that activity stations and projects, when maintained by appropriate teacher-support, create a playful context in which children can be actively and happily engaged in science-related inquiry.     

Making learning interesting and its application to the science classroom

Generations of students are graduating from secondary school disinterested in post-secondary study of science or pursuing careers in science-related fields beyond formal education. We propose that destabilising such disinterest among future students requires science educators to begin listening to secondary school students regarding their views of how science learning is made interesting within the science classroom. Studies on students’ interest in response to instructional strategies applied in the classroom communicate the opinions (i.e. the ‘voice’) of students about the strategies they believe make their classroom learning interesting. To this end, this scoping study (1) collects empirical studies that present from various science and non-science academic domains students’ views about how to make classroom learning interesting; (2) identifies common instructional strategies across these domains that make learning interesting; and (3) forwards an instructional framework called TEDI ([T]ransdisciplinary Connections; Mediated [E]ngagement; Meaningful [D]iscovery; and Self-determined [I]nquiry), which may provide secondary school science teachers with a practical instructional approach for making learning science genuinely interesting among their students within the secondary school science classroom context.     

The Mandate for Interdisciplinarity in Science Education: The Case of Economic and Environmental Sciences

Science educators often miss an opportunity to encourage the cognitive leaps associated with the formation of networks of meaning when they deliver scientific concepts as solitary sets of received wisdom. Interdisciplinary science education provides a rich setting for encouraging this formation of meaning within the minds of the students. A wonderful example of this rich interdisciplinary setting can be found when environmental science is informed by the study of economics within the classroom. The usefulness of particular concepts in economic science for environmental science is illustrative of what science students can gain from learning science in an interdisciplinary setting.     

Teaching Scientific Practices: Meeting the Challenge of Change

This paper provides a rationale for the changes advocated by the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards. It provides an argument for why the model embedded in the Next Generation Science Standards is seen as an improvement. The Case made here is that the underlying model that the new Framework presents of science better represents contemporary understanding of nature of science as a social and cultural practice. Second, it argues that the adopting a framework of practices will enable better communication of meaning amongst professional science educators. This, in turn, will enable practice in the classroom to improve. Finally, the implications for teacher education are explored.