Experienced teachers' knowledge of teaching and learning of models and modelling in science education

This article reports a study of the knowledge of experienced science teachers in the context of a reform in science education in The Netherlands. The study focused on a major goal of the reform, that is, improving students' knowledge and abilities in the field of models and modelling in science. First, seven teachers of biology and chemistry were interviewed about the teaching and learning of models and modelling in science. Next, a questionnaire was designed consisting of 30 items on a Likert-type scale. This questionnaire was completed by a group ( n = 74) of teachers of biology, chemistry and physics. Results indicated that the teachers could be grouped in two subgroups, who differed in terms of their self-reported use of teaching activities focusing on models: one sub-group applied such activities substantially more often than the other sub-group. This distinction appeared not to be related to the teachers' subject, or teaching experience. Moreover, the use of teaching activities seemed only loosely related to the teachers' knowledge of their students, particularly, students' views of models and modelling abilities. Implications for the design of teacher education are discussed.     

Seeing classes: toward a broadened research agenda for critical qualitative researchers

This paper proposes a research agenda that foregrounds social class in US public schooling. The author suggests that the relative invisibility of social class in academic discourse on schooling limits the value of research in at least three ways: (1) middle‐class academics’ propensity to speak on behalf of the poor and working class limits analysis of class and schooling; (2) the class and gender constraints on the work of teachers has been inadequately theorized, while simultaneously the work of teachers ha been invoked as proxy for deeper social and structural inequalities; and (3) researchers have declined to ‘study up’ power structures within which the work of schools is embedded, limiting our understanding of relationships between schooling and the economy. It is suggested that researchers’ work will make deeper contributions to the reform of schools to the extent that they acknowledge how norms of scholarship sustain their own middle‐class privilege.