Capturing and Enhancing Science Teachers’ Professional Knowledge

This paper reports research from a three-year Australian science teacher professional learning project, the Science Teaching and Learning (STaL) Project, in which groups of science teacher participants (across years K – 12) worked with academics over a one-year period as teacher researchers. Through reflecting on their experiences within the STaL Project and collecting data from their classrooms related to specific science teaching concerns, teacher participants constructed cases around particular aspects of their professional learning. The cases that these participants developed elicited rich insights into their teaching and their students’ learning of science. This paper discusses how the cases were developed by the teacher researcher participants and uses exemplars as a way of illustrating the nature of the professional knowledge developed.     

Developing Understanding: the use of teaching portfolios in preservice education

The premise that underlies the preservice‐teacher‐education programme at Monash University is the need to focus on the nature of learning (for example, Gunstone et al., 1993). One approach currently being used to enhance this process is the use of portfolios. The portfolio is an open‐ended task designed to explore teaching from many different vantage points. It is organised as a dynamic assessment task through which the student teachers work on developing their understanding of what it means to be a science teacher, and the teaching portfolio itself is a mixture of artefacts designed to help student teachers demonstrate this to others. This paper reports on the effectiveness and value of portfolios in helping preservice teachers learn about learning and teaching.     

Measuring instructional practice in science using classroom artifacts: lessons learned from two validation studies

With growing interest in the role of teachers as the key mediators between educational policies and outcomes, the importance of developing good measures of classroom processes has become increasingly apparent. Yet, collecting reliable and valid information about a construct as complex as instruction poses important conceptual and technical challenges. This article summarizes the results of two studies that investigated the properties of measures of instruction based on a teacher‐generated instrument (the Scoop Notebook) that combines features of portfolios and self‐report. Classroom artifacts and teacher reflections were collected from samples of middle school science classrooms and rated along 10 dimensions of science instruction derived from the National Science Education Standards; ratings based on direct classroom observations were used as comparison. The results suggest that instruments that combine artifacts and self‐reports hold promise for measuring science instruction with reliability similar to, and sizeable correlations with, measures based on classroom observation. We discuss the implications and lessons learned from this work for the conceptualization, design, and use of artifact‐based instruments for measuring instructional practice in different contexts and for different purposes. Artifact‐based instruments may illuminate features of instruction not apparent even through direct classroom observation; moreover, the process of structured collection and reflection on artifacts may have value for professional development. However, their potential value and applicability on a larger scale depends on careful consideration of the match between the instrument and the model of instruction, the intended uses of the measures, and the aspects of classroom practice most amenable to reliable scoring through artifacts. We outline a research agenda for addressing unresolved questions and advancing theoretical and practical knowledge around the measurement of instructional practice. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 38–67, 2012     

The struggle for comprehensive education in the Netherlands: the representation of secondary school innovation in Dutch newspaper articles in the 1970s

This article focuses on how Dutch newspapers represented the debate in the Netherlands in the 1970s on comprehensive education and thus influenced the Dutch Middle School experiment. Wiborg’s identification of key factors of success in Scandinavia was used as a point of reference. The article shows that these key factors did not exist in the Netherlands because of the polarisation of liberals and social democrats. Furthermore, the article shows how newspapers played different roles, varying from disseminators of new ideas to sparking debate and from communicators of political views to a barometer, consequently influencing the political strategies chosen.     

Educational patterns in lifelong learning settings

Education involves interactive processes in which symbolization plays a major role. Poetry promotes a unique approach to symbolization that is characterized by (a) fostering creativity within the realm of meaning, and (b) generating the development of sensibility. Despite these important educative functions, poetry has never been recognized as part of the core curriculum in schools. However, poetry has continuously managed to promulgate its educative functions from the periphery of schools. The focus of this paper is on the aspects of critical thinking the poetry of two Persian poets has fostered not only in the Iranian audience but also in a larger community since the 11th century.     

Slowmation: Preservice elementary teachers representing science knowledge through creating multimodal digital animations

Research has identified the value of learners using technology to construct their own representations of science concepts. In this study, we investigate how learners, such as preservice elementary teachers, design and make a narrated animation to represent their science knowledge. The type of animation exemplified is called a “Slowmation” (abbreviated from “Slow Animation”), which is a simplified way for preservice teachers to make an animation that integrates features from claymation, object animation, and digital storytelling. Drawing on semiotic theory, a case study of three preservice elementary teachers, who were audio and video recorded as they created a slowmation, illustrates how the construction process enabled them to engage with a science concept in multiple ways. Findings suggest that when preservice teachers create a slowmation, they design and make a sequence of five representations, each being a semiotic system with particular affordances that link as a semiotic progression: (i) research notes; (ii) storyboard; (iii) models; and (iv) digital photographs, which culminate in (v) a narrated animation. In this study, the authors present their theoretical framework, explain how the preservice teachers created a slowmation using a sequence of representations to show their science knowledge and discuss the implications of these findings for learners in universities and schools. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 985–1009, 2011     

Teaching portfolios: A strategy for developing learning and teaching in preservice education

Teaching portfolios have been used in the preservice teacher education program at Monash University to help student teachers to reflect on their learning about learning and teaching and to help them to convey this to others. The portfolio is an open-ended and un-graded task designed to explore teaching from many different vantage points. It is organised as a dynamic assessment task, not simply a static end product. This is done by considering teaching portfolios as comprising two important aspects, one is the process the other is the product. The process involves learning from the variety of experiences offered in the preservice education program and encouraging student teachers to reflect on these. The product is the development of the individual portfolio items that are used to demonstrate this learning to others. The portfolio comprises a number of individual items which act as a prompt to “tap” the creator's understanding of what it means to be a (science) teacher. This paper reports on the effectiveness and value of portfolios from the student-teachers' perspective by exploring how their understanding of the task evolved as they completed their preservice teacher education program.