Students as ‘catalysts’ in the classroom: the impact of co‐teaching between science student teachers and primary classroom teachers on children's enjoyment and learning of science

This study is an investigation of the impact of collaborative teaching by student‐teachers and classroom teachers on children’s enjoyment and learning of science. The paper describes findings from a project in which undergraduate science specialist student‐teachers were placed in primary schools where they ‘co‐taught’ investigative science and technology with primary teachers. Almost six months after the student placement, a survey of children’s attitudes to school science revealed that these children enjoyed science lessons more and showed fewer gender or age differences in their attitudes to science than children who had not been involved in the project. The authors discuss how this model of collaborative planning, teaching and evaluation can both enhance teacher education and improve children’s experience of science.     

The relationship between classroom quality and students’ engagement in secondary school

Student engagement has been identified as an influential mediator between classroom interactional quality and adolescent learning outcomes. This study examined the relationship between classroom quality and student behavioural engagement in secondary school classrooms. Three dimensions of classroom quality (emotional, organisational and instructional support) and the dimension of student engagement were observed in nine classrooms using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. Self-ratings of behavioural engagement were provided by 181 Finnish secondary school students along with their teachers’ ratings of classroom-level student engagement. The results showed, first, that there was variation in both classroom quality and student behavioural engagement between the classrooms. Second, classroom organisational support was associated with observed and with teacher- and student-rated engagement, and instructional support was associated with student-rated and observed engagement. Third, emotional support did not have a direct effect on student engagement but contributed to student engagement indirectly via organisational and instructional support. There were no gender differences with respect to self-reported engagement. Class size had a positive effect on teacher-rated engagement. The results demonstrated specific associations between the domains of classroom quality and student behavioural engagement in secondary school classrooms.     

The relationship between biology teachers’ understanding of the nature of science and the understanding and acceptance of the theory of evolution

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of the theory of evolution (TE) to scientific knowledge, a number of misconceptions continue to be found among biology teachers. In this context, the first objective of this study was to identify the impact of professional development programme (PDP) on teachers’ understanding of nature of science (NOS) and evolution and on the acceptance of this theory. Its second objective was to study the relationship among these variables. Three instruments were used to quantify these variables: the Views of the Nature of Science Version D (VNOS D+), the Assessing Contextual Reasoning about Natural Selection (ACORN), and the Measure of Acceptance of Theory of Evolution (MATE). The results indicate that the PDP had a positive impact on teachers, significantly improving their understanding of the NOS and natural selection, as well as their acceptance of the TE. Furthermore, a positive correlation between the understanding of the NOS obtained by teachers in the first part of the PDP and the understanding and acceptance of evolution that these teachers showed at the end of the programme was determined. However, no relationship between an understanding of the NOS and gains in the understanding and acceptance of evolution was found.     

The difficult relationship between theory and practice in an in‐service course for science teachers

We compare the content that was expected with what actually was put into practice in a course of ongoing education of secondary education (12–16 year olds) science teachers, and describe the most relevant problems that arose. We believe that the educational content — its nature, how it is organized and presented to the teacher participants, and so on — has a major influence on the relationships that are established between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. It is from this perspective that the results are analysed.

The data come from statements made by those involved — the director and the coordinator of the course and the teacher participants — obtained in interviews and written documents.

The inference drawn from the analysis of the results is that, in the educational strategy that was being studied, practice is not conceived of as a genuine scenario of production of meanings, but only as a field of application of the theories of the disciplines being taught. This has a decisive influence on the development of the course and on the degree of professional evolution of the participants.     

Investigating the relationship between students’ attentive–inattentive behaviors in the classroom and their literacy progress: Chapter 1 Introduction: Effects and context

The co-occurrence of inattentiveness and poor literacy achievement is problematic for a significant number of children and adolescents. Such problems are resistant to intervention and constitute substantial management difficulties for parents, educators and health professionals. Due to conceptual and methodological deficiencies endemic to inquiry in this field, findings from prevailing explanatory models are inadequate and misleading. However, the identification of salient contributing factors is difficult for two key reasons. First, indicators of poor literacy achievement and inattentiveness are heterogeneous and overlap. Second, there has been a persistent failure of researchers to fit cross-validated models that adequately reflect the complex inter-relationships that operate among multivariate, multilevel factors affecting child behavior and educational outcomes. The chapter concludes with an acceptance of Hinshaw’s (1992, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 60, 893–903) “challenge,” namely: “The challenge for the field is to derive explanatory models with sufficient rigor and complexity to handle the diversity of causal factors” (p. 151).     

What if teachers learn in the classroom?

This study focuses on exploring teacher learning in terms of teachers’ professional agency embedded in the classroom. Teachers’ sense of professional agency is related to perceiving instruction as a bidirectional process, use of students as a resource for professional learning and continuous reflection on teaching practices. Accordingly, the capacity to cross the boundaries in teacher learning contributes active professional agency and, consequently to work-related well-being. Hence, the interrelations between teachers’ sense of professional agency and the burnout they experienced were also analysed. Altogether 2310 Finnish comprehensive school teachers, including primary, subject and special education teachers, completed the study survey. The results indicated that active professional agency, promoting both learning and well-being, requires not just reflecting and adapting but also efforts to learn at work. Moreover this requires not just self-directed and active professional practice but also learning at the boundaries and creating new professional knowledge together with students and colleagues.     

Investigating the relationship between students’ attentive–inattentive behaviors in the classroom and their literacy progress: Chapter 5 Implications of the findings

The findings are discussed in terms of their methodological and substantive implications. This includes evaluations of the methods used to: (1) assess students’ attentive–inattentive behaviors in the classroom, (2) assess their literacy progress, and (3) analyze the data. A critical evaluation of the fitted explanatory models is provided, suggesting that prevailing unidirectional, single-level, explanatory models purporting to “account” for the overlap are inadequate. Two major substantive implications for current and future intervention policies and practices are discussed. First, early success in literacy is vital for students since it has significant positive effects on both their early and subsequent attentive behaviors and achievement hence reducing the need for subsequent behavioral management interventions. Second, since teachers make a difference, the need to provide them with structured approaches to the teaching of early literacy is paramount.     

How do teachers perceive cheating students? Beliefs about cues to deception and detection accuracy in the educational field

The present study explores how well teacher trainees can detect liars. Moreover, a new method was applied to investigate beliefs that teacher trainees hold about liars. The results indicate that, overall, teacher trainees were not better than chance in detecting true and invented stories. Generally, participants reported to have used only a few cues for their credibility judgment, where most of these self-reported cues are stereotypical and invalid deception cues (e.g., gaze aversion). Further analyses with a Brunswikian lens model showed that the self-reported cues were good predictors of their credibility judgment but only poorly predictive for the objective truth/lie status of the statement. Practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Testing the mediating role of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs in the relationship between sources of efficacy information and students achievement

The purpose of this study is to test the mediating role of teachers?? self-efficacy beliefs in the relationship between sources of efficacy information and students achievement. For achieving this aim, this study suggests two alternative models, tested by Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. In the first model, sources of efficacy information and teachers?? sense of self-efficacy independently influenced student achievement. In second model, we examined a dependent 2-factor model, consisting of: (a) antecedent variable: sources of efficacy information, (b) mediator variable: teachers?? sense of self-efficacy, and (c) criterion variable: student??s achievement. Among 284 teachers who participated in this study, Sources of the Self-Efficacy Inventory (SOSI) and Teachers?? Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) were distributed. Findings of this study indicated that between two suggested models, the dependent model showed the best overall fit to the data. In this model, teachers?? self-efficacy had mediational role between sources of teachers?? self-efficacy and student??s achievement.     

Investigating the relationship between students’ attentive–inattentive behaviors in the classroom and their literacy progress: Chapter 6 Epistemological and methodological issues: A synthesis

An overview of the investigation is provided within the framework of a discussion of epistemological and methodological issues related to the status of claims to knowledge in the field. Future research must confront the inherent complexity and substantive richness of the phenomena being investigated by employing conceptual orientations and investigative methodologies that are commensurate with that complexity. The challenge is to refocus the prevailing psycho-behavioral models accounting for the overlap between inattentive behavior problems and poor academic achievement — together with their related intervention emphases — to educational ones. Indeed, It is the considered view of the authors that the personal, social and financial costs of failure to meet this challenge will be both unsustainable and unbearable.     

Using process drama to enhance pre-service teachers’ understanding of science and religion

I report an action research study that aimed at improving Thai pre-service teachers’ understanding of the relationship between science and religion and at assisting them to respond to this issue in a science classroom. The participants were twelve post-grad students pursuing Master of Art in Teaching Science at Kasetsart University. They took a course, Philosophy of Science, taught by the researcher in Semester A, academic year 2007. Process drama is the teaching strategy employed. The students were fully engaged in the process drama; doing research, producing, distributing, and criticizing the drama. Focus group, student journal, and observation were used to gather the data and the data was analyzed using qualitative analysis techniques. The focus groups revealed that the drama could help students reflect on the complexity and sensitivity of the issue. They found there was no inherent conflict between science and religion since they answered different questions and used different methods to achieve their results. However, the conflicts occurred when people were not aware of the basic differences between the two so they justified one on the basis of purpose and method of one another. The pre-service teachers also found consistency between science and Buddhism. They thought that the teachers of science should respond to the conflicts in a respectful, compromising, and neutral manner.     

‘Science disproves the biblical account of creation’: exploring the predictors of perceived conflict between science and religion among 13- to 15-year-old students in the UK

This study drew on data provided by 11,809 13- to 15-year-old students drawn from the four nations of the UK to explore the level of agreement with the view that science disproves the biblical account odf creation, and to explore the power of five sets of variables to predict individual differences in responses to that opinion. The five sets of variables were personal factors, psychological factors, religious factors, attitudinal factors (including ‘scientific fundamentalism’, understood as an exaggerated, uncritical, and unqualified belief in the inerrancy of science), and theological factors (distinguishing between differing implied theologies of religion). Blockwise multiple regression demonstrated that personal, psychological, religious, and theological factors all held significant power, but that the greatest variance was explained by the attitudinal variables. When the five sets of variables were assessed within the model, 25% of the variance was accounted for. Greater incompatibility between science and religion was associated with scientific fundamentalism (β = .37, p < .001), with anti-religious attitude (β = .16, p < .001), and with atheism (β = .07, p < .001). These findings suggest that young people who believe in science in an unqualified way are more distrustful of religion.     

Fear and efficacy appeals in the classroom: the secondary teachers’ perspective

Previous research has examined the use of classroom fear and efficacy appeals from a student perspective, but little is known about teachers’ views towards fear and efficacy appeals. In this preliminary study, we conducted a survey of 234 secondary school teachers. Results showed that teachers held mixed views towards the use of fear appeals and their domain knowledge of fear appeals, but more homogenous views about efficacy appeals, reassuring messages and domain knowledge of efficacy appeals. There were no differences in the endorsement of fear and efficacy appeals from teachers of differing school general certificate of secondary education performance, however, teachers reported students to be less efficacious from schools whose performance is deemed to be ‘under average’. There were no differences in the endorsement of fear appeals or domain knowledge of fear appeals between novice and experienced teachers. These findings provide a first step in examining fear and efficacy appeals from a teacher perspective.     

On the relationship between society and higher education: what path should we take?

Abstract

The current network society, with its primacy of information and communication technologies, is challenging the higher education model. The needs and expectations of today’s students differ from those of students in the past, and educational practices should adapt to modern times. But what changes will we see in the relationship between societal transformation and the higher education system? In this research paper, we set out a quantum-based approach in order to analyze this relationship and to advance the understanding about the role that distance education will play in the future. Under this perspective, we provide an illustration that allows for the representation and evaluation of future scenarios.     

Raising awareness of uncertainty: A useful addendum to courses in the history and philosophy of science for science teachers?

A brief consideration of the need for courses in the history and philosophy of science (HPS) for science teachers is followed by the development of a suggested addendum. The rationale accepts the developmental argument that a conscious awareness of personal uncertainty of explanation provides the motor of change needed to involve science teachers in thinking critically about the nature of their subject. Following the technique pioneered in a different context by Acredolo and O'Connor (1991), the addendum is developed as a test procedure fostering the expression of uncertainties in relation to important questions about science. Using questions designed to serve our specific purposes, a form of the test is trialled on a small group of science teachers attending courses in a Graduate Certificate in Science Education, and the results used to stimulate and promote their discussion of some critical matters concerning the nature of science.     

Declawing the dinosaurs in the science classroom: Reducing Christian teachers’ anxiety and increasing their efficacy for teaching evolution

America's rank among the lowest of developed countries in evolution acceptance rates is due, at least in part, to religious and political opposition. The negative correlations among religiosity, political ideology, and evolution acceptance in the United States have been documented repeatedly, and comfort with evolution varies by region with reception being especially cool in the south and southwest. Teachers are on the frontlines of the tensions between science and faith and often avoid the topic even if such avoidance violates state laws. Even non-creationist teachers in regions with creationist norms are pressured to conform to regional curricula preferences. The present study describes the outcomes of a professional development workshop that explicitly considerers motivational and identity features of largely conservative, religious science teachers residing in West Texas. Our goal was to reduce the perceived conflict between faith and science such that Christian teachers would feel less negative and more positive about the theory and teaching it, and thus more efficacious in the classroom such that they would be more willing to teach according to the standards. In a retrospective pretest-posttest design, teachers reported reductions in misconceptions and negative emotions in response to the workshop, and gains in positive emotions and self-efficacy. Change scores were particularly marked for female teachers. Moreover, the relationships between community support for teaching evolution and teacher emotions and self-efficacy were reduced post-workshop indicating that teachers became independent from the norms of their schools. Though not the first intervention to support teacher instruction of evolution, the present workshop is the first to our knowledge that seeks to integrate biological content, cognitive change, and motivational/identity models.