Science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge development during enactment of socioscientific curriculum materials

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into short-term professionalization of teachers regarding teaching socioscientific issues (SSI). The study aimed to capture the development of science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for SSI teaching by enacting specially designed SSI curriculum materials. The study also explores indicators of stronger and weaker development of PCK for SSI teaching. Thirty teachers from four countries (Cyprus, Israel, Norway, and Spain) used one module (30–60 min lesson) of SSI materials. The data were collected through: (a) lesson preparation form (PCK-before), (b) lesson reflection form (PCK-after), (c) lesson observation table (PCK-in-action). The data analysis was based on the PCK model of Magnusson, Krajcik, and Borko (1999). Strong development of PCK for SSI teaching includes “Strong interconnections between the PCK components,” “Understanding of students' difficulties in SSI learning,” “Suggesting appropriate instructional strategies,” and “Focusing equally on science content and SSI skills.” Our findings point to the importance of these aspects of PCK development for SSI teaching. We argue that when professional development programs and curriculum materials focus on developing these aspects, they will contribute to strong PCK development for SSI teaching. The findings regarding the development in the components of PCK for SSI provide compelling evidence that science teachers can develop aspects of their PCK for SSI with the use of a single module. Most of the teachers developed their knowledge about students' understanding of science and instructional strategies. The recognition of student difficulties made the teacher consider specific teaching strategies which are in line with the learning objectives. There is an evident link between the development of PCK in instructional strategies and students' understanding of science for SSI teaching.     

How do Student Teachers Elicit their Mentor Teachers' Practical Knowledge?

The present study focuses on how student-teachers attempt to elicit the practical knowledge of the mentor teachers who supervise their practical training. Having access to the practical knowledge of their mentors means, among other things, that student-teachers have access to the cognitions underlying teaching that can help them to understand their mentors' teaching style, advice, and feedback. The analysis of 29 interviews with student-teachers revealed three self-initiated activities for this access: (1) observing a mentor's lesson; (2) asking specific questions about lessons observed; and (3) discussing the student's lesson or teaching and education in general. Not all the activities mentioned by the student-teachers elicited what is called 'practical knowledge' in the literature. As practical knowledge is an important element of the learning-to-teach process, it was concluded that the stimulation of activities aimed at exploring this knowledge could make a valuable contribution to teacher education. The instruments used in the research on teacher knowledge and beliefs could be helpful for attaining this objective. Implications of this research for teacher education and suggestions for further research are presented.     

What is Lesson Study?

This article addresses the conceptual question “what is lesson study?” as an issue that arises in the context of the globalisation of lesson study as a method for improving teaching and learning beyond its presumed origins in the Japanese education system. To what extent can adaptations of the method in different national settings be interpreted as faithful representations of its practically significant “critical features” in the country of origin? In order to address this question, the article begins by examining the comparative classroom research by Stigler and Hiebert that culminated in the publication of The Teaching Gap. This work is generally acknowledged to have been seminal for the global development of lesson study as a method for improving teaching and learning. Sponsored by the 1997 TIMMS testing programme, the research sought to explain pronounced differences in measured educational attainment between students of all ages in Japan, and the US and Germany. In the process Stigler and Hiebert discovered the extensive use of lesson study in Japanese primary schools as a school‐based research method for securing consistency between learning goals and teaching methods. In doing so, they identified six principles which underpinned the method and pinpointed its practical significance. In this article, the author claims that the principles identified by Stigler and Hiebert can be used as a framework for assessing adaptations of lesson study in the context of globalisation, and connecting it to related methodological ideas that are internationally circulating. In particular, the author stresses links between lesson study, the tradition of classroom action research forged by Lawrence Stenhouse and his colleagues at the University of East Anglia, UK and the theory of variation developed in Sweden and Hong Kong by Ference Marton, Lo Mun Ling and others. Such links can deepen a theoretical understanding of “lesson study” and safe‐guard it against a “cherry‐picking” approach to its implementation in a context of globalisation. The article particularly highlights the importance of understanding the ways in which the organisational cultures of schooling in many countries shape and distort the implementation of lesson study. It argues for the greater involvement of school leaders and administrators in a form of second‐order action research aimed at transforming the organisational context of teachers’ work in classrooms and creating more space for them to spend less time as test data managers and more time as lesson researchers in accordance with the six principles outlined.     

Language in Use

The conference set up one commission to look at the particular place of the English lesson within a framework of Language across the Curriculum. Such a view of language in school could have awkward implications for English: that either a pupil's growth in language might be provided for by the work of the whole curriculum, or that the English lesson should ‘service’ a pupil's language for his work in other studies. Two questions arise: are there certain responses and experiences which pupils need time for and which can only be allowed for in the English lesson ? And are there particular studies in language that only the English lesson can take responsibility for ? In order to set this discussion on its way, Peter Doughty was invited to talk about the special work which his team at University College, London, had been doing on language in English, and which has now been incorporated into material known as Language in Use. We print here an extract from his paper, published by the Schools Council, a fuller version of which is available on application from Great Portland Street, London, W.1. Fred Inglis took issue with this point of view about language in English.     

Investigating Situational Interest in Primary Science Lessons

Pupils’ interest has been one of the major concerns in science education research because it can be seen as a gateway to more personalised forms of interest and motivation. However, methods to investigate situational interest in science teaching and learning are not broadly examined. This study compares the pupils’ observed situational interest and their expressed situational interest. One class of Finnish fourth-graders (N?=?22, age 9–10 years) participated in a heat transfer lesson. The lesson encompassed an interactive demonstration with a thermal camera, teacher-led discussions and the conduct and presentation of a collaborative inquiry task. Pupils expressed their interest levels (scale: 1?=?very boring, 5?=?very interesting) by using an electronic response system called a ‘clicker’. The measurement took place 15 times during the lesson, with 1 measurement being just a rehearsal. The lesson was video recorded, and visible aspects of interest at the measurement time points were analysed. Reported and observational data were compared. In most cases, the observations did not yield data compatible with the pupils’ own evaluations, indicating that most pupils’ expressed interest is not easily interpreted through observation of their facial expressions and behaviour. In general, the interest of the group as a whole seems to diminish during the lesson. We argue that in order to maintain and increase pupils’ interest, their evaluations should be taken into account in lesson planning. Video-based research might also be further enriched and validated by employing the participants’ own expressions. The clicker is a suitable means of collecting primary pupils’ experiences concerning their interest levels.     

Teacher education,the global financial crisis,frogs and bicycles

Background:?The extent to which the global financial crisis (GFC) has impacted upon teacher education in universities in Australia is potentially, like most other aspects of teacher education, a contested area.

Purpose, aims/questions:?The aim of this article is to examine the impact the GFC along with other funding constraints, has had on teacher education in Australia.

Sources of evidence:?On the surface we could cite some aspects of teacher education which may point to a significant impact of the GFC such as funding from the government not keeping pace with other OECD countries' spending on higher education in general and teacher education in particular, increased pressure to find appropriate practicum placements for students, increased staff/student ratios, reduction of hours for teaching in university courses, obsession with profit margins and cost-driver budget models. However, all of these issues were evident or at least immanent before we started hearing about the GFC. Alistair Mant in his book Intelligent Leadership (Crow's Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin; 1997) employs the metaphor of frogs and bicycles to describe organisations and systems. Universities and most organisations are in fact more naturally like frogs than bicycles. They are organic in that all parts interact to create the whole and they are complex systems, which are not susceptible to technical, machine-like approaches. A bicycle is a machine and a frog is a living thing.

Main argument:?Governments view universities as bicycles or machines, and this thinking is further reinforced through the introduction of a market forces model. Teacher education when treated as a bicycle when it is really more of a frog, shows signs of adaptation for as long as it can cope with various bits being cut off, but then will become unsustainable. While the impact of the GFC in Australia generally was much less severe than in many other countries, the continued starving of teacher education of adequate funding over a long period has taken its toll as reflected in unduly high staff student ratios, an over-reliance on casual staffing, insufficient funds to support the requirements of practicum placements, unrealistic staff workloads, lack of succession planning and inability to innovate.

Conclusion:?The issues discussed in this article are likely to be attributable to a highly successful and prolonged period of economic rationalism and policies, which emanate from New Right ideologies. The influence of neo-conservative and neo-liberal policies is well in evidence in universities generally and in Australia, successive governments have underfunded higher education.     

What Preservice Teachers and Knowledgeable Others Professionally Notice During Lesson Study

The purpose of this study was to understand what preservice teachers and knowledgeable others professionally notice as they engaged in repeated cycles of a modified version of lesson study, as a component of a field experience in a teacher education program. The study also centered on comparing the professional noticing practices of preservice teachers with other lesson study participants, including classroom teachers and university facilitators. Data analyzed included videos of weekly lesson study analysis meetings for seven weeks for each of four teams. Each team included six preservice teachers, a classroom teacher, and a university facilitator. Findings indicate that preservice teachers primarily noticed elements about the classroom environment and teacher pedagogy, but included instances of noticing centered on students' mathematical thinking. In contrast, classroom teachers and university facilitators, as knowledgeable others, typically noticed general events and were less focused on students' mathematical thinking. Analysis of noticing trends over the seven weeks indicated that noticing levels remained steady initially, dropped in the fourth and fifth week, and resumed original status in the final weeks. Results that the preservice teachers' noticing comments were at higher levels than the knowledgeable others are contrary to other research studies and indicate that incorporating lesson study with appropriate scaffolds into a field experience for preservice teachers may be a viable option for encouraging noticing of students' mathematical thinking.     

Zen and the art of neriage: Facilitating consensus building in mathematics inquiry lessons through lesson study

One danger of integrating inquiry-based problem-solving activities into mathematics lessons is that different strategies could be accepted without in-depth discussions on the cogency and efficiency of the strategies. To overcome this issue, Japanese teachers typically go through a series of lesson-study-based teacher learning sessions and learn how to help students build consensus on the best mathematical strategy and think deeply about problem solving (neriage in Japanese). Assuming that this can also be an effective model in other cultural contexts, a video-based lesson study was conducted for a group of US teachers to effectively incorporate consensus building discussions in their mathematical inquiry lessons. Through the lesson study, the teachers learned to release control of class discussions to their students and help them discuss and examine different strategies. This article concludes with various aspects that the teachers learned for effectively implementing neriage in their lessons.     

School-university partnerships: a new recipe for creating professional knowledge in school

This paper first reviews the literature on school-university partnerships to evaluate and describe challenges and paradigms of Japanese approaches to school-university partnerships in theory and practice. Secondly, it clarifies the role of three-year school-university partnership between the Nagoya University and the Tokai City Board of Education in the central Japan for creating an effective environment in schools for teachers to learn from each other and for developing more learning-centered education that focuses on the real needs of students. From this study it can be claimed that more effective relationships between Japanese school teachers and university researchers can be established through developing collaborative a school-based research framework especially through the process of jugyou kenkyuu (lesson study).     

Heterotopias in physical education: towards a queer pedagogy?

This article sets out to outline how prevailing gender structures can be challenged in physical education (PE) by exploring queer potentials in an event that took place during a dancing lesson in an upper secondary PE class. The event and its features were documented through video recording and post-lesson interviews with the teacher and some of the students. It is argued that the event can be seen as a heterotopia, according to Michel Foucault a ‘counter-site’ enabling the resistance to authority, where the production of normalcy was challenged. Furthermore, even though the event happened spontaneously, the authors suggest that it can show a way towards a queer pedagogy for PE through teaching paradoxically; it indicates a preferred ethos of the lesson and the use of conceptual tools by teachers and students that make them able to intervene in the production of normalcy.     

Shedding Light on the East Asian Learner Paradox: Reconstructing student-centredness in a Shanghai classroom

The East Asian learner paradox refers to the apparent contradiction between the teacher-dominated learning environment in East Asia, which is generally perceived to be non-conducive to learning, and the outstanding performance of East Asian students in comparative studies. This study attempts to explain this phenomenon based on the perspectives of a Chinese teacher from Shanghai, his group of students, and the author's own observations as a researcher. The analysis was based on the theory of variation and it showed how the teacher handled the relationship between the procedural and conceptual aspects of the mathematics. This analysis also shows that the teacher in this study had a strong pedagogical belief and highly valued his students' thinking and participation. At the same time, his students also expressed a consistent concern for learning the mathematical content. Therefore, this author argues that what seems to be a teacher-dominated lesson may actually be interpreted as an alternative form of student-centredness, which is accepted in the teacher's culture.     

Dream interpretation as a component of researcher's reflexivity within an ethnographic research

Researchers' reflexivity about how they shape the phenomena that they study within the data collection process is often presented as a crucial component of ethnographic research methodology. Nevertheless, academic literature about ethnography is mostly silent around whether researchers' dreams are relevant to the research process and their interpretation can be considered a valuable material to be reflexive of. While using data from an ethnographic study in two public primary schools in Australia and Slovakia about inclusive education and school leadership, this paper demonstrates how researcher's dreams and their interpretation navigated his decisions about the data collection process, data analysis and ethical aspects of the study. This paper presents original implications for understanding the concept of reflexivity and putting it in practice when employing ethnographic research methodology.     

Teachers' views on the nature of models

A semi‐structured interview was used in Brazil to enquire into the ‘notion of model’ held by a total sample of 39 science teachers who were: employed in ‘fundamental’ (6–14 years) and ‘medium’ (15–17 years) schools; student science teachers currently doing their practicum; and university science teachers. Seven ‘aspects’ of their notions of a model were identified: the nature of a model, the use to which it can be put, the entities of which it consists, its relative uniqueness, the time span over which it is used, its status in the making of predictions, and the basis for the accreditation of its existence and use. Categories of meaning were identified for each of these aspects. The profiles of teachers' notions of ‘model’ in terms of the aspects and categories were complex, providing no support for the notion of ‘Levels’ in understanding. Teachers with degrees in chemistry or physics had different views about the notion of ‘model’ to those with degrees in biology or with teacher training certificates.     

Lesson Planning Practices of Special Education Teachers

This study reports the results of a survey of special education teachers regarding: (a) how special education teachers organize and develop their lesson plans, (b) which lesson plan components special education teachers include in their lesson planning activities and how each component is planned, and (c) what lesson plan components special education teachers recommend that beginning teachers include in written lesson plans. As indicated by the results, the majority of the special education teachers who participated in this study did not write out lesson plans for each lesson they taught. They indicated that, even though most of the planning prior to instruction was unwritten, it was often "consciously" planned, or planning was unnecessary because the component was performed by habit or instinct. A substan- tial majority indicated that they did not use any expert's lesson planning format, such as Hunter's (1984) or a format suggested in preservice teacher training. None of the 14 components regularly included in preservice lesson plans and instructional design models were written out by a majority of the teachers; only 3 of the 14components were written out by over one third of the respondents. Conversely, this study demonstrated that, although these teachers did not write out detailed lesson plans, they strongly recommended that beginning teachers do so. All 14 components were recommended by at least one third of the respondents, with 8 recommended by a majority. Limitations, questions for future investigation, and implications for teacher preparation are discussed.     

The “Nature” of leadership philosophy in outdoor and adventure education: Partnership or predation

Abstract

Nature continually impresses humans in its role as an omnipresent, if not ultimate, source of power. One hallmark of outdoor and adventure education (OAE) has been its presumption that humans' interaction with aspects of Nature's “power” promotes the antecedents of leadership: measurable, persistent psychological effects and behavioral modifications including self-awareness, self-reliance, and stewardship. Recently, an unresolved discourse has arisen involving the guiding philosophies and actual outcomes derived from programs assembled under various combinations of the terms outdoor, adventure, environment, recreation, and education. Unifying these five terms is leadership potential mediated through Nature's metaphorical majesty and demonstrable power. However, Nature can be an ally, a medium, or an enemy, and outcomes resulting from OAE programs should be congruent with a consciously examined, coherent philosophy. A theoretical model depicts combinations of society, civilization, and culture placed along a continuum ranging from predation to partnership to demonstrate that the type of leadership emanating from any two or more perspectives may be very different. Nature is a complex system that is both predatory and partnering, and leadership in OAE must purposefully select and design programs that embrace the appropriate philosophy of Nature.     

Thinking in Nearness: Seven Steps on the Way to a Heideggerian Approach to Education

This paper explores the concept of Gelassenheit as developed in the later thought of Martin Heidegger. It seeks to show the relevance of this to aspects of education, especially to the ways that teaching can be enhanced in order to do better justice both to the learners and to what is studied. Thinking in this way helps to overcome the dominance of representational thought, a kind of thinking that imposes barriers on the understanding and restrictions on how the world can come to be. In the end the thinking illustrated by Gelassenheit constitutes a more responsible and more responsive relationship to the truth. My paper provides examples of ways that this can enhance education. In the end, with a caveat, I revisit and re‐examine aspects of Heidegger's work about which I think there is reason to be cautious. This is to encourage a degree of vigilance in relation to Heidegger's thought, but in a way that does not deny its powerful insights.     

“过重课业负担”是概念,还是判断?——针对“过负”概念及其直接目的的探讨

有关"过负"问题的研究,浩瀚无穷,但它是一个概念,还是一个判断,则始终没有提出过。这个缺失,直接制约了减负研究的深入,对减负政策及其实践都带来不利影响。本文认为,"过负"是概念与判断的复合体,但首先应作为一个概念来揭示,因为它应对着一种独立的社会现象和教育现象,它不是能在"课业""学业"或"课程"范畴中,可加以揭示和刻画的现象或问题。"过负"内涵,可以归结为四点:外驱化、高压化、片面化和高耗化。相应地,减负直接目的或目标由此归结为三个:保护或维护好儿童的身心材质这一民族的最根本的天赋资源;保障和落实儿童权利和权益;给儿童或学生留出自我发展或自主发展的必要时空。减负的这三大目的或目标,同时也体现为向"建设现代社会和现代教育"这一最终目标的努力和驱近。     

Reading and Teaching Literature as Writing

Christer Ekholm's point of departure in this article is Gert J. J. Biesta's call for a new pedagogical attitude that takes a stand against the current trend in education. At present, the dominant approach is to make what we do in school into something wholly predictable, measurable, and assessable, which (as Biesta argues) misses important aspects of what education actually is or should be. One such aspect has to do with “subjectification,” that is, events where someone makes an appeal to me, singles me out in my uniqueness, and makes me ethically responsible to the other one before me. What role can literary education play in facilitating such events? What kind of reading strategies should be promoted with the aim of such an ambition? On the basis of a critical analysis of the discursive construction of an opposition between reading as engagement and reading as distance, Ekholm argues that the answer to these questions is to be found in an alternative literature didactics, where the work of fiction is understood not as text, but as utterance; not as something written, but as writing; perhaps even, not in terms of object(ification), but of subject(ification)?