Relationships between emotional climate and the fluency of classroom interactions

This study examined emotional climate in relation to the teaching and learning of grade 7 science. A multi-method and multi-theoretic approach used sociocultural frameworks as a foundation for interpretive research, conversation analysis, prosody analysis, and studies of nonverbal conduct. Emotional climate varied continuously throughout a lesson. Dialogues occurred and afforded learning when interactions between the teacher and students were fluent and included humour and collective effervescence. Emotional climate was negatively valenced when the teacher and/or students endeavoured to establish and maintain power by restricting others’ participation to spectator roles. The teacher’s endeavours to maintain and establish control over students were potentially detrimental to teaching and learning, teachers and learners. This type of teaching gradually evolved into a form we referred to as cranky teaching, whereby the teacher and her students showed signs of frustration and the enacted teaching and learning roles lacked fluency. The methods we pioneered in the present study might be helpful for other teachers who wish to participate in research on their classes to ascertain what works and should be strengthened, and identify practices and rituals that are deleterious and in need of change.     

Teaching as creating space for participation – establishing a learning community in diverse classrooms

The relationships between teacher and students are interdependent and rely on their mutual interaction. In the classroom, teaching involves daily face-to-face encounters between students and teachers and therefore could be considered a moral as well as an academic issue. A central question is how the teacher can establish and support a learning community in diverse classrooms where the different learners are recognized as participants, not just as recipients. In this article, a situation from a science lesson has been selected as a case to highlight/illuminate teaching as creating space for participation. The theoretical framework used in this discussion underlines participation as intersubjectively dependent. This perspective points to the ambiguity and uncertainty embedded in teaching and learning situations. It also emphasizes the importance of the teacher's role in inviting students into meaning-making processes. Special attention is paid to essential features of teaching as creating space for participation; 'the act of holding back', 'the act of passing on' and 'the act of non-valuing'. Teaching as creating space for participation is also discussed as an issue that needs greater attention in teacher education.     

Understanding the Development of a Hybrid Practice of Inquiry-Based Science Instruction and Language Development: A Case Study of One Teacher’s Journey Through Reflections on Classroom Practice

This qualitative case study looks closely at an elementary teacher who participated in professional development experiences that helped her develop a hybrid practice of using inquiry-based science to teach both science content and English language development (ELD) to her students, many of whom are English language learners (ELLs). This case study examines the teacher’s reflections on her teaching and her students’ learning as she engaged her students in science learning and supported their developing language skills. It explicates the professional learning experiences that supported the development of this hybrid practice. Closely examining the pedagogical practice and reflections of a teacher who is developing an inquiry-based approach to both science learning and language development can provide insights into how teachers come to integrate their professional development experiences with their classroom expertise in order to create a hybrid inquiry-based science ELD practice. This qualitative case study contributes to the emerging scholarship on the development of teacher practice of inquiry-based science instruction as a vehicle for both science instruction and ELD for ELLs. This study demonstrates how an effective teaching practice that supports both the science and language learning of students can develop from ongoing professional learning experiences that are grounded in current perspectives about language development and that immerse teachers in an inquiry-based approach to learning and instruction. Additionally, this case study also underscores the important role that professional learning opportunities can play in supporting teachers in developing a deeper understanding of the affordances that inquiry-based science can provide for language development.     

Mediating cultural borders during science field trips

In this paper, I analyze teacher and student roles in the teaching and learning of science at an informal learning center, The Outdoor Classroom. As a white middle class informal learning science teacher, I examine my struggles to teach science to students across boundaries of race, class, gender, and experience with the outdoors during field trips. Through the field trip I did not have the time or face-to-face experience to make sense of the students’ culture, see their culture in terms of capital, and align my enactment to benefit their learning. Likewise, the students did not have the time or face-to-face experience with me in order to adapt their cultural capital and build the essential stocks of symbolic and social capital. This research demonstrates how the classroom teacher draws upon previous transactions and emotions to successfully engage her students in practices that promote the participation and learning of science. Through creating culturally adaptive ways of transacting, teachers can provide opportunities for their students to generate positive emotional energy and group solidarity in the learning of science at an informal science center.     

When Teaching Makes a Difference: Developing science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through learning study

It is a common view that developing teachers’ competence to restructure or reframe their knowledge and beliefs is inevitably a complex challenge. This paper reports on a research project with the aim to develop science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) through their participation in a learning study. A learning study is a collegial process in which teachers work together with a researcher to explore their own teaching activities in order to identify what is critical for their students’ learning. During one semester, three secondary science teachers worked in a learning study together with a researcher in a cyclical process in order to create prerequisites and further identify conditions for students’ learning. During the learning study, data were collected from video-recorded lessons and stimulated recall sessions in which the teachers and the researcher reflected on the lessons to analyze their development of PCK, their students’ learning and the impact of that knowledge on their own teaching. The results provide an insight into how the teachers developed their self-understanding in which they questioned their own epistemological beliefs, aims and objectives of teaching and taken-for-granted assumptions about science teaching and learning. As such, the study provides an understanding of teacher professional learning through a careful investigation of how teachers’ PCK is enhanced through their participation in the learning study, and further, how students’ learning might be developed as a consequence.     

Primary Connections: Simulating the Classroom in Initial Teacher Education

The challenge of preparing novice primary teachers for teaching in an educational environment, where science education has low status and many teachers have limited science content knowledge and lack the confidence to teach science, is great. This paper reports on an innovation involving a sustained simulation in an undergraduate science education course as a mediational tool to connect two communities of practice—initial teacher education and expert primary science teaching. The course lecturer and student teachers role-played the expert classroom teacher and primary students (Years 7/8) respectively in an attempt to gain insights into teaching and learning through authentic activity that models good practice in primary science teaching and learning. Activity theory was used to help frame and analyse the data. Findings from the first trial indicate that the simulation was very effective in initiating science pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development of primary student teachers.     

Case‐based pedagogy as a context for collaborative inquiry in the Philippines

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential for using case‐based pedagogy as a context for collaborative inquiry into the teaching and learning of elementary science. The context for this study was the elementary science teacher preparation program at West Visayas State University on the the island of Panay in Iloilo City, the Philippines. In this context, triple linguistic conventions involving the interactions of the local Ilonggo dialect, the national language of Philipino (predominantly Tagalog) and English create unique challenges for science teachers. Participants in the study included six elementary student teachers, their respective critic teachers and a research team composed of four Filipino and two U.S. science teacher educators. Two teacher‐generated case narratives serve as the centerpiece for deliberation, around which we highlight key tensions that reflect both the struggles and positive aspects of teacher learning that took place. Theoretical perspectives drawn from assumptions underlying the use of case‐based pedagogy and scholarship surrounding the community metaphor as a referent for science education curriculum inquiry influenced our understanding of tensions at the intersection of re‐presentation of science, authority of knowledge, and professional practice, at the intersection of not shared language, explicit moral codes, and indigenization, and at the intersection of identity and dilemmas in science teaching. Implications of this study are discussed with respect to the building of science teacher learning communities in both local and global contexts of reform. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 502–528, 2001     

Teaching primary science: emotions, identity and the use of practical activities

This paper uses cultural historical activity theory to examine the interactions between the choices primary teachers make in the use of practical activities in their teaching of science and the purposes they attribute to these; their emotions, background and beliefs; and the construction of their identities as teachers of science. It draws on four case studies of science lessons taught over a term by four exemplary teachers of primary science. The data collected includes video recordings of science lessons, interviews with each teacher and some of their students, student work, teachers?? planning documents and observation notes. In this paper, we examine the reflexive relationship between emotion and identity, and the teachers?? objectives for their students?? learning; the purposes (scientific and social) the teachers attributed to practical activities; and the ways in which the teachers incorporated practical activities into their lessons. The findings suggest that it is not enough to address content knowledge, pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge in teacher education, but that efforts also need to be made to influence prospective primary teachers?? identities as scientific thinkers and their emotional commitment to their students?? learning of science.     

Evidence that Teacher Interactions with Pedagogical Contexts Facilitate Chemistry-Content Learning in K-8 Professional Development

In many innovative science content professional development (PD) courses for teachers, science concepts are situated within pedagogical contexts, or in other words, science content is incorporated within contexts relevant to teaching and student learning. Pedagogical contexts are often used because they are believed to be engaging for teachers and to support content transfer to the classroom. However, few studies have investigated how pedagogical contexts serve to impact teacher engagement and science content learning. This qualitative case study examined K-8 in-service teachers?? interactions with pedagogical contexts in a chemistry PD course. Findings indicate that teachers??: (1) contribution of teaching experiences helped create a collegial learning environment, (2) sharing of concerns from classroom teaching directed content discussion and learning objectives, and (3) reflection on teacher and learner roles in the PD classroom led to persistence in chemistry-content learning. Implications for PD instructor use of pedagogical contexts in science content based PD are discussed.     

The Development of Prospective Secondary Biology Teachers PCK

In order to understand how prospective teachers develop knowledge for teaching, researchers must identify the types of knowledge that are integral to effective science teaching. This case study investigated how 4 prospective secondary biology teachers’ science teaching orientations, knowledge of science learners, and knowledge of instructional sequence, developed during a post-baccalaureate teacher education program. Data sources included a lesson planning task and two interview-observation cycles during the participants’ year-long internship. Over the course of a year, the participants’ science teaching orientations were based primarily on their K-16 learning experiences, and were robust and highly resistant to change. The prospective teachers became more aware of student learning difficulties, and therefore, developed more elaborated knowledge of the requirements of learning. They consistently sequenced instruction in ways that gave priority to transmitting information to students. Prospective teachers’ development of knowledge of student understanding of science and instructional sequence were congruent with their science teaching orientations. Implications are given for teacher education and future research.     

Learning from Rookie Mistakes: Critical Incidents in Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Science to Teachers

While there is a growing literature focused on doctoral preparation for teaching about science teaching, rarely have recommendations extended to preparation for teaching science content to teachers. We three doctoral students employ self-study as a research methodology to investigate our developing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to teachers during a mentored internship in an elementary teacher professional development program. With our mentor, we examine critical incidents in the experience that supported new insights about teaching teachers and about ways in which beginning teacher educators need to develop their existing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to students in order to teach science effectively to teachers. We emphasize ways in which doctoral internships can support this learning and how our respective cultures shaped our interactions with and perceptions of teachers as learners.     

The Temporality of Participation in School Science: Coordination of Teacher Control and the Pace of Students’ Participation

This study investigates classroom organisation and interaction focusing on phases of activity. The detailed in-depth case study is based on video recordings of 1 science unit consisting of 11 lessons about biological evolution in a Swedish ninth-grade class (aged 15). The study illuminates the temporality of student participation as a fundamental and practical concern for the science teaching profession. Through multiple scale analysis an activity pattern and students' contrasting positions are identified. Movements of control and agency between teacher and students in small-groups provide opportunities for the teacher to coordinate the teaching and the pace of students' participation. The implications point to challenges involved in providing all students with the learning opportunities that participation in the school science discourse affords.     

Factors Influencing Entering Teacher Candidates’ Preferences for Instructional Activities: A glimpse into their orientations towards teaching

The present study was designed to identify and characterize the major factors that influence entering science teacher candidates’ preferences for different types of instructional activities, and to analyze what these factors suggest about teacher candidates’ orientations towards science teaching. The study involved prospective teachers enrolled in the introductory science teaching course in an undergraduate science teacher preparation program. Our analysis was based on data collected using a teaching and learning beliefs questionnaire, together with structured interviews. Our results indicate that entering science teacher candidates have strong preferences for a few activity types. The most influential factors driving entering science teacher candidates’ selections were the potential of the instructional activities to motivate students, be relevant to students’ personal lives, result in transfer of skills to non‐science situations, actively involve students in goal‐directed learning, and implement curriculum that represents what students need to know. This set of influencing factors suggests that entering science teacher candidates’ orientations towards teaching are likely driven by one or more of these three central teaching goals: (1) motivating students, (2) developing science process skills, and (3) engaging students in structured science activities. These goals, and the associated beliefs about students, teaching, and learning, can be expected to favor the development or enactment of three major orientations towards teaching in this population of future science teachers: “motivating students,” “process,” and “activity‐driven.”     

Examining features of how professional development and enactment of educative curricula influences elementary science teacher learning

This research examines factors influencing elementary science teacher learning as they participate in professional development with and enactment of educative curricula in comparison with learning following limited professional development and enactment of traditional curricula. Using a randomized cluster design (125 teachers and 2,694 students in 4th—5th grades) that met the What Works Clearinghouse standards without reservations, teacher learning was conceptualized using four outcomes. Data were analyzed using standard single-level multiple regression models and possible mediation models for the teacher outcomes were considered using piecewise multiple regression and path analytic approaches. Treatment group teachers experienced greater increases in content knowledge, views of science inquiry, beliefs about reform-based teaching, and teaching self-efficacy than comparison group teachers. The findings indicate that what teachers learn from the combination of professional development and teaching with educative curriculum varies according to what their knowledge and beliefs are on entering the experience. Surprisingly, high entry-level self-efficacy was associated not only with lower learning gains for the teachers, but also for their students. Finally, teachers' space science learning and that of their students are implicated as mediators of the positive effect of the professional development and educative curriculum enactment on teacher beliefs about reform science teaching. This work refines and extends a theoretical framework of teachers' participatory relationship with curricula.     

What do we know and where do we go? Formative assessment in developing student teachers’ professional learning of teaching science

In the context of teacher education, it could well be suggested that assessment activities that build on formative interactions between student teachers and teacher educators might offer new windows into better understanding teaching and learning. This paper presents findings from a study into a primary science teacher education initiative that seeks to build the foundations on which 24 primary science student teachers, through the use of formative assessment of their science teaching and learning, can begin developing their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In the project, formative assessment consists of activities used by teacher educators to stimulate interactions, self- and peer-assessment in order to provide insights into how student teachers develop their PCK during a semester. Content Representations (CoRes), were used as a tool to unpack the student teachers’ approach to teaching a science topic and the reasons for that approach. The results indicate that the use of CoRes, together with subsequent self-assessment and formative interactions with teacher educators and peers, do have the potential for PCK development for student teachers. The results further highlight the need for developing reliable and valid tools for capturing and assessing student teachers’ PCK in pre-service teacher education.     

Reframing Practice: Teacher Learning Through Interactions in a Collaborative Group

Using a case study design and ethnographic methods, this research investigated the interactions of a group of high school mathematics teachers who collaborated daily on issues related to curricular and pedagogical reforms. The members of the collaboration team implemented these reforms with the goal of supporting all students’ learning of 1st-year college preparatory mathematics. This study used conceptual tools from frame analysis (E. Goffman, 1974) alongside an analysis of teacher participation patterns to understand teacher learning within a community of practice (E. Wenger, 1998). This analysis documented development within the teacher community through teachers increasing orientation to classroom-based interventions for struggling students alongside more collegial participation patterns, contributing an empirical example of teacher learning within a community of practice.     

A comparison of elementary teacher attitudes and skills in teaching science in Australia and the United States

A study, originally don in Australia in 1983, was replicated in an urban-suburb in the Unitd States. The Australian project vivolved matched pairs of year-fiv teachers in one of two workshops. One workshop taught the skills of teaching electricity, while the other one discussed issues in gender equity in science education (active participation of both girls and boys, comparble student-teacher interactions, and research findings concerning equity). The U.S. study provided three types of workshops (skills, equity and skills, and equity) for comparable groups of fourth and fifth grade teachers. All teachers and their students were subsequently obseved during lessons involving an electricity unit, queried both students and teachers concerning the appropriateness of different fields of science for boys and girls and their interest and aptitudes in doing various types of science. Results from both studies suggest that gender differences in student attitudes toward science may be amellorated by specific types of teacher workshop. Specializations: Gender research, science teacher education, science education national policy. Specializations: Elementary and middle school science education, classroom research. Specializations: Secondary science education, data analysis.     

Science Students' Perceptions of Engaging Pedagogy

During their years of schooling, students develop perceptions about learning and teaching, including the ways in which teachers impact on their learning experiences. This paper presents student perceptions of teacher pedagogy as interpreted from a study focusing on students' experience of Year 7 science. A single science class of 11 to 12 year old students and their teacher were monitored for the whole school year, employing participant observation, and interviews with focus groups of students, their teacher and other key members of the school. Analysis focused on how students perceived the role of the teacher's pedagogy in constructing a learning environment that they considered conducive to engagement with science learning. Two areas of the teacher's pedagogy are explored from the student perspective of how these affect their learning: instructional pedagogy and relational pedagogy. Instructional pedagogy captures the way the instructional dialogue developed by the teacher drew the students into the learning process and enabled them to “understand” science. How the teacher developed a relationship with the students is captured as relational pedagogy, where students said that they learned better when teachers were passionate in their approach to teaching, provided a supportive learning environment and made them feel comfortable. The ways in which the findings support the direction for the middle years and science education are considered.     

When you’ve only got one class,one chance: acquiring sociocultural knowledge using eclectic case pedagogy

In this paper we describe the creation of an eclectic case pedagogy based on case‐based methods, sociocultural learning theory and visual studies successfully used in a university teacher education course designed to help students acquire sociocultural knowledge about schooling and teaching. Using qualitative data collected across three semesters and four offerings of the course, we outline the types of cases that made up the eclectic case pedagogy, as well as how students recognized the efficacy and significance of this pedagogic method for their learning. Students highlight three specific kinds of learning opportunities afforded to them when engaging with the eclectic case pedagogy including: guided participation, dismantling and building connections and close in(tro)spection of schooling and society. The benefits students attribute to this approach suggest the eclectic case pedagogy may especially befit courses that aim to expand preservice teachers’ knowledge base around issues of historical inequalities in schools, institutional barriers to equity, and teaching within and about difference.