Narrative Inquiry for Science Education: Teachers’ repertoire‐making in the case of environmental curriculum

This paper considers how the school science curriculum can be conceptualised in order to address the contingent and complex nature of environmental and sustainability‐related knowledge and understanding. A special concern lies in the development of research perspectives and tools for investigating ways, in which teachers are faced with complex and various situations in the sense‐making of science‐related issues, and subsequent pedagogic issues. Based on an empirical examination of Korean teachers’ sense‐making of their curricular practice, the paper develops a narrative approach to teachers’ perspectives and knowledge by considering the value of stories as sense‐making tools for reflective questioning of what is worth teaching, how and why. By employing the idea of ‘repertoire’, the study regards teachers’ stories about their environment‐related personal and teaching experiences as offering angles with which to understand teachers’ motivation and reflection in curricular development and implementation. Furthermore, three empirical cases present ways in which the nature of knowledge and understanding is recognised and potentially integrated into pedagogies through teachers’ narratives. Finally, the paper argues for the need to reconsider the role of the science teacher in addressing environmental and sustainability‐related issues, in ways that facilitate teachers’ reflexive interpretation of meanings in cultural texts and the construction of pedagogic text.     

Modelling the Sociocultural Contexts of Science Education: The Teachers’ Perspective

A growing body of research argues that teachers’ beliefs and practices should be studied within the sociocultural contexts of their work because the relationship between their beliefs and practices is both complex and context-dependent. There is a need for further research in this area in understudied contexts such as developing countries, in order to promote effective education in schools and the professional development of teachers. This paper argues that if this ‘black box’ of sociocultural contexts in which science teachers are embedded is better understood, it may be possible to identify specific aspects of these contexts related to educational organizations that act as either supports or barriers to pedagogical reform or to implementing innovations in science education. Consequently, the main purpose of this study is to explore the sociocultural contexts of ten Egyptian science teachers and to what extent these sociocultural contexts help in understanding teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices. This paper, by utilizing a multi-grounded theory approach and qualitative methods, reveals a variety of sociocultural contexts that are related to teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices.     

Correction to: A Critical Review of Students’ and Teachers’ Understandings of Nature of Science

Science & Education - The original article unfortunately contains incorrect presentation of Tables 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.     

Experience and Reflection: Preservice Science Teachers’ Capacity for Teaching Inquiry

In this article, we investigate the relationship between preservice teachers’ inquiry experience and their capacity to reflect on the challenges involved in implementing inquiry into classrooms. For data, we draw on the personal narratives of preservice science teachers enrolled in science instruction courses. Preservice teachers with extensive inquiry experiences perceive implementation challenges principally in terms of teaching and student learning. This contrasts with the perceptions of preservice teachers with limited inquiry experience for whom the main concerns relate to the negative perceptions of others, time, the curriculum, and materials. By identifying these perceptions, it may be possible to develop courses that assist limited and moderate-experience preservice teachers’ move toward the perceptions of their more inquiry experienced colleagues.     

Discourse of Making Sense of Data: Implications for Elementary Teachers’ Science Education

This study of classroom discourse and other data from a physical science course for in-service teachers show the areas of success and challenge of the participants in making claims supported by justifications. It also shows that the teachers learned to make scientific claims and were able to make some justifications. Nevertheless, many found the process difficult. Some of those who performed well in the course did not consider the pedagogy suitable for their own students. The implications of the findings for elementary teacher education are discussed.     

Teachers’ responses to curriculum policy implementation: colonial constraints for curriculum reform

A new approach to curriculum and implementation in a new era normally requires schools and teachers to take more responsibility for student learning. This might present a challenge at any time, particularly when teachers have been used to more directives and less professional approaches to curriculum implementation. In order to meet such a challenge, a new approach to curriculum policy, namely “soft” policy, was used by policy-makers to implement curriculum reform. With the provision of substantial resources, it was expected by the policy-makers that schools and teachers would have better opportunities to develop themselves professionally and manage the new changes effectively. However, such a view misread the situation because the historical trend and present situation of teachers’ professional development were overlooked. This paper uses case studies of schools and teachers involved in the current reforms to show how teachers and schools implemented the reform process. The cases demonstrate how reforms were understood at the local level and the extent to which it could be claimed that implementation had taken place.     

Science Instructors’ Perceptions of the Risks of Biotechnology: Implications for Science Education

Developing scientifically literate students who understand the socially contextualized nature of science and technology is a national focus of science education reform. Science educators’ perceptions of risks and benefits of new technologies (such as biotechnology) may shape their instructional approaches. This study examined the perceived risk of biotechnology of four groups of science educators: pre-service science teachers, in-service science teachers, biology graduate teaching assistants, and biology professors (n = 91). Data sources included a survey instrument and card sort task designed to determine the respondents’ structure of risk perception and factors contributing to this structure. The perceptions of the four educator groups were compared and contrasted along these dimensions. Results showed that the teacher groups were similar along many aspects of risk perception, but university professors were more likely to view the more subtle “gray areas” between biotechnology risks. The results are discussed in the context of understanding teacher risk perception on science pedagogical practice as well as the role of content knowledge and teaching experience on risk perception formation.     

Crossing the Border from Science Student to Science Teacher: Preservice Teachers’ Views and Experiences Learning to Teach Inquiry

Preservice science teachers face numerous challenges in understanding and teaching science as inquiry. Over the course of their teacher education program, they are expected to move from veteran science students with little experience learning their discipline through inquiry instruction to beginning science teachers adept at implementing inquiry in their own classrooms. In this study, we used Aikenhead’s (Sci Educ 81: 217–238, 1997, Science Educ 85:180–188, 2001) notion of border crossing to describe this transition preservice teachers must make from science student to science teacher. We examined what one cohort of eight preservice secondary science teachers said, did, and wrote as they both conducted a two-part inquiry investigation and designed an inquiry lesson plan. We conducted two types of qualitative analyses. One, we drew from Costa (Sci Educ 79: 313–333, 1995) to group our preservice teacher participants into one of four types of potential science teachers. Two, we identified successes and struggles in preservice teachers’ attempts to negotiate the cultural border between veteran student and beginning teacher. In our implications, we argue that preservice teachers could benefit from explicit opportunities to navigate the border between learning and teaching science; such opportunities could deepen their conceptions of inquiry beyond those exclusively fashioned as either student or teacher.     

Teaching Science Inquiry in Urban Contexts: The Role of Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs

This paper reports on a study of elementary preservice teachers’ inquiry-based practices, their efficacy beliefs, and the role beliefs had on two preservice teachers’ practices in urban classrooms. Results show inquiry-based practices can be cultivated through field-based experiences and preservice teachers’ efficacy beliefs, as it relates to practice in urban settings, are malleable. Specifically, personal efficacy beliefs about teaching science improved or were sustained for one cohort of preservice teachers. However, beliefs about students’ ability to learn science, that is outcome beliefs, were less stable. The results of two case studies show that science content knowledge was a factor in preservice teachers’ inquiry-based practices. However, why preservice teachers’ beliefs about student learning declined is less clear. More research is needed, along with follow-up data on teacher induction, to learn how preservice teachers’ beliefs impact urban students’ science education.     

K-12 Science and Mathematics Teachers’ Beliefs About and Use of Inquiry in the Classroom

A survey instrument was developed and administered to 1,222 K-12 mathematics and science teachers to measure their beliefs about and use of inquiry in the classroom. Four variables (grade level taught, content area taught, level of support received, and self-efficacy for teaching inquiry) were significantly correlated to two dependent variables, percentage of time that students are engaged in inquiry during a typical lesson and the perceived ideal percentage of instructional time that should be devoted to inquiry. Specifically, elementary school teachers reported using inquiry-based practices more than either middle-school or high-school teachers; similarly, elementary-school teachers believed such practices should be used more often. All groups, however, reported believing in an ideal percentage of time devoted to inquiry instruction that was significantly greater than their reported percentage of time actually spent on inquiry instruction. A disordinal effect was found between grade level taught and content area taught; at the elementary level, science teachers reported both an ideal and actual percentage of time on inquiry higher than those reported by the math teachers, while at the high school level math teachers reported both an ideal and actual percentage of time on inquiry higher than those reported by the science teachers. No correlations were found between typical and ideal percentage of time devoted to inquiry and subject matter content knowledge training, gender, years of teaching experience, or maximum degree earned.     

Engaging Students in Guided Science Inquiry Discussions: Elementary Teachers’ Oral Strategies

This study explores how elementary teachers perceive and use engaging oral strategies (i.e., manners of speaking that encourage students to participate and become engaged in science discussions). It is reported that the strategies employed as well as their frequency varied substantially depending upon on the teachers’ grade level and perceptions. While a kindergarten teacher viewed such strategies negatively and employed only a few figurative directives, fourth-grade teachers viewed them positively, frequently resorting to a variety of speech figures, parallel repetition and engaging questions. It is argued that teachers’ engaging oral strategies are multifunctional, serving important social and cognitive functions.     

Enabling Factors of Preservice Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Nature of Science and Nature of Scientific Inquiry

Science & Education - The goal of this study was to explore the influencing factors of pre-service science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for targeted aspects of nature of...     

Exploring Exemplary Elementary Teachers’ Conceptions and Implementation of Inquiry Science

This study was an exploration of the conceptions of inquiry science held by exemplary elementary teachers. The origins of these conceptions were explored in order to establish how best to improve elementary teachers’ understanding and implementation of inquiry science teaching. Four focus group sessions were held as well as classroom observations. Data were also collected through surveys and interviews. The six exemplary teachers in this study held ideas about inquiry as “finding things out” and all described themselves as having been children who explored and experimented with the world around them. The teachers provided information about successful classroom environments and attitudes that they use to achieve strong inquiry science learning. The teachers had a number of recommendations for helping other teachers become inquiry science teachers and suggestions for professional development for teachers are made based on these recommendations.     

Pre-Service Teachers’ Views of School-Based Approaches to Pre-Service Primary Science Teacher Education

Primary pre-service teachers (PSTs) in Australia often have low confidence and negative experiences in relation to science and teaching science. This paper reports on pre-post survey data produced by four institutions involved in a multi-institutional project exploring the use of university-school partnerships for primary science teacher education. The findings show that the experience of engagement in school-based science teaching contributed to the development PST classroom readiness particularly with respect to statistically significant increases in confidence. We argue that moving tutorials from university into schools supports PSTs’ engagement with the teaching profession and teaching science.     

Teachers’ enactments of curriculum: Fidelity to Procedure versus Fidelity to Goal for scientific argumentation

Fidelity of implementation (FOI) has received attention in calls for funding and research; however, there are numerous ways of conceptualising and measuring this construct. We argue that this conceptualisation is important for recent reform efforts focused on science practices. Consequently, we explored FOI in the context of the enactment of a middle-school curriculum focused on one particular science practice, argumentation. We coded videos of five teachers’ enactments of argumentation lessons using two different fidelity coding schemes. First, Fidelity to Procedure targeted teachers’ adherence to the order and types of procedures. Second, Fidelity to Goal examined teachers’ adherence to the overarching argumentation goals. This analysis resulted in case studies that illustrate distinct patterns in the teachers’ curriculum enactments. One case in particular, Ms Newbury, received a low score for Fidelity to Procedure, but a high score for Fidelity to Goal. She altered procedures to provide her students, all of whom were English Language Learners, with different linguistic supports, but maintained the overarching argumentation goals. Consequently, we argue that FOI for goals may better capture whether teachers’ enactments are supporting students in the science practices. Furthermore, the results suggest the importance of educative curriculum including rationales for the curricular goals.     

Teachers’ Evaluation of Enterprise Education in the Secondary School

Abstract

This investigation was undertaken as part of research into ‘mini‐enterprise'activity in the secondary school. The research aimed to evaluate ‘mini‐enterprise’ as an approach to learning and to offer different examples in practice. Fundamental to this evaluation was an examination of the views and attitudes of teachers towards ‘mini‐enterprise’ work. This paper describes the survey undertaken to determine teachers’ attitudes towards certain key ‘enterprise’ issues and offers a summary of the research findings concluding in a discussion of the wider educational implications.