Taiwanese science and life technology curriculum standards and earth systems education

This research examines whether UK primary teachers are aware of the potential of highly able young 'scientists' and whether they differentiate their teaching accordingly. The support that the National Curriculum gives to highly able children is also examined. A questionnaire was chosen for initial data collection, followed by a semi-structured interview with teachers who sent children to master classes. Analysis would indicate that teachers recognize that children who are scientifically highly able have the capacity to use higher order thinking to perform all aspects of science investigations. There does, however, seem to be a mismatch between theory and practice. The data from the questionnaires suggest that teachers do use a variety of methods to differentiate their science teaching. There was, however, no correlation between teachers' opinions related to scientifically able children's investigative skills and the associated methods of differentiating their teaching. The interview data reinforced this further as many able children had been given limited experience of science investigations in mixed ability groups.     

Elementary teachers' epistemological and ontological understanding of teaching for conceptual learning

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which elementary teachers applied their understanding of conceptual learning and teaching to their instructional practices as they became knowledgeable about conceptual change pedagogy. Teachers' various ways to interpret and utilize students' prior ideas were analyzed in both epistemological and ontological dimensions of learning. A total of 14 in‐service elementary teachers conducted an 8‐week‐long inquiry into students' conceptual learning as a professional development course project. Major data sources included the teachers' reports on their students' prior ideas, lesson plans with justifications, student performance artifacts, video‐recorded teaching episodes, and final reports on their analyses of student learning. The findings demonstrated three epistemologically distinct ways the teachers interpreted and utilized students' prior ideas. These supported Kinchin's epistemological categories of perspectives on teaching including positivist, misconceptions, and systems views. On the basis of Chi's and Thagard's theories of conceptual change, the teachers' ontological understanding of conceptual learning was differentiated in two ways. Some teachers taught a unit to change the ontological nature of student ideas, whereas the others taught a unit within the same ontological categories of student ideas. The findings about teachers' various ways of utilizing students' prior ideas in their instructional practices suggested a number of topics to be addressed in science teacher education such as methods of utilizing students' cognitive resources, strategies for purposeful use of counter‐evidence, and understanding of ontological demands of learning. Future research questions were suggested. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 1292–1317, 2007     

Sense-making—A case study using the movieJurassic park

In this ecological age, communicating information on environmental issues is extremely important. Yet, problems exist in communication models where knowledge is seen as absolute and the individual envisioned as an empty receptacle. What happens when a person assimilates knowledge? How does this knowledge relate to a person's view of the world (reality)? This paper is a brief introduction to Sense-Making, an alternative methodology which allows an insight into a person's perception of reality. Interviews were conducted with science teachers following a viewing ofJurassic Park to investigate the relationship of the movie to their ontological view of science, society and self. The Sense-Making methodology may be very beneficial in helping educators and communicators to understand the assimilation of knowledge by people and consequently the development of future communication models on scientific and environmental issues.     

‘Brown Paper Packages’? A Sociocultural Perspective on Young Children's Ideas in Science

How do we see young children's thinking in science? Is it, as much previous research has led us to believe, that their ideas can be neatly boxed like “brown paper packages tied up with strings” – as the song from The Sound of Music goes? Or are their ideas like “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings” (Sound of Music): fluid, complex, rich.?.?.? Drawing on the author's research into young children's ideas about natural phenomena such as the rain and clouds, and on Rogoff's three foci of analysis (personal, interpersonal and contextual), this paper illustrates how a consideration of sociocultural theory can be useful in framing research with young children, and allow us to see beyond the boxes. Emphasis is placed on recognising that children's thinking in science is embedded within particular sociocultural contexts, is guided by others and integrated with their use of certain mental and physical cultural tools. Thus, the article aims to present an alternative method for the generation of data on young children's thinking. Specific analysis of this data will, it is intended, be presented in a subsequent article.     

Science teachers' knowledge about and attitudes towards the use of models and modelling in learning science

A semi-structured interview was used to enquire into the knowledge of models and modelling held by a total sample of 39 Brazilian science teachers working in 'fundamental' (ages 6-14 years) and 'medium' (ages 15-17 years) schools, student teachers, and university teachers. This paper focuses on their perceptions of the role of models in science teaching. The teachers' ideas are organized in three groups: the status and value of models; the influences that inform the translation of these general ideas into classroom practice; and how they respond to the outcomes of students' modelling activities. The teachers interviewed generally showed an awareness of the value of models in the learning of science but not of their value in learning about science. They were also uncertain of the relationship that could exist in the classroom between various types of models. Modelling, as an activity by students, whilst praised in theory, would not seem to be widely practised. Where practised, the outcomes are by no means always treated with that integrity that learning about science would call for.     

Positioning participation in the NGSS era: What counts as success?

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) strives to shift science learning from the teacher as a single cognitive agent, to a classroom community in which participants are working together in directing the classroom's communal knowledge to figure out questions about how phenomena occur, and building, testing, and refining their ideas to address those questions. To achieve this type of classroom environment, teachers should attend to students' knowledge and ideas and pay attention to how students are located within teacher-led interactions, such as being positioned as active discussants or designated listeners. In this study, we explore if and how this is occurring in the NGSS era. We used a naturalistic inquiry to explore how an experienced first-grade teacher used a new NGSS-aligned unit that called for students to use the science and engineering practices (SEP) to build content knowledge. We used a macro-analytic lens to answer the research question “how are class discussions shaped to address the SEP”? We used a micro-analytic lens to answer the research question “how are students positioned during these science discussions in this classroom?” Evidence suggests that the teachers' whole class discussions incorporated and involved the SEP which were specified in the unit lessons for content learning. However, on a micro-analytic level, we found that few students were positioned as active discussants. The teacher heavily relied on those students who could provide succinct and clearly relevant answers while positioning the remainder of the students as silent spectators. Implications from this research suggest that not only new NGSS curriculum materials need to focus on what students should know and do but they also need to address heuristics for teachers that show them how to position all of their students as active doers of science so all students have opportunities to build deeper, core science knowledge.     

Minima Pedagogica: Education,Thinking and Experience in Adorno

This article attempts to think of thinking as the essence of critical education. While contemporary education tends to stress the conveying of knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the present‐day information society, the present article turns to the work of Theodor W. Adorno to develop alternative thinking about education, thinking and the political significance of education for thinking. Adorno touched upon educational questions throughout his writings, with growing interest in the last ten years of his life. Education, he argues following Kant, must enable students to think for themselves and to break free of the authority of teachers, parents and other adults. Nevertheless, in his discussions of education Adorno says little about the nature of thinking, and the secondary literature on his educational theory addresses this question only cursorily. Important claims on the nature of thinking do appear elsewhere in Adorno's work. From his early writings up to Negative Dialectics, Adorno is preoccupied with thinking, sketching the outlines of critical‐dialectical thought. Still, these reflections rarely touch upon educational questions, and the Adorno scholarship has yet to establish this link. Unlike studies which read Adorno's educational thought against the backdrop of the history of education and the German Bildung tradition, or in relation to art and aesthetics, the present article brings together Adorno's ideas on education and thinking in an attempt to contribute both to the Adorno scholarship and to the growing field of education for thinking.     

Using the case method in teacher education: The role of discussion and experience in teachers' thinking about cases

The question of whether discussion is a crucial variable in teachers' learning from cases has not been tested empirically. This study investigated what teachers understood from just reading and writing about a case, compared to what they thought when also discussing it. The quality, form, and content of the thinking of 8 student teachers, 8 beginning teachers, and 8 experienced teachers was examined. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of participants' writing and oral discourse from the case discussions were undertaken. The work of Piaget and Vygotsky provide the theoretical basis for interpreting how discussion affected teachers' thinking about cases.     

What Kind of a Girl Does Science? The Construction of School Science Identities

A view of science as a culturally‐mediated way of thinking and knowing suggests that learning can be defined as engagement with scientific practices. How students engage in school science is influenced by whether and how students view themselves and whether or not they are the kind of person who engages in science. It is therefore crucial to understand students' identities and how they do or do not overlap with school science identities. In this paper, we describe four middle school African American girls' engagement with science. They were selected in the 7th grade because they expressed a fondness for science in school or because they had science‐related hobbies outside of school. The data were collected from the following sources: interviews of students, their parents and their teachers; observations in science classes; journal writing; and focus groups. These girls' stories provide us with a better understanding of the variety of ways girls choose to engage in science and how this engagement is shaped by their views of what kind of girl they are. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 441–458, 2000.     

‘To Be Is To Respond’: Realising a Dialogic Ontology For Deweyan Pragmatism

Dewey's pragmatism rejected ‘truth’ as indicative of an underlying reality, instead ascribing it to valuable connections between aims and ends. Surprisingly, his argument mirrors Bishop Berkeley's Idealism, summarised as ‘esse est percepi’ (to be is to be perceived), whose thinking is shown to be highly pragmatist—but who retained a foundationalist ontology by naming God as the guarantor of all things. I argue that while this position is unsustainable, pragmatism could nonetheless be strengthened through an ontological foundation. Koopman's charges of foundationalist ‘givenism’ in Dewey's work, and in his promotion of the scientific method, are not proven. However, Koopman's ‘genealogical pragmatism’ may develop Deweyan educational theory by addressing dilemmas around curricular study. Koopman's arguments also point towards a missing ontological piece in Dewey's theory of knowledge. In the final section of the article I offer a dialogic ontology as compatible with pragmatism. This dialogical ontology provides both an ethical foundation through interrelatedness, and a generative theory of meaning and experience, as emergent from the encounter with difference. In this framework, to be is to respond—or be responded to. I offer the metaphor of ‘realisation’ to capture the human experience implied by this ontological stance.     

Sex bias in science teachers’ ratings of work and pupil characteristics‡

In this paper, the role of modelling in the teaching and learning of science is reviewed. In order to represent what is entailed in modelling, a 'model of modelling' framework is proposed. Five phases in moving towards a full capability in modelling are established by a review of the literature: learning models; learning to use models; learning how to revise models; learning to reconstruct models; learning to construct models de novo . In order to identify the knowledge and skills that science teachers think are needed to produce a model successfully, a semi-structured interview study was conducted with 39 Brazilian serving science teachers: 10 teaching at the 'fundamental' level (6-14 years); 10 teaching at the 'medium'-level (15-17 years); 10 undergraduate pre-service 'medium'-level teachers; 9 university teachers of chemistry. Their responses are used to establish what is entailed in implementing the 'model of modelling' framework. The implications for students, teachers, and for teacher education, of moving through the five phases of capability, are discussed.     

论教师精神的现代困境——兼论教师教育问题

现代性消弭了人存在的高贵性,是教师精神矮化的时代症候。这导致建基于此的教育科学、教师教育、教师道德等都对教师的本体性问题隐而不谈。此外,犬儒主义将相对主义与怀疑主义发挥到极致,让教师精神进一步衰微,教师丧失了教育信念,对新概念、新理论采取拒绝态度,教学走向娱乐化与迎合化。从卑微走向高贵,教师首先可以从对真善美的超越性理解与追求入手,重思教师职业的爱与卓越,重思教师生活的审美性,让教师的成长之路更具道德与审美实践之意蕴。其次,需要把教师教育从科学恢复到人学,进行本体论、存在论的思索,实现教师的觉醒与解放,进而让教师获得人之为人的高贵。