Early Science Instruction and Academic Language Development Can Go Hand in Hand. The Promising Effects of a Low-Intensity Teacher-Focused Intervention

Early science instruction is important in order to lay a firm basis for learning scientific concepts and scientific thinking. In addition, young children enjoy science. However, science plays only a minor role in the kindergarten curriculum. It has been reported that teachers feel they need to prioritize language and literacy practices over science. In this paper, we investigate whether science lessons might be integrated with learning the language functional for school: academic language. The occurrence of scientific reasoning and sophisticated vocabulary in brief science lessons with 5-year-olds is evaluated. The aim of the study was twofold: first, to explore the nature of kindergarten science discourse without any researcher directions (pre-intervention observation). Second, in a randomized control trial, we evaluated the effect on science discourse of a brief teacher training session focused on academic language awareness. The science lessons focussed on air pressure and mirror reflection. Analyses showed that teachers from the intervention group increased their use of scientific reasoning and of domain-specific academic words in their science discourse, compared to the control group. For the use of general academic words and for lexical diversity, the effect was task-specific: these dependent measures only increased during the air pressure task. Implications of the study include the need to increase teachers' awareness of possibilities to combine early science instruction and academic language learning.     

Assisting Performance: A case study from a primary science classroom

The interactions of a primary school teacher with her class during two sessions of science are analysed to find the extent to which the teacher can be considered to be assisting the performance of her class. The qualitative analysis is in terms of both Tharp and Gallimore's six assisting behaviours and Coulthard's 'initiation-response-feedback' pattern for typical classroom discourse. The teaching shows features which suggest children's science concepts are being developed and features which are consistent with assisted performance, though it is not possible to show a causal relationship between these two aspects. It is suggested that there would be potential for exploring assisted performance further as a framework for teaching for conceptual development in primary science.     

Classroom Discourse as a Tool to Enhance Formative Assessment and Practise in Science

This study details an innovative approach to coordinating and enhancing multiple levels of assessment and discursive feedback around an existing multi‐media curricular environment called Astronomy Village^®. As part of a broader design‐based research programme, the study analysed small group interactions in feedback activities across two design cycles. The goal of this analysis is to develop an understanding of the ways that a situative approach to assessment and practise supports learning. Findings demonstrate ways that student and teacher engagement in collaborative activities support and constrain meaningful understanding, which we consider in terms of a trajectory of participation in and across conversations and written assessments, as well as individual learning gains on formal classroom examinations and standards‐oriented external tests. Analyses of complementary formulations of domain concepts—discourse practises and assessment performance—suggest that participation in social forms of scientific engagement supports both learning and subsequent performance in more formal contexts. We suggest design principles for integrating the formative functions of discursive feedback with the summative functions of traditional assessment, through participation in different forms of science discourse(s).     

Using Questioning to Guide Student Thinking

This case study analyzes ways in which an experienced physics teacher uses questioning to guide student thinking during a benchmark discussion about measurement. Interactional issues involve ways of speaking: Why the teacher decided to ask what he did, when he did, of whom, in what way, and for what purpose. Conceptual issues involves ways of thinking: How students seemed to understand measurement concepts such as calculating an average value. We define a particular kind of question, a reflective toss, that the teacher uses to try to give students responsibility for thinking. A reflective toss sequence typically consists of a student statement, teacher question, and additional student statements. This unit of analysis directs attention to ways in which a teacher question influences student thinking. We analyze reflective tosses in terms of the immediate action plans they instantiated, the emergent goals they served, anal underlying beliefs they embodied during an episode that involved the public refinement of a student's ideas. We propose that teachers may shift toward more reflective discourse by asking questions that help students to make their meanings clear, to consider various points of view in a neutral manner, and to monitor the discussion and their own thinking.     

Interrupting Discourses Around Gender Through Collective Memory Work and Collaborative Curriculum Research in Middle School

Many schools in recent years have implemented curricular projects to 'deal with' homophobia and sexism as problems that affect adolescent students and make schools unsafe. The ways in which we, as teachers and researchers, confront such problems, however, depends upon how we view their power within schools. When viewed as discursive elements of a generally heteronormative school environment, gender and sexuality norms become more complicated and subtle, as they are a part of systems of language, actions, and expectations that can be difficult to problematize with students and teachers. Drawing on feminist post-structuralist theory related to normativity and discourse analysis, our research looks at two middle-school projects aimed at interrupting heteronormative thinking by including students in the process of analyzing and re-creating school discourse. In one project, a whole class looks at gender identity formation through analyzing collective memory works collaboratively with the teacher. In the second project, a smaller group of girls works to re-think ways that the science/math curriculum could be more responsive to girls, in the end also analyzing the work that comes out of the collaboration. Together, the projects raise important questions about the effectiveness of such curricular projects, the power of school language around 'adolescence', and the potential for addressing gender normativity on the level of discourse, especially in the face of such powerful ideas of gender/sexuality in the middle grades.     

Multicultural education as an emotional situation: practice encountering the unexpected in teacher education

Juxtaposing the concepts of screen memory, counter-transference and the holding environment within psychoanalytic theory, this essay explores the author’s emotional experience, who begins the exploration by asking several questions. What happens to a teacher’s emotional world and her consciousness in the process of trying to shift students’ consciousness in multicultural education? What is the psychical consequence for teachers of colour who must listen to racist discourse as a precondition to convincing those to do otherwise? How does a teacher’s emotional world influence student learning and development of critical consciousness? In working through her emotional response aroused by the students’ questions in her multicultural education classes, the author discusses the importance of a conversation between psychoanalysis and critical multicultural pedagogies and why the conversation matters.     

Identifying Canadian teacher candidates' needs for training in the use of inclusive classroom assessment

To identify teacher candidates' needs for training in inclusive classroom assessment, the present study investigated teacher candidates' beliefs about inclusive classroom assessments for all students educated in regular classrooms, including those with special needs and English language learners. An innovative theoretical assessment model, consisting of four concepts of assessment for, as, of learning as well as accommodations and modifications, was built to compare with questionnaire responses from a group of Canadian teacher candidates (n?=?295). Our data yielded five factors: (1) beliefs about accommodations and modifications for students with diverse needs (ACC), (2) assessment of learning, (3) assessment as learning, (4) misconceptions of inclusive assessment, and (5) negative beliefs about assessment for learning (NAFL). Contrary to expectations, assessment concepts are not fully interrelated with each other in teacher candidates' belief systems. In addition, participating teacher candidates may have some misconceptions about inclusive assessments given that they possessed positive beliefs towards them. The implications for teacher education programmes and professional development were also discussed in this study.     

Supporting young children's explanations through inquiry science in preschool

This study examines the ways in which preschool teachers support the development of children's explanatory language through science inquiry. Two classrooms in a preschool center using a science inquiry curriculum were videotaped during a 5-week unit on color mixing. Videotapes were analyzed for how teachers facilitated children's explanatory language. An assessment of explanatory language was administered to 47 children in the center before and after the color mixing unit. Analysis of discourse revealed that teachers engaged children as conversational partners and as scientific investigators responsible for their own learning. Explanations were dynamically co-constructed by adults and children within the context of participation in scientific inquiry. By the end of the unit, children produced more on-topic responses, more standard color-mixing terms, and more causal connectives in their responses to the assessment of explanatory language.     

Improving Science and Literacy Learning for English Language Learners: Evidence from a Pre-service Teacher Preparation Intervention

This paper present findings from a pre-service teacher development project that prepared novice teachers to promote English language and literacy development with inquiry-based science through a modified elementary science methods course and professional development for cooperating teachers. To study the project’s impact on student learning, we administered a pre and post assessment to students (N = 191) of nine first year elementary teachers (grades 3 through 6) who experienced the intervention and who taught a common science unit. Preliminary results indicate that (1) student learning improved across all categories (science concepts, writing, and vocabulary)—although the effect varied by category, and (2) English Language Learner (ELL) learning gains were on par with non-ELLs, with differences across proficiency levels for vocabulary gain scores. These results warrant further analyses to understand the extent to which the intervention improved teacher practice and student learning. This study confirms the findings of previous research that the integration of science language and literacy practices can improve ELL achievement in science concepts, writing and vocabulary. In addition, the study indicates that it is possible to begin to link the practices taught in pre-service teacher preparation to novice teacher practice and student learning outcomes.     

Identification,Interpretation—Evaluation,Response: An alternative framework for analyzing teacher discourse in science

Although research has come to recognize the importance of studying classroom-based student–teacher discourse in science, the emphasis remains largely on teachers' abilities to ask questions and provide students with feedback, or on students' abilities to ask questions or engage in argumentative discourse. Consequently, little research has focused on the discourse elements relating to teacher–student discourse interactions. In this article, we argue for a shift of research attention toward describing what the teacher is responding to (Identification of student inquiry), the process of deciding how to respond (Interpretation—Evaluation of student inquiry), and how the teacher is responding (Response to student inquiry). We propose a new methodological approach for studying teacher discourse, which involves a framework we developed while analyzing 1,385 minutes of fifth grade, whole-class science conversations covering a 2-year period and facilitated by an experienced science teacher. Then, as a case in point, we applied our framework to the teacher discourse data of the study, aiming to show that the framework can be a useful tool for examining how a teacher supports students' inquiry.     

英语教师的话语分析

在英语课堂上,教师的语言是重要的信息输入,正确有效地使用教师话语对外语教学起着至关重要的作用。但是,教师话语的现状却还存在一些不尽人意的地方。因此,结合教师课堂话语的输入量、质量、多样性以及课堂提问方式方面的一些问题,提出有针对性的对应策略,以期进一步提高英语教学质量。     

Preservice elementary teachers' views of their students' prior knowledge of science

Pre‐service teachers face many challenges as they learn to teach in ways that are different from their own educational experiences. Pre‐service teachers often enter teacher education courses with pre‐conceptions about teaching and learning that may or may not be consistent with contemporary learning theory. To build on preservice teachers' prior knowledge, we need to identify the types of views they have when entering teacher education courses and the views they develop throughout these courses. The study reported here focuses specifically on preservice teachers' views of their own students' prior knowledge and the implications these views have on their understanding of the formative assessment process. Sixty‐one preservice teachers were studied from three sections of a science methods course. Results indicate that preservice teachers exhibited a limited number of views about students' prior knowledge. These views tended to privilege either academic or experience‐based concepts for different aspects of formative assessment, in contrast to contemporary perspectives on teaching for understanding. Rather than considering these views as misconceptions, it is argued that it is more useful to consider them as resources for further development of a more flexible concept of formative assessment. Four common views are discussed in detail and applied to science teacher education. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 497–523, 2008     

Strategic Facilitation of Problem-Based Discussion for Teacher Professional Development

Engaging teachers in discussing and analyzing problems of practice has great potential for teacher professional development, yet little is known about how to facilitate such discussion. This study examined the strategies that experienced facilitators used to promote productive discussion among science teachers. Participants were 6 facilitators and 35 in-service teachers who participated in a professional development program that adopted a problem-based learning approach for teacher learning. Data analysis showed that experienced facilitators used a variety of strategies in their facilitation, including questioning, revoicing, making connections, clarifying, reframing, summarizing, role playing, meta-talk, and modeling. In particular, questioning and revoicing were the most important strategies in all sessions studied, accounting for about half of the facilitators' talk. Analysis further revealed both productive and disruptive characteristics of questioning and revoicing. In addition, analysis found that teachers were able to make progress in participating in the problem-based learning discourse in different ways. This study has implications for research on teacher professional development, problem-based learning, and learner-centered instruction.     

Ways of Knowing beyond Facts and Laws of Science: An Ethnographic Investigation of Student Engagement in Scientific Practices

In this study, an anthropological perspective informed by sociolinguistic discourse analysis was used to examine how teachers, students, and scientists constructed ways of investigating and knowing in science. Events in a combined fourth‐ and fifth‐grade elementary class were studied to document how the participating teacher provided opportunities for students to diverge from the intended curriculum to pursue their questions concerning the behavior of sea animals in a marine science observation tank. Analysis of the classroom discourse identified ways that particular teaching strategies provided opportunities for student engagement in scientific practices. Implications of this study for the teaching of science in elementary classrooms include the value of student‐initiated science explorations under the conditions of uncertainty and for topics in which the teacher lacked relevant disciplinary knowledge. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 237–258, 2000.     

Hybrid discourse practice and science learning

In this article, we report on a study of how creative linguistic practices (which we call hybrid discourse practices) were enacted by students in a fifth-grade science unit on barn owls and how these practices helped to produce a synergistic micro-community of scientific practice in the classroom that constituted a fertile space for students (and the teacher) to construct emergent but increasingly legitimate and dynamic disciplinary knowledges and identities. Our findings are important for the ways in which they demonstrate (a) how students use hybrid discourse practices to self-scaffold their work within complex curricular tasks and when they are not completely sure about how to enact these tasks (b) how hybrid discourse practices can promote inquiry orientations to science, (c) how hybrid discourse practices index new and powerful forms of science pedagogy, and (d) how hybrid discourse practices are relevant to more global issues such as the crucial roles of language fluency and creativity, which are known prerequisites for advanced science learning and which aid students in developing skills that are necessary for entry into science and technology careers.     

Student and teacher questioning during conversations about science

This paper summarizes case studies developed by a group of collaborating educators. We investigated ways of speaking that encourage students to (a) formulate insightful questions about science topics and (b) express their own ideas during reflective discussions. The authors include elementary, high school, and college faculty. Subject‐matter contexts included phases of the moon, motion, electricity, light, and waves. In developing case studies, we documented and interpreted student and teacher questions during the three ways of speaking we value most: guided discussions, student‐generated inquiry discussions, and peer collaborations. Student questions occurred when we set up discourse structures that explicitly elicited student questions, engaged students in conversations about familiar contexts in which they had made many observations over a long time period, created comfortable discourse environments in which students could try to understand one another's thinking, and established small groups where students were collaborating with one another. Typically we elicited student thinking by asking questions that develop conceptual understanding. These included questions to help students clarify their meanings, explore various points of view in a neutral and respectful manner, and monitor the discussion and their own thinking. We also elicited student thinking by practicing quietness through long wait times, attentive silence, and reticence. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 159–190, 2001     

话语分析的逻辑:谬误与澄清——当前教育研究中话语分析的教育学审视

教育研究的"语言学转向",将教育概念、命题的话语分析作为基本任务,旨在澄清教育语言的逻辑谬误,促使教育学语言的精确化。然而,对教育话语的分析,实际上是对教育话语背后隐藏的教育观念和行为目的的探究,是实现由符号到意义的研究过程和理论分析工具。因此,对于教育语言的"教育学"批判、反思,才是对教育概念和命题重新阐释的基础性前提。尽管教育研究的工具可以是多样化的,但目的和立场却是唯一的——它只能指向"教育学"本身。     

Profiles of middle school science teachers: Accounting for cognitive and motivational characteristics

Teachers play a critical role in successfully implementing science education reforms in the United States to provide high-quality science learning opportunities to all students. However, the differentiated ways in which teachers make decisions about their science teaching are not well understood. This study takes a person-centered approach by applying latent profile analysis to examine how cognitive (pedagogical content knowledge) and motivational (instructional goal orientations, self-efficacy beliefs, and reform values) characteristics combine to form science teacher profiles in middle school. Predictors of profile membership (bachelor's degree, school %FRL) and both teacher (science instructional practices) and student (science achievement, engagement, and self-efficacy) outcomes related to the teacher profiles were also examined. Five science teacher profiles were identified (severely discouraged but reform oriented, discouraged but reform oriented, conventional, confident and mastery oriented, and confident with multiple goal approaches) that represented unique configurations of cognitive and motivation characteristics. Additionally, findings showed that the teacher profiles were significantly related to three dimensions of science instructional practice including communication, discourse, and reasoning. Finally, the teacher profiles were significantly related to student science achievement and motivational outcomes. Implications for differentiated approaches to teacher professional learning and supports for science instruction are discussed.     

“Exploring this whole thing of social justice” narrative as a tool for critical sociocultural knowledge development in teacher education

Many teacher education programs provide teachers with opportunities to read, write, and discuss critical pedagogy, with the hope that such work will allow them to develop more equitable and just teaching practices. Yet, there often remains a gap between the theoretical discussions of teaching and learning in teacher education classrooms and the pedagogical practice in those teachers’ K-12 classrooms. In this study, we examine how one teacher, Gabriela, used narratives to make connections between her third-grade classroom and the critical concepts she was exploring in a teacher education course. Embedded within an ethnographic case study of an inservice teacher education program, we used a discourse analytic approach to examine both the sociocultural knowledge and the identities Gabriela constructed through narrative as she engaged with issues of language, race, and power within the course. We consider some of the affordances of narrative in this space, including how it allowed Gabriela to integrate her understandings of multiple course topics, to position herself in multiple ways as a teacher, and to disrupt her existing understandings of race and racism in the classroom. This analysis suggests that critically oriented teacher education programs might more intentionally make space for narrative to connect critical theory and pedagogical practice.