Curriculum design for inquiry: Preservice elementary teachers' mobilization and adaptation of science curriculum materials

Curriculum materials are crucial tools with which teachers engage students in science as inquiry. In order to use curriculum materials effectively, however, teachers must develop a robust capacity for pedagogical design, or the ability to mobilize a variety of personal and curricular resources to promote student learning. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the ways in which preservice elementary teachers mobilize and adapt existing science curriculum materials to plan inquiry‐oriented science lessons. Using quantitative methods, we investigated preservice teachers' curriculum design decision‐making and how their decisions influenced the inquiry orientations of their planned science lessons. Findings indicate that preservice elementary teachers were able to accurately assess how inquiry‐based existing curriculum materials are and to adapt them to make them more inquiry‐based. However, the inquiry orientations of their planned lessons were in large part determined by how inquiry‐oriented curriculum materials they used to plan their lessons were to begin with. These findings have important implications for the design of teacher education experiences that foster preservice elementary teachers' pedagogical design capacities for inquiry, as well as the development of inquiry‐based science curriculum materials that support preservice and beginning elementary teachers to engage in effective science teaching practice. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:820–839, 2010     

Metaphors used by pre-service teachers of Chinese as an international language

This inquiry explored 68 pre-service perceptions and aspirations of Teaching Chinese as an International Language (TCIL) teachers by analysing the metaphors they used to describe themselves as teachers. The inquiry revealed that the participants used a variety of metaphors to project the images of themselves as pre-service TCIL teachers. The results also confirm that the participants’ use of metaphors, as powerful tools to understand the complexity of teaching, reflects the mediation of cultural, historical and sociopolitical conditions. These findings help teacher educators to support TCIL teachers’ professional development by engaging them in critical dialogues about the metaphors they use to perceive themselves as TCIL teachers. They also help teacher educators to adopt tailor-made pedagogical content to address their development needs.     

Personal inquiry learning trajectories in geography: technological support across contexts

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilities. To address this, the Personal Inquiry project has designed a tool kit that includes nQuire, a Web-based tool to support students through the inquiry process. Here, we identify when, across five lessons comprising an inquiry into microclimates, nQuire was used by a teacher and a case study group of her 12 to 13-year-old students, and the ways in which they adopted nQuire as a tool to facilitate the creation of a coherent and cumulative inquiry learning experience over time. We found that students' use of nQuire supported them in capturing and representing their evolving understanding of inquiry, in defining and supporting their progression through the process of inquiry and in resourcing their cognitive engagement in data interpretation and representation. nQuire supported the students in accumulating and integrating new understandings across contexts and over time. In this way, nQuire successfully resourced and supported the students' learning journeys or trajectories. We conclude that nQuire can be an effective tool for supporting teachers' and students' understanding of the nature of inquiry and how to design and implement inquiries of their own.     

科学教学中的"探究"释义

根据教学论,科学教学中的“探究”可有三层含义:作为教学目标,指学生应掌握的科学探究技能,要理解的科学探究特性;作为教学原则,指激发学生积极探究未知、主动建构意义的基本教学要求;作为教学方法,指学生在教师指导下所采用的类似科学探究过程的学习方式或程序。     

Characteristics and Difficulties of Teachers Who Mentor Environmental Inquiry Projects

The paper describes characteristics and analyses difficulties of environmental sciences teachers in mentoring their students in an extended inquiry project, which is a mandatory requirement of the environmental sciences matriculation in Israel. The teachers participated in a professional development program that provided both content knowledge and support for conducting inquiry, and enabled the teachers to guide the students in the inquiry project. Teachers who had experience in inquiry identified more skills required for mentoring students' inquiry, and provided a non-directive guidance pattern, whereas inexperienced teachers acknowledged less skills, and tended to present a directive-authoritative approach. Insufficient content and pedagogical content knowledge affected the teachers who closely controlled their students' work.     

互动探究教学模式的实践与思考——以高中《经济全球化》一课为例

互动探究教学模式是以学生为主体,以学会学习为目标,采用师生互动、生生互动、共同探究的课堂教学方式,达到活化政治课堂,提高教学效果的目的.本文试从教学实践时此进行初步的探索和思考.     

对物理探究式教学的几点思考

探究式教学是指为培养学生的探究意识及实践创新能力,教师创建条件引导学生主动探究问题、自主建构其知识体系的一种教学方式。在实践中发现,物理探究式教学有形式化与泛化现象,学生可能出现思维障碍,教师需要重建角色、更新知识结构、创新教学过程。作为应对策略,要注意营造民主、宽松、和睦的教学氛围,探究活动的设计要符合学生和教学的客观实际,要注重对学生探究能力的培养和强调合作学习。     

Examining the effect of teachers' adaptations of a middle school science inquiry‐oriented curriculum unit on student learning

Reform based curriculum offer a promising avenue to support greater student achievement in science. Yet teachers frequently adapt innovative curriculum when they use them in their own classrooms. In this study, we examine how 19 teachers adapted an inquiry‐oriented middle school science curriculum. Specifically, we investigate how teachers' curricular adaptations (amount of time, level of completion, and activity structures), teacher self‐efficacy (teacher comfort and student understanding), and teacher experience enacting the unit influenced student learning. Data sources included curriculum surveys, videotape observations of focal teachers, and pre‐ and post‐tests from 1,234 students. Our analyses using hierarchical linear modeling found that 38% of the variance in student gain scores occurred between teachers. Two variables significantly predicted student learning: teacher experience and activity structure. Teachers who had previously taught the inquiry‐oriented curriculum had greater student gains. For activity structure, students who completed investigations themselves had greater learning gains compared to students in classrooms who observed their teacher completing the investigations as demonstrations. These findings suggest that it can take time for teachers to effectively use innovative science curriculum. Furthermore, this study provides evidence for the importance of having students actively engaging in inquiry investigations to develop understandings of key science concepts. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., J Res Sci Teach 48: 149–169, 2011     

上好成人教育课要做好的几项工作

成人教育有其特有的自身规律。任课教师要根据成人教育的特点进行教学工作 ;要站在专业的角度去研究课程 ,搞清所授课程在专业培养目标中的位置和作用 ;要依照专业课程教学大纲去认真钻研教材 ,确定教学方案 ;要根据学员实际组织教学 ,特别要注意帮助学员正确处理工作和学习之间的矛盾 ;要把指导学员自学作为自己的一项重要任务认真抓好 ;教学中 ,要严于律己 ,率先垂范 ,树立良好的师德师风     

Teaching Inquiry to High School Teachers Through the Use of Mathematics Action Research Projects

Abstract

This paper describes the use of Mathematics Action Research Projects (ARPs) as a capstone experience in lieu of a Master’s Thesis in a Master’s program for in-service secondary teachers. The ARPs include two primary components: (i) each teacher participant conducts mathematical research that is new to them on a topic that is connected in some way to the material they teach in one of their classes; and (ii) each teacher participant also creates an in-class innovation related to the mathematical research they have been doing, and implements it in their own classroom. Ten teacher participants have completed such ARPs with the author over the last 3 years. In completing their ARPs, teacher participants not only learn how to conduct mathematical inquiry themselves, but also most often choose to implement some kind of inquiry-based classroom innovation that allows them to share some of this experience with their own students. This course structure has had the effect of encouraging teachers to decide to try more inquiry-based teaching methods, and at the same time, has given them the knowledge and tools to be successful in doing so.     

Inquiring About Practice: Using web‐based materials to develop teacher inquiry

This paper explores a new pedagogical approach to teaching teachers to assume a learning or inquiry stance in their practice. It is based on an assumption that professional learning is a core capability of good teaching that is responsive to the changing needs of children, schools, and communities. One source of teacher learning is practice—one's own practice and the practice of others. Whereas there is much written about teachers learning from their own practice, there is scant attention in the field currently about learning from the practice of others. What do we mean by learning from the practice of others? Beyond visiting their classrooms, how might teachers access the practice of others so that they can learn from it? How does learning work proceed? This paper grapples with these questions as a frame for discussing one teacher education attempt at preparing teachers to learn from the practice of others. It begins by making a case for learning as a centerpiece of good teaching, and then proceeds to describe one example of how the inquiry practice of experienced teachers was used to teach teacher inquiry to a group of novice teachers in California.     

Inquiry-based science education: towards a pedagogical framework for primary school teachers

Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) has been promoted as an inspiring way of learning science by engaging pupils in designing and conducting their own scientific investigations. For primary school teachers, the open nature of IBSE poses challenges as they often lack experience in supporting their pupils during the different phases of an open IBSE project, such as formulating a research question and designing and conducting an investigation. The current study aims to meet these challenges by presenting a pedagogical framework in which four domains of scientific knowledge are addressed in seven phases of inquiry. The framework is based on video analyses of pedagogical interventions by primary school teachers participating in open IBSE projects. Our results show that teachers can guide their pupils successfully through the process of open inquiry by explicitly addressing the conceptual, epistemic, social and/or procedural domain of scientific knowledge in the subsequent phases of inquiry. The paper concludes by suggesting further research to validate our framework and to develop a pedagogy for primary school teachers to guide their pupils through the different phases of open inquiry.     

在语文教学中学生自主学习初探

自主学习强调的是自由、自主创新。课堂是学生展现自我、发展自我的舞台。教师要充分利用课堂这一实施素质教育的主战场,培养学生的自学能力和创造精神,从鼓励学生自主学习,激发学生学习的内驱力入手,把课堂还给学生。鼓励学生发表独立见解,加强学生自主的语文实践活动,引导他们在实践中主动获取知识,形成能力,最大限度地开发学生的潜能。     

先学后导问题引领 提高课堂教学有效性——《速度》课堂教学设计及反思

物理教学活动应该是一种让学生主动去体验的过程——在体验中去学习,学生的物理学习应该是一种积极的、主动的过程,应该是一种内在的需要并得到满足的过程,从某种意义上讲,学生学会物理知识,并不是老师教会的,而是自己学会的,是学生在感悟和认识的冲突中,在体验和思考的过程中,学生主动去发现、构建的新知识,这要比老师硬塞给他们要强百倍、强千倍。     

Teaching the Nature of Inquiry: Further Developments in a High School Genetics Curriculum

In order for students to truly understand science, we feel that they must be familiar with select subject matter and also understand how that subject matter knowledge was generated and justified through the process of inquiry. Here we describe a high school biology curriculum designed to give students opportunities to learn about genetic inquiry in part by providing them with authentic experiences doing inquiry in the discipline. Since a primary goal of practicing scientists is to construct explanatory models to account for natural phenomena, involving students in the construction of their own explanatory models provides a major emphasis in the classroom. The students work in groups structured like scientific communities to build, revise, and defend explanatory models for inheritance phenomena. The overall instructional goals include helping students understand the iterative nature of scientific inquiry, the tentativeness of specific knowledge claims (and why they should be considered tentative), and the degree to which scientists rely on empirical data as well as broader conceptual and metaphysical commitments to assess models and to direct future inquiries.     

Practicing What We Preach in Teacher Education: A Critical Whiteness Studies Analysis of Experiential Education

In this article I problematize the reasons for and methods through which I incorporated an opportunity for experiential learning, via a Community Inquiry Project, into my own teaching. I take the stance of a teacher-researcher to closely analyze the specific documents and tasks used to introduce pre-service teachers to the project. I draw on sociocultural approaches to teacher development and literature on experiential education in teacher education to provide a background for the project and the self-study and offer critical whiteness studies as an appropriate lens through which to analyze the various elements of the project. Findings from this study suggest that the project limited the pre-service teachers’ characterizations of community, understandings of sociocultural approaches to learning, relationships to the community, and perceptions of the role of community in teaching. I draw on these findings to suggest that teacher educators share their reflective practices with their students and learn about the diverse experiences of the pre-service teachers themselves to better prepare them to inquire into and draw on knowledge of communities as they work with diverse populations of students.     

Secondary Social Studies Teachers’ Experiences Planning and Implementing Inquiry Using the Inquiry Design Model

While the use of inquiry-based instruction has been encouraged for many years, it continues to be the exception rather than the norm. The publication of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, as well as the Inquiry Design Model that provides structure for its implementation, offer support for teachers to use inquiry in their social studies classrooms. This phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analyses to explore three secondary social studies teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge as they planned and implemented inquiries. Findings indicate that teachers found a structured method of designing inquiries useful and that their approaches to planning and implementing those inquiries varied with individual context and personal pedagogical stances. There is no one-size-fits-all inquiry, even when teachers used the same support tool.     

和谐处理初中科学课堂教学中学生出现的错误

在初中科学教学中,教师应本着以人为本的教育观,面对学生已出现的错误要换位思考,不斥责、挖苦学生,应更多地关注学生的情感体验,让学生在纠错、改错中感悟道理、领悟方法、发展思维、实现创新,促进学生全面和谐发展。     

高中英语探究性学习存在的问题及策略研究——以四川省渠县二中为例

高中学生英语学习方式的转变是高中英语新课程改革的重要目标之一,提倡让学生采用自主学习、合作学习和探究学习等学习方式,培养学生学会学习,形成一种科学的思维习惯和能力,具备创新能力,为学生终身学习做好准备。学生学习方式的转变涉及到学生的学和教师的教,而且教师教学方式的转变是学生学习方式转变的关键。作为高中英语教师,在新课程教学中积极开展探究性英语教学研究既是新课程改革的需要,也是每一位高中英语教师应该认真面对的教育课题。通过本课题的研究,了解并分析当前学生在英语学习过程中实施探究性学习所存在的问题及原因,进而提出相应的改进对策。