Attitude of students in exemplary programs toward their science teachers

Student attitudes concerning their science teachers at third, seventh, and eleventh grade are compared. Samples of students were drawn from those enrolled in NSTA's exemplary programs and other students drawn from classrooms of a random selection of teachers who are also NSTA members. Some of the affective items from the Third Assessment of Science, National Assessment of Educational Progress, were used for the study. Results indicate significantly more positive attitudes of students from the exemplary programs in the following ways:

• (1) pleasure with student questions;
• (2) desire for students to explore their own ideas;
• (3) “liking” of science (at the elementary school level);
• (4) ability and “knowledge” of it to make science study exciting.

     

The school as a workplace: Extending democracy to schools

The author has a thorough knowledge of the educational scene in the USA. His critical analyses of the “modern” educational theories developed by J. Holt, H. Kohl, Ch. Silbermann, I. Illich and others, and of their — as yet unresearched — application to institutionalized learning and socialisation processes provide very informative insights into the on-going discussion on reform, even outside his own country. Stopsky points to four factors which have had a pronounced influence on the objectives, direction and progress of curriculum reform:

1. The student movement and the stimuli it generated in the civil rights movement and the relations with the “Third World”.
2. The subculture of youth, accompanying this protest movement and partly caused by its lack of success, with its typical phenomena of drug consumption and social disintegration.
3. The disappointment at the failure of the propagated educational reform to establish, e.g., equality of chances and improve the quality of life, and the effects of raising the standards of performance demanded of under-privileged pupils by means of drastic restrictions on admission and entrance examinations implying social selection for higher educational courses.
4. The development of “anti-curricula” in the form and content of “open” or neohumanist education. The favourable reports on experiments with these “pupil-centred” curricula in British schools created a fascinating response from teachers and pupils in the USA, but most colleges rejected the innovation as being anti-intellectual and decided in favour of a “competency based” or “performance based” curriculum.

In this future-oriented paper F. Stopsky attempts to free school from the odium of suffering individual oppression and the resulting fear of the pupils, and to turn it instead into a place where children and adults will work without repression.     

Factors which deter potential science/math teachers from teaching; changes necessary to ameliorate their concerns

In light of the perceived national need for more science and math teachers, this study was conceived to:

• 1. Identify “teaching oriented” students among freshmen at a mid-western engineering school, who have chosen NOT to become teachers;
• 2. Find out what reasons these “potential” science and math teachers have for deciding not to pursue teaching careers;
• 3. Determine what amelioration of these problems would be necessary for them to no longer be factors which would inhibit students from becoming teachers.

Of a random sample of 110 students drawn from a freshman class, 98 participated fully in the study. Each participant took Holland's Self-Directed Search to determine “teaching orientation” and author-constructed instruments to assess their concerns about teaching. Results showed “teaching oriented” students avoided teaching due to low starting salaries, lack of job security, low maximum salaries, not wanting to do the work teacher's do, poor job availability and discouragement by family and friends. Starting salaries of $21,693 and salaries of $32,600 for a teacher with a B.A. and 10 years experience were among the changes deemed necessary to make teaching attractive.     

Using collaborative two‐stage examinations to address test anxiety in a large enrollment gateway course

Large enrollment foundational courses are perceived as “high stakes” because of their potential to act as barriers for progression to the next course or admittance to a program. The nature of gateway courses makes them ideal settings to explore the relationship between anxiety, pedagogical interventions, and student performance. Here, two‐stage collaborative examinations were implemented to improve test‐taking skills and address widespread test anxiety in an introductory human anatomy course. Test anxiety data were collected (using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire) before the first examination and last examination. Most students experienced decreased test anxiety over the course of the semester; however, some students may have experienced performance limiting conditions due to test anxiety at the end of the semester based on academic ability in the course (in “C” students when compared to “A” students: P < 0.00006 and “B” students: P < 0.05), overall academic ability (in academically weaker students: P < 0.025), and demographic factors (in women: P < 0.025). The strongest performances on examinations were primarily observed in already academically strong students (mean individual performance: P < 0.000, mean group performance: P < 0.000). Furthermore, changes in test anxiety were not significantly associated with the group portion of the examinations. Patterns of changes in test anxiety over the course of the semester underscore a complex interaction between test anxiety, student background, and student performance. Results suggest that pathways for test anxiety in “high stakes” courses may be separate from the mechanisms responsible for the benefits of collaborative testing. Anat Sci Educ 10: 409–422. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

“I'm just not that great at science”: Science self-efficacy in arts and communication students

Research in science education confirms the importance of self-efficacy in students' persistence and success in the sciences. The current study examined the role of science self-efficacy in nonspecialist, arts and communication-oriented students encountering science in a general education context. Participants (N = 275) completed a beginning- and end-of-semester survey including a Science Self-Efficacy Scale, a “connection to science” measure—the Inclusion of Science in Self Scale—and a Science Anxiety Scale. Participants also responded to two open-ended “sources of science efficacy” questions, and provided background/demographic information and access to their academic records. Results showed a significant increase in science self-efficacy and connection to science—although no change in science anxiety—over the course of the semester. The observed shift in self-efficacy for minority and international students was of particular note. These students started the course with lower confidence but, by the end of the semester, reported comparable science self-efficacy, and achieved similar grades to their White/Non-Hispanic and US resident classmates. Contrary to expectations, science self-efficacy did not predict performance in the class. However, students' self-reported sources of efficacy indicated increased confidence in using science in daily life, and confirmed the value of mastery experiences and of personally meaningful, student-centered course design in scaffolding student confidence. Results are discussed in terms of the individual and instructional factors that support science self-efficacy and student success in this unique, general education science environment.     

Plants or animals—which do junior high school students prefer to study?

This research addressed the following questions: (1) Which science topic do junior high school students prefer to study—plants or animals? (2) Is their preference related to the variables of grade level and sex of student? Public school students from grades 7, 8, and 9 in Avoca, New York participated in the study. Findings show that 9th grade students have a greater interest in biological science topics than do students in the other grades studied. Girls are more interested in biological science topics than boys are. Girls also showed a significant preference for animals over plants. As a group, junior high school students revealed that they prefer animal study over plant study. About half of the student responses categorized as “biological science” did not express a clear-cut preference for either plants or animals. A caution about generalizability is expressed. Interviews of students suggest that the following characteristics of animals are important determinants of preferences: Animals move, eat, have eyes for sight, communicate by sound, exhibit behaviors that are fun to watch, have short and observable live cycles, interact with humans, can learn, have mates, give birth, and raise their young. It was obvious that most students think of mammals when they hear the term “animal.”     

Natural pedagogical conversations in high school students' internship

Many science educators encourage student experiences of “authentic” science by means of student participation in science‐related workplaces. Little research has been done, however, to investigate how “teaching” naturally occurs in such settings, where scientists or technicians normally do not have pedagogical training and generally do not have time (or value) receiving such training. This study examines how laboratory members without a pedagogical background or experience in teaching engage high school students during their internship activities. Drawing on conversation analysis, we analyze the minute‐by‐minute transactions that occurred while high school students participated in a leading environmental science laboratory. We find that the participation trajectory was based on demonstration‐practice‐connect (D‐P‐C) phases that continually recurred in the process of “doing” science. Concerning the transactional structures, we identify two basic conversation patterns—Initiate‐Clarify‐Reply (I‐C‐R) and Initiate‐Reply‐Clarify‐Reply (I‐R‐C‐R)—that do not only differ from the well‐known Initiate‐Reply‐Evaluate (I‐R‐E) patterns previously observed in science classrooms, but also could be combined to constitute more complex patterns. With respect to the organization of natural pedagogical conversations, we find that there were not only of preferred and dispreferred modes of responding but also ambiguous dispreferred modes; and the formulating organization not only includes self‐formulating but also other‐formulating. These natural pedagogical conversations helped, on the one hand, students to clarify their understanding and, on the other hand, technicians (or teachers) to teach toward different needs for different students in different contexts. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 481–505, 2009     

Turkish grade 10 students' and science teachers' conceptions of nature of science: A national study

This study aimed to assess grade 10 Turkish students' and science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS) and whether these conceptions were related to selected variables. These variables included participants' gender, geographical region, and the socioeconomic status (SES) of their city and region; teacher disciplinary background, years of teaching experience, graduate degree, and type of teacher training program; and student household SES and parents' educational level. A stratified sampling approach was used to generate a representative national sample comprising 2,087 students and 378 science teachers. After establishing their validity in the Turkish context, participants were administered a questionnaire comprising 14 modified “Views on Science‐Technology‐Society” (VOSTS) items to assess their views of certain aspects of NOS. A total of 2,020 students (97%) and 362 teachers (96%) completed the questionnaire. Participant responses were categorized as “naïve,” “have merit,” or “informed,” and the frequency distributions for these responses were compared for various groupings of participants. The majority of participants held naïve views of a majority of the target NOS aspects. Teacher views were mostly similar to those of their students. Teacher and student views of some NOS aspects were related to some of the target variables. These included teacher graduate degree and geographical region, and student household SES, parent education, and SES of their city and geographical region. The relationship between student NOS views and enhanced economic and educational capitals of their households, as well as the SES status of their cities and geographical regions point to significant cultural (specifically Western) and intellectual underpinnings of understandings about NOS. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 1083–1112, 2008     

Observer, observed and observations: Initial teacher education English tutors' feedback on lessons taught by student teachers of English

We reflect here on research into the process of giving and receiving lesson‐observational feedback for student teachers. Key questions and areas are:

• ? How effective is post‐lesson observation feedback in developing student teachers’ understanding of their own teaching?
• ? Are there any issues to do with English subject knowledge?
• ? What of the language issues involved?
• ? What is the relationship between formative and evaluative aspects of such feedback?
• ? How involved are the student teachers themselves, and what are their thoughts and feelings?

     

The effect of A teacher questioning strategy training program on teaching behavior,student achievement,and retention

The use of questions in the classroom has been employed throughout the recorded history of teaching. One still hears the term “Socratic method” during discussions of questioning procedures. The use of teacher questions is presently viewed as a viable procedure for effective instruction. This study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of training teachers in the use of a questioning technique and the resultant effect upon student learning. The Post-Test Only Control Group Design was used in randomly assigning teachers and students to experimental and control groups. A group of teachers was trained in the use of a specific questioning technique. Follow-up periodic observations were made of questioning technique behavior while teaching science units to groups of students. Post-unit achievement tests were administered to the student groups to obtain evidence of a relationship between the implementation of specific types of teacher questions and student achievement and retention. Analysis of observation data indicated a higher use of managerial and rhetorical questions by the control group than the experimental group. The experimental group employed a greater number of recall and data gathering questions as well as higher order data processing and data verification type questions. The student posttest achievement scores for both units of instruction were greater for the experimental groups than for the control groups. The retention scores for both units were Beater for the experimental groups than for the control groups.     

Black males' self‐perceptions of academic ability and gifted potential in advanced science classes

The purpose of this research effort was to examine Black male students' self‐perceptions of academic ability and gifted potential in science. The purposeful sample consisted of nine Black males between the ages of 14 and 18 years. Four categories of self‐perceptions of academic ability and gifted potential emerged from the data. These included: (a) gifted high achievers; (b) gifted “could do better” high achievers; (c) gifted “could do better” situational nonachievers; and (d) gifted “could do better” underachievers. Science teachers' influences that referenced participants' academic achievement pointed to validation. Participants' perceptions regarding how science teachers' influenced their academic performance focused on science teachers' content knowledge. Power dynamics germane to Black male participants' value or worth that directed their efforts in science learning environments are discussed. Implications are posited for science teaching, science education programs, and future research. This research endeavor was based on two premises. The first premise is that Black males' self‐perceptions of academic ability affect their science academic achievement. The second premise is that, given parental, peer, and community influences, science teachers have considerable influence on students' self‐perceptions of academic ability. However, the focus of this research was not on parental influences, peer influences, or any potential influences that participants' communities may have on their academic achievement. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 888–911, 2005     

Meeting the Demands of the Workplace: Science Students and Written Skills

Over the last 15 years, surveys in a range of English-speaking countries, from North America and the United Kingdom, to New Zealand and Australia, have consistently shown that employers rank oral and written communication skills as highly as or more highly than any technical or quantitative skills. However, in New Zealand there has been very little research into determining exactly what is meant by the “written communication skills” employers state they desire. A further issue in this research to date has been a lack of differentiation between employers—no study has specifically targeted the requirements of employers of science graduates. This article reports the findings of ongoing research into the expectations of science students and of employers of science graduates, and centers around several key questions:

• What do New Zealand employers of science graduates specifically want in terms of their new hires' writing skills?
• How can information gained from employers of science graduates be used to motivate science students to take seriously the need to develop their writing skills?
• How can writing programs be evaluated and developed to help science students acquire communication skills that are important for their future learning and for their employment and promotion prospects?

Findings are compared with the findings of the 2004 National Commission on Writing's survey of American businesses.

     

An Analysis of Teacher Discourse that Introduces Real Science Activities to High School Students

Most academic science educators encourage teachers to provide their students with access to more authentic science activities. What can and do teachers say to increase students’ interests in participating in opportunities to do real science? What are the discursive resources they draw on to introduce authentic science to students? The purpose of this ethnographic and discourse-analytic study is to investigate the ways in which the activities of scientists are discursively presented to high school students in a biology/career preparation course. Data sources were collected by means of observation, field notes, interviews, and videotaped lessons in an eleventh-grade biology/career preparation course. Drawing on discourse analysis, we investigate the discursive resources—or, more specifically and technically, the interpretative repertoires—teachers used to explain and promote opportunities to engage students in real science activities. Our analysis identifies and characterizes six types of interpretative repertoires: specialized, a-stereotypical, relevant, empirical, emotive, and rare-opportunity. To better understand the “big picture” of how these discursive resources are drawn on in the classroom, we also report on the frequencies of the repertoires in the discourse and the ways in which repertoires changed in the course of teacher-student interactions. The findings of this case study offer teachers and researchers with a better understanding of how specific forms of discourse—i.e., the repertoires—can serve as resources to enhance teacher-introduction of authentic science to students and provide students a bridge between school and authentic science.     

College Match and Undermatch: Assessing Student Preferences,College Proximity,and Inequality in Post-College Outcomes

Recently, multiple studies have focused on the phenomenon of “undermatching”—when students attend a college for which they are overqualified, as measured by test scores and grades. The extant literature suggests that students who undermatch fail to maximize their potential. However, gaps remain in our knowledge about how student preferences—such as a desire to attend college close to home—influence differential rates of undermatching. Moreover, previous research has not directly tested whether and to what extent students who undermatch experience more negative post-college outcomes than otherwise similar students who attend “match” colleges. Using ELS:2002, we find that student preferences for low-cost, nearby colleges, particularly among low-income students, are associated with higher rates of undermatching even among students who are qualified to attend a “very selective” institution. However, this relationship is weakened when students live within 50 miles of a match college, demonstrating that proximity matters. Our results show that attending a selective postsecondary institution does influence post-college employment and earnings, with less positive results for students who undermatch as compared with peers who do not. Our findings demonstrate the importance of non-academic factors in shaping college decisions and post-college outcomes, particularly for low-income students.     

Profession, “performance”, and policy: teachers,examinations, and the state in England and Wales, 1846–1862

Abstract

When historians discuss the impact of examinations on elementary education in mid-Victorian England and Wales they typically focus on the Revised Code of 1862. The Revised Code is famous for instituting a policy of “payment-by-results” for teachers in state-supported voluntary schools. “Payment-by-results” made government grants to schools – and, by extension, for teachers’ salaries – contingent upon student attendance and pass rates in reading, writing and arithmetic. As this article emphasises, however, “payment-by-results” was not the first, or even the most significant, instance in which competitive examination was used by the state as an instrument for establishing the pedagogical fitness and salaries of teachers. Less often explored by historians is the formative role that state-mandated competitive examinations for teachers played in developing a professionally aspirant body of schoolteachers and, consequently, the schoolteachers’ later role in developing competitive examination as a broad-scale national accreditation apparatus. But while the use of competitive examinations came to shape modern British academic and professional life in fundamental ways, the strengthening effects that they had for certain occupations and institutions, such as physicians, civil servants and middle-class secondary schools, were in fact ultimately denied to state teachers and the elementary education sector generally. With the introduction of “payment-by-results” in 1862, competitive examinations were converted into an instrument that weakened rather than strengthened teachers’ professional identity and policy influence. This article explains how the nineteenth-century English state structured examinations and examination results to manipulate the professional status of teachers in order to suit state priorities during different stages of national development. This historical narrative is framed in reference to present-day examination-based reforms of teacher compensation systems such as performance-related-pay and value-added modelling.     

Quasi-appropriation of dialectical materialism: a critical reading of Marxism in Vygotskian approaches to cultural studies in science education

In this review essay we examine five categories of dialectical materialism proposed by Paulo Lima Junior, Fernanda Ostermann, and Flavia Rezende in their study of the extent to which the articles published in Cultural Studies of Science Education, that use a Vygotskian approach, are committed to Marxism/dialectical materialism. By closely examining these categories (“thesis, antithesis and synthesis,” “unity of analysis,” “History,” “revolution,” “materialism”) we expect to enrich the general discussion about the possible contributions of Marxism to science education. We perceive part of science education practice as orientating toward positivism, which reduces human beings—teachers, learners and researchers—to isolated individuals who construct knowledge by themselves. The very same approach aggravates the inner contradiction of the capitalist society demanding commitments from researchers to continually build innovative science education from human praxis. Nevertheless, it is necessary to situate ourselves beyond a formal commitment with dialectical materialism and hence reach the heart of this method. Besides understanding the researchers’ commitments, we question the extent to which the respective research helps to radically refresh the current view on science, science education practice, and research in science education.     

Videobased lesson analysis: Effective science PD for teacher and student learning

The Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) project is a videobased analysis‐of‐practice PD program aimed at improving teacher and student learning at the upper elementary level. The PD program developed and utilized two “lenses,” a Science Content Storyline Lens and a Student Thinking Lens, to help teachers analyze science teaching and learning and to improve teaching practices in this year‐long program. Participants included 48 teachers (n = 32 experimental, n = 16 control) and 1,490 students. The STeLLA program significantly improved teachers' science content knowledge and their ability to analyze science teaching. Notably, the STeLLA teachers further increased their classroom use of science teaching strategies associated with both lenses while their students increased their science content knowledge. Multi‐level HLM analyses linked higher average gains in student learning with teachers' science content knowledge, teachers' pedagogical content knowledge about student thinking, and teaching practices aimed at improving the coherence of the science content storyline. This paper highlights the importance of the science content storyline in the STeLLA program and discusses its potential significance in science teaching and professional development more broadly. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., J Res Sci Teach 48: 117–148, 2011     

Identifying patterns in students’ scientific argumentation: content analysis through text mining using Latent Dirichlet Allocation

Constructing scientific arguments is an important practice for students because it helps them to make sense of data using scientific knowledge and within the conceptual and experimental boundaries of an investigation. In this study, we used a text mining method called Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify underlying patterns in students written scientific arguments about a complex scientific phenomenon called Albedo Effect. We further examined how identified patterns compare to existing frameworks related to explaining evidence to support claims and attributing sources of uncertainty. LDA was applied to electronically stored arguments written by 2472 students and concerning how decreases in sea ice affect global temperatures. The results indicated that each content topic identified in the explanations by the LDA— “data only,” “reasoning only,” “data and reasoning combined,” “wrong reasoning types,” and “restatement of the claim”—could be interpreted using the claim–evidence–reasoning framework. Similarly, each topic identified in the students’ uncertainty attributions— “self-evaluations,” “personal sources related to knowledge and experience,” and “scientific sources related to reasoning and data”—could be interpreted using the taxonomy of uncertainty attribution. These results indicate that LDA can serve as a tool for content analysis that can discover semantic patterns in students’ scientific argumentation in particular science domains and facilitate teachers’ providing help to students.

     

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.     

Cloud Pedagogy: Utilizing Web-Based Technologies for the Promotion of Social Constructivist Learning in Science Teacher Preparation Courses

The new guidelines for science education emphasize the need to introduce computers and digital technologies as a means of enabling visualization and data collection and analysis. This requires science teachers to bring advanced technologies into the classroom and use them wisely. Hence, the goal of this study was twofold: to examine the application of web-based technologies in science teacher preparation courses and to examine pre-service teachers’ perceptions of “cloud pedagogy”—an instructional framework that applies technologies for the promotion of social constructivist learning. The study included university teachers (N = 48) and pre-service science teachers (N = 73). Data were collected from an online survey, written reflections, and interviews. The findings indicated that university teachers use technologies mainly for information management and the distribution of learning materials and less for applying social constructivist pedagogy. University teachers expect their students (i.e., pre-service science teachers) to use digital tools in their future classroom to a greater extent than they themselves do. The findings also indicated that the “cloud pedagogy” was perceived as an appropriate instructional framework for contemporary science education. The application of the cloud pedagogy fosters four attributes: the ability to adapt to frequent changes and uncertain situations, the ability to collaborate and communicate in decentralized environments, the ability to generate data and manage it, and the ability to explore new venous.