Roles, caring and learning to teach science

Classroom narratives and stories are rich and powerful in offering deep insights into classrooms and the reality of teaching—a reality critically re-examined in this forum. Discussing Maria’s narratives led to reflections about what it takes to support teachers to become agents of more equitable science practices. Factors such as time and identity-work are key dimensions of the authors’ struggle, but they also address understanding students in profound ways. The ways in which contradictions at different levels in the educational system can become sources of growth, reflection and action are discussed; yet no simple answers follow. Teaching and becoming a teacher are best understood as life-long processes of reflection and action and as political acts that entail challenging many boundaries. They also involve putting oneself into vulnerable roles and positions. This dialogue opens up many questions about how we can collaborate, guide and support both novices and experienced professionals in education as researchers, science staff developers, and teacher educators. It seeks to support the on-going quest to make science education authentic and equitable.     

Toward constructivism for adult learners in online learning environments

Since online learning has a different setting from the conventional classroom, online educators need to use some special techniques and perceptions to lead to success. Moreover, adults have special needs and requirements as learners compared with children and adolescents, thus online educators should know how adults can learn best because of their special characteristics. Philosophical and methodological shifts also affect instruction. Many researchers have suggested that constructivism should be applied in distance education. Thus, this paper attempts to examine the impact of constructivism in online learning environments when focusing on adult learners. The author develops the connection between constructivism and adult learning theory. In addition, the paper proposes instructional guidelines using the constructivist approach in online learning for adults.     

Reframing learning to teach diversity: multicultural curriculum within a cosmopolitan context

This qualitative study explores the possibilities of reframing multicultural teacher education in the context of critical cosmopolitanism. I examine the ways in which 34 pre-service and in-service teachers learn to teach diversity and multicultural issues in their curriculum. I use three sets of coursework materials, including course discussions, small group presentations, and midterm and final papers to investigate their conceptualisations of diversity and equity issues in education. I present two salient themes as they reframe to teach diversity by reviewing both local and global conflicts: (a) analysing the frame of recognition and (b) revisiting the notions of self-other and interrelationality. Butlerian theory of recognisability provides an important theoretical and pedagogical approach for exploring the conditions of recognition as liveable life, rather than focusing on what works best for increasing teachers’ cosmopolitan awareness. Teacher education programmes could benefit from critical cosmopolitanism when implementing a theoretical and pedagogical strategy for teaching diversity within a global context.     

Development of professional knowledge in learning to teach elementary science

The purpose of this research was to understand how preservice elementary teacher experiences within the context of reflective science teacher education influence the development of professional knowledge. We conducted a case analysis to investigate one preservice teacher's beliefs about science teaching and learning, identify the tensions with which she grappled in learning to teach elementary science, understand the frames from which she identified problems of practice, and discern how her experiences played a role in framing and reframing problems of practice. The teacher, Barbara, encountered tensions in thinking about science teaching and learning as a result of inconsistencies between her vision of science teaching and her practice. Confronting these tensions between ideals and realities prompted Barbara to rethink the connections between her classroom actions and students' learning and create new perspectives for viewing her practice. Through reframing, she was able to consider and begin implementing alternative practices more resonant with her beliefs. Barbara's case illustrates the value of understanding prospective teachers' beliefs, their experiences, and the relationship between beliefs and classroom actions. Furthermore, the findings underscore the significance of offering reflective experience as professionals early in the careers of prospective teachers. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 121–139, 1999     

The experience of learning to teach: Changing student teachers' ways of understanding teaching

I examine how physical education teachers respond to homophobic name‐calling, as revealed in life history interviews with ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, and ‘heterosexual’ teachers in Canada and the USA. Censoring homophobic name‐calling in schools is discussed as an important, but insufficient, response. Several ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ teachers responded with pedagogies of injury; that is, they recalled their personal experiences of homophobic language to teach students not to use words such as ‘fag’, ‘dyke’, and ‘queer’. I examine why some teachers were prepared to risk further personal injury in order to prevent injury to other students. In addition to rational and conscious explanations, I speculate that an unconscious masochistic imperative may also animate this approach to anti‐homophobic education. Ultimately, I ask what is demanded from teachers if this type of anti‐homophobic teaching is animated by what has been called an attachment to subjection.     

Perspectives on learning to teach science: insights and dilemmas from a collaborative practicum project

In this article we discuss the theoretical and practical rationale for establishing a collaborative science practicum project and report on the findings of the first two years. The project was designed to strengthen the communication links among the school‐based educators, the pre‐service teachers, and the university‐based educators, in order to address the seemingly intractable problems associated with initiating new science teachers into the varied social practices of the teaching profession. Our findings are organized and discussed in the form of three dilemmas (Cuban 1992). These dilemmas are associated with the difficulties the pre‐service teachers had in connecting the propositional knowledge presented in the university setting with the procedural knowledge required in the school setting, and the lack of familiarity by the university and school‐based educators of each other's practice setting. We describe results that resonate with similar issues reported in other collaborative projects, and propose an alternative approach for preparing science teachers. This approach is based on conceptualizing learning to teach as a cognitive apprenticeship (Hennessy 1993) which prepares pre‐service teachers to enter the ‘community of practice’ called teaching. We argue that the success of such an approach requires the development of a collaborative community in which all participants engage in meaningful and supportive discourse concerning what, when and how science is taught in the classroom.     

Students' learning in science lessons: towards understanding the learning process

Constructivist views of learning have been applied to science education largely as a response to attempts to understand the origins of students' misconceptions in science, and therefore the learning process. As part of this effort to understand learning in science lessons, Appleton (1989) proposed a learning model drawn mainly from Piagetian (1978) ideas and generative learning theory (Osborne & Wittrock, 1983). This paper explores the development and evolution of the learning model as other constructivist view were applied, and as the model was tested against students' responses in science lessons. The revised model finally arrived at is then examined. It was found to be a useful means of describing student's learning processes during a science lesson. Specializations: primary teacher education, teaching strategies in science, cognitive change and learning theories. Specializations: secondary science teacher education, chemical education.     

Growing the tree of teacher knowledge: Ten years of learning to teach elementary science

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a much debated and studied construct. In this article, we adopt an all‐embracing view of PCK to examine the development of one elementary science teacher's knowledge over a 10‐year period. We portray this teacher's knowledge at three critical points in her career—as a student teacher, beginning teacher, and established teacher—and represent and analyze the growth of her science PCK using the metaphor of a knowledge tree. The tree metaphor shows that while science knowledge begins as the major branch of science PCK, it is soon overshadowed by the general teaching and interactive knowledge branches of science PCK; however, taken together, all three branches contribute over time to the formation of a healthy, established tree of science PCK. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 767–790, 2005     

Rethinking science education: Beyond piagetian constructivism toward a sociocultural model of teaching and learning

In the first part of the article I present an epistemological critique of forms of pedagogy founded on Piagetian constructivism. Despite the appeal of the notion that learners construct their understanding, I argue that constructivism is problematic because it ignores the subjectivity of the learner and the socially and historically situated nature of knowing; it denies the essentially collaborative and social nature of meaning making; and it privileges only one form of knowledge, namely, the technical rational. I then present a critique of active learning and student-centered forms of pedagogy. I argue that in our models of teaching we rely on too many unexamined assumptions from developmental psychology and we take for granted the problematic notion that children learn by doing. My central thesis is that constructivism is flawed because of its inability to come to grips with the essential issues of culture, power, and discourse in the classroom. In the concluding section of the article I present a preliminary account of a sociocultural approach to teaching and learning that takes seriously the notion that learning is situated in contexts, that students bring their own subjectivities and cultural perspectives to bear in constructing understanding, that issues of power exist in the classroom that need to be addressed, and that education into scientific ways of knowing requires understanding modes of classroom discourse and enabling students to negotiate these modes effectively so that they may master and critique scientific ways of knowing without, in the process, sacrificing their own personally and culturally constructed ways of knowing.     

Troubling teacher identity: preparing mathematics teachers to teach for diversity

This paper reports on an action research project designed to explore the complexities of pre‐service mathematics teacher resistance to social justice issues. Research on equity and mathematics education has indicated that such resistance seems particularly strong for mathematics teachers. Twelve pre‐service mathematics teachers participated in a course‐based research project to explore this issue. Participants completed a classroom discourse analysis and a self‐study narrative as part of their secondary mathematics methods course. The findings suggest that attention to issues of identity construction within school mathematics can be successfully embedded in methods courses in order to better prepare mathematics teachers to teach for diversity.     

Coteaching: Creating resources for learning and learning to teach chemistry in urban high schools

How do new teachers become confident and competent while they are interns in inner‐city neighborhood schools challenged by many problems, often associated with economic shortfalls and cultural differences between the students and their teachers? Many science teacher education programs place a lot of emphasis on the planning stages of curriculum. But considerable discrepancies emerge between planned and lived curriculum, particularly in inner‐city, comprehensive high schools, and especially in classrooms that honor student interests and culture as starting points for learning. Previous research showed that coteaching provides opportunities for learning to teach even though the lived curriculum emerges often in unpredictable ways from the dialectic of collective (teacher and students) agency and structure. The present study allowed us to understand the underlying processes: the presence of a coteacher increases access to social and material resources, and thereby increases opportunities for actions that otherwise would not occur. Greater teaching opportunities provide newcomers with greater opportunities of learning to teach. ? 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 882‐904, 2004.     

Coherent teaching and need-based learning in science: an approach to teach engineering students in basic physics courses

In the present paper, we propose an alternative, based on constructivism, to the conventional way of teaching basic physics courses at the university level. We call this approach ‘coherent teaching’ and the underlying philosophy of teaching science and engineering ‘need-based learning’. We have been applying this philosophy in practice in a basic physics course at the Department of Engineering Physics and Mathematics of Helsinki University of Technology. Here we present the main ideas of the new approach and how we have implemented them, as well as discuss how coherent teaching has affected the students' opinions about the course and how it has changed the learning results.