Mixed‐Ability Science Teaching in England

Summaries

English

In this short paper, the author looks back over the past few years at the experience gained in English schools of mixed‐ability teaching in science, and makes some personal interpretation of the lessons to be learned from that experience. It is hoped that some of these issues will be of relevance to other countries too.     

Teaching Statistics Visually: A Quasi‐Experimental Evaluation of Teaching Chi‐Square through Computer Tutorials 1

This paper examines the effectiveness of computer graphic tutorials in explaining statistical concepts to undergraduates enrolled in two sections of criminal justice research methods. We demonstrated key concepts to a treatment group through a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and Macromedia Flash movies. The students’ statistical skills were measured through a test on mathematical calculation and multiple‐choice questions about chi‐square concepts. Both sections scored similarly on the skills test; however, the treatment group performed better on the conceptual questions. We discuss the implications for teaching methods and statistics and offer several resources that instructors can use in their courses.     

Linguistic‐minority Students and Bilingual Mathematics Teaching

Mathematics teaching and subject‐matter acquisition of two groups of linguistic minority students were studied; one in a minolingual second‐language class and the other in a traditional bilingual‐education model in the city of Oslo, Norway. The background of attempts at bilingual education in the Norwegian context is presented, and some aspects of bilingual education, bilingual pedagogy and research‐based perspectives on the role of bilingual education in subject‐matter acquisition is discussed. On the basis of an empirical study of the teaching situation of linguistic‐minority students it is concluded that linguistic‐minority students profit from bilingual mathematics teaching. The empirical research results indicate that linguistic‐minority students (LMSs) with a bilingual‐education (BE) background can achieve as good or better results in mathematics as monolingual students. The strength of bilingual education can therefore be said to reside in the favourable conditions that it creates for the comprehension of linguistic‐minority students of the content taught. By creating favourable conditions bilingual subject‐matter teaching also fulfils minorities’ expectations of participating in content‐area instruction: to understand what is being communicated in subject‐matter teaching and to learn what is normally expected to be learned in subject‐matter teaching. It is therefore legitimate to argue for bilingual education on pedagogical grounds without the support of old‐fashioned anthropological or psychological arguments.     

Scaffolding Science Teachers in Open‐inquiry Teaching

The present study deals with a school‐based professional development trajectory for secondary science teachers, aiming at scaffolding teachers in open‐inquiry teaching for the topic of water quality. Its design was based on the leading principle of ‘guiding by scaffolding’. Seven experienced teachers participated in institutional meetings and teaching at school. The research focused on designing scaffolding tools, addressing these tools in the meetings, and implementing them in the classroom. The main research data were obtained from meetings, classroom discussions, and observations. The results indicated that the professional development trajectory has promoted teachers’ learning of scaffolding students in open inquiry, especially the ability to know when and how to give students a well‐balanced combination of ‘structure’ for open‐inquiry learning and sufficient ‘space’ for that. The implications for science teacher education are discussed.     

A Motivational View of Constructivist‐informed Teaching

Constructivist and conceptual change perspectives on learning have given rise to a number of models of constructivist classroom teaching. Motivation has been recognized as an important factor in the construction of knowledge and the process of conceptual change, so one could expect that motivation strategies would be integral components of constructivist‐informed teaching. The purpose of this paper was to examine, by literature review, the extent to which motivation strategies have been included in extant models of constructivist‐informed teaching. The study involved the development of a list of motivation strategies, based on current motivation constructs. Several constructivist‐informed teaching models were then analysed. It was found that these models were rather limited in the extent to which they had explicitly integrated motivation. It was also found that some aspects of the models were not entirely in accord with current views of motivation. Finally, a motivational model of constructivist‐informed teaching was developed and its three components were described.     

Teaching a Course in Human‐Computer Interaction

This article describes a graduate‐level course entitled “Human‐Computer Interaction.” The theme of the course was development of students’ ability to be critical and creative, within the context of human‐computer interfaces. The aim throughout the course was to expose students to the vagaries of a real‐world human‐computer interface development environment since one learns design best by doing design. This was accomplished through a semester‐long interface development project in which groups of students defined, specified, designed, prototyped, evaluated, and iteratively refined an interactive system with a significant human‐computer interface. The purpose of the interface development project was to give students exposure to the complete process of interface development, not necessarily to develop a complete interface. Other assignments supplemented lecture materials. Student assessments of the course were very positive, indicating that, in particular, the development project was of great use in exposing them to all the phases involved in developing a quality human‐computer interface. The course format and content presented here appear to be a viable model for teaching an effective and enjoyable course on human‐computer interaction.     

Learning of Chemical Equilibrium through Modelling‐based Teaching

This paper presents and discusses students’ learning process of chemical equilibrium from a modelling‐based approach developed from the use of the ‘Model of Modelling’ diagram. The investigation was conducted in a regular classroom (students 14–15 years old) and aimed at discussing how modelling‐based teaching can contribute to students learning about the main qualitative aspects concerning chemical equilibrium. The data (collected from the written material produced by the students and the video‐recording of the classes) were organised in case studies for each group of students. The discussion supports the conclusion that elements from the ‘Model of Modelling’ diagram, as well as methodological aspects related to the teacher’s action, influenced the students’ learning process.     

Kuhn's Paradigm and Example‐based Teaching of Newtonian Mechanics

Summaries

English

According to Kuhn, normal scientific work is developed not mainly from basic axioms, but by the development of the fundamental examples and demonstrations of the paradigm. For disciplines still at the research frontier, education can also only be example‐based rather than axiomatic, but for disciplines which have become classical, such as Newtonian mechanics, teaching should be performed using more formal methods. In practice this does not appear to be the case, and a number of simple problems in mechanics are cited where example‐based teaching commonly leads to misunderstanding. A recommendation is made for more direct teaching of the basic principles of mechanics.     

A Learning‐centred Faculty Certificate Programme on University Teaching

Learning‐centred education (LCE) has the potential to meet the diverse needs and circumstances of a multidisciplinary faculty cohort enrolled in a certificate programme on teaching and learning by engaging participants in a learning community, and by drawing upon a wide range of appropriate teaching strategies to facilitate learning and development of student abilities. Action research design was employed to examine the theory‐practice relationship of LCE within the UBC Faculty Certificate Programme on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Research data, both quantitative and qualitative, collected over a 12‐month period, suggest that a multidisciplinary faculty cohort exhibits diverse learning styles, and that individual faculty members are at different stages in developing a scholarly approach to teaching and learning. Furthermore, data suggest that LCE can be used to organise a faculty certificate programme around teaching and learning issues relevant to university faculty and that some structuring of the LCE environment can assist in the attainment of course learning outcomes while engaging faculty as active participants in their personal developmental process.     

Academics' Motivation and Self‐efficacy for Teaching and Research

The study focused on academic staff in a post‐1987 university, that is, a former college of advanced education which had been awarded university status as a result of the Australian Government's decision to have a Unified National System of universities. The focus of attention was motivation and self‐efficacy for teaching and research. The effect of faculty of affiliation, level of appointment, gender, qualifications, and research productivity on staff's self‐reported attributions for teaching and research were examined. Tutors, staff with bachelor degrees, academics with low research productivity, and women had higher teaching motivation. One faculty was lower in both research motivation and self‐efficacy, and associate professors and professors had high levels of research efficacy. Men and women had the same level of research motivation and self‐efficacy. Staff with higher degrees and greater research productivity were more motivated and self‐efficacious about research. The results suggest the need to understand more clearly how each individual's research motivation and self‐efficacy is constructed and to determine the best method of increasing motivation and self‐efficacy for teaching and research.     

The Acquisition of Science‐related Attitudes and its Relationship to Pre‐student Teaching Experience

It is desirable that secondary school science teachers should, in addition to acquiring factual knowledge in the content area of science, also develop favourable science‐related attitudes. The present science teacher education programmes provided in Teachers’ Colleges in Nigeria make provisions for the acquisition of factual knowledge in science. However, it is assumed that positive science‐related attitudes would be incidentally acquired as secondary product of cognitive outcomes.

This paper is a report of a study in which an instructional package‐‐the Introductory Science Teacher Education (ISTE)‐‐was designed to promote in pre‐service science teachers the acquisition of favourable science‐related attitudes.

A trial administration of the ISTE was carried out in the study. Then the effect of the ISTE on students exposed to it was determined in terms of acquisition of science‐related attitudes and competence in lesson preparation.

The results obtained confirmed that the ISTE could produce better science‐related attitudes than the traditional science teacher education programme. The superiority of the effect of the ISTE on lesson preparation competence of pre‐service science teachers was also established in the study. Thus, a case is made for the need for such a package as the ISTE in science teacher education programmes.     

Case‐Based Teaching: Four Experiences in Educational Software Design

Abstract

Good teaching is good story telling. Case‐based teaching exploits the basic capacity for students to learn from stories and the basic desire of teachers to tell stories that are indicative of their experiences. The premise of software that used case‐based teaching would be to place a student in a situation that the student found interesting and where the telling of a story would be appreciated. First, case‐based teachers teach the student what he or she needs to know at precisely the point of becoming interested in knowing the information. This information should be presented in the form of stories. Law schools and business schools have been teaching this way for years. They teach cases rather than rules because, by and large, they don't have rules to teach. The second critical part of learning in a case‐based environment is teaching a student to abstract from what the student has been told, and adapting it to situations for which the student was not specifically trained.

At the Institute, we have, to date, built four examples of case‐based teaching software. The programs are:

VICTOR — a voice and image courtesy tutor — built for Ameritech

DUSTIN — a language experience — built for Andersen Consulting

CREANIMATE — a biology experience‐built for schools and supported by IBM

TAXOPS — a tax opportunity advisor and cross seller — built for the Tax division of Arthur Andersen     

Teaching Object‐Oriented Design Without Programming: A Progress Report

This project is demonstrating the feasibility of using the object‐oriented paradigm to teach students software design in a nonprogramming context. The program, developed using principles of user‐based, prototyping design, teaches students to create responsibility‐driven designs of computer games. Investigations with high school students with little or no knowledge of computers and senior computer science majors have demonstrated that students can indeed learn to use Class‐Responsibility‐Collaborator (CRC) cards to produce creditable high‐level designs in a relatively short time whether or not they have programming experience and can generalize what they have learned to a new design. Although the computer science majors created more complete designs and demonstrated a deeper understanding of the design process than the high school students, these students still found the experience valuable. Both sample groups generally found the process interesting and relatively painless.     

Towards a Theoretical Framework for Teaching Controversial Socio‐scientific Issues

This paper develops a conceptual basis for a model on the teaching of socio‐scientific controversial issues for secondary or high school students. I argue that the teaching of controversial issues needs a stronger theoretical base. Drawing on a liberal democratic conception of possible sources of conflict, three strands are developed that provide a framework for teachers when teaching socio‐scientific issues: these are categories of reasonable disagreement, the communicative virtues, and modes of thought. Examples are given to illustrate how the framework can be used by teachers in which the features of controversy are made explicit to students.     

Classroom‐Based Curriculum Development,Artificial Intelligence and History Teaching

The adoption of educational policy measures to close the achievement gap, as well as the significant amount of scholarship dedicated to the subject, are just some of the indicators that reflect the tremendous concern in education about the academic performance of students of colour. Within research aimed at promoting equitable practices in education, culturally relevant teaching has emerged as a good teaching strategy to improve achievement. Using genealogical methods to examine the ways in which culture has become relevant to classroom practice, the author argues that that the perceived difference from white students that made it possible to conceive of children of colour as culturally deficit in the 1960s is also invoked in more recent literature that promotes attending to culture as an equity strategy. The take-up of culturally relevant teaching as something that a teacher can ‘do’, instead of a critical stance that a teacher takes, is also examined and critiqued.     

Teaching about Human Relationships Education for primary school student‐teachers using an interactive CD‐ROM

Human Relationships Education is a very important part of primary school student‐teacher education. All primary school children need sound guidance and enhanced knowledge about puberty, growing up successfully, and feeling competent and confident in themselves. An interactive multimedia CD‐ROM was designed and developed for some Australian university student‐teachers in the final fourth year of their Bachelor of Education (Primary School), and addresses the Human Relationships Education curriculum. This paper analyses some of the pedagogies used in this pastoral care learning as examples of a Constructivist approach to designing multimedia interactivities based on Anderson and Krathwohl's learning framework. Such an approach may be useful for other educational designers to improve student‐teacher involvement in their pastoral care learning, to provide pedagogical variation and to use interactive multimedia, thus enhancing learning outcomes for student‐teachers and, in turn, their primary school students.     

The Effects of Incorporating Web‐assisted Learning with Team Teaching in Seventh‐grade Science Classes

Due to the implementation of a 9‐year integrated curriculum scheme in Taiwan, research on team teaching and web‐based technology appears to be urgent. The purpose of this study was incorporated web‐assisted learning with team teaching in seventh‐grade science classes. The specific research question concerned student performance and attitudes about the teaching method. Two certified science teachers and four classes of the seventh graders participated in this study. It used a mixed methods design, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The main data included students’ scores, questionnaires, teachers’ self‐reflections, and the researcher’s interviews with teachers. The results showed that the average final examination scores of students experiencing the experimental teaching method were higher than that of those receiving traditional teaching. The two teaching methods showed significant difference in respect of students’ achievement. The research had limitations because of students’ abilities of data collection, computer use, and discussion, but more than one‐half of the students preferred the experimental method to traditional teaching. However, team teachers would encounter the problems of technology ability, time constraints, and entrance examination pressure.     

Effects of In‐service Education on Improving Science Teaching in Swaziland

This paper discusses the findings of an evaluative and interpretive study into the potential of in‐service education to improve science education in Swaziland. Short‐term and long‐term effects of an in‐service intervention are evaluated in terms of changes in classroom processes. The teaching approach of participating teachers has been monitored and analysed before, during and 1 year after the in‐service intervention, to assess whether changes occurred. The study revealed the subjective interpretations of teachers about those changes, also in relation to contextual factors. Recommendations are put forward to enhance the potential of in‐service education in comparable contexts.     

An Example of Large‐group Drama and Cross‐year Peer Assessment for Teaching Science in Higher Education

Undergraduate students pursuing a three‐year marine biology degree programme (n = 86) experienced a large‐group drama aimed at allowing them to explore how scientific research is funded and the associated links between science and society. In the drama, Year 1 students played the “general public” who decided which environmental research areas should be prioritised for funding, Year 2 students were the “scientists” who had to prepare research proposals which they hoped to get funded, and Year 3 students were the “research panel” who decided which proposals to fund with input from the priorities set by the “general public”. The drama, therefore, included an element of cross‐year peer assessment where Year 3 students evaluated the research proposals prepared by the Year 2 students. Questionnaires were distributed at the end of the activity to gather: (1) student perceptions on the cross‐year nature of the exercise, (2) the use of peer assessment, and (3) their overall views on the drama. The students valued the opportunity to interact with their peers from other years of the degree programme and most were comfortable with the use of cross‐year peer assessment. The majority of students felt that they had increased their knowledge of how research proposals are funded and the perceived benefits of the large‐group drama included increased critical thinking ability, confidence in presenting work to others, and enhanced communication skills. Only one student did not strongly advocate the use of this large‐group drama in subsequent years.