Barbara S. Spector

Beginning Teachers: Beliefs and Classroom Actions

The current national priority for systemic approaches to the reform of science and mathematics education has led to unprecedented interest in research on the efficacy of science and mathematics teacher preparation programs. In response to this priority, a focus on collaborative approaches to educational reform and to research on educational reform resulted in a national collaborative research consortium of insitutions of higher education. The consortium was formed to investigate the following question about secondary science teacher education: What are the perceptions, beliefs, and classroom performances of beginning secondary teachers as related to their philosophies of teaching and their content pedagogical skills? The research design and instrumentation yielded detailed descriptions that elicited knowledge and beliefs held by beginning teachers about science, the nature of teaching and learning, and their philosophy of teaching. An analysis of video portfolios of beginning teachers provided classroom-based evidence of their performance in both subject matter and pedagogical dimensions of teaching. Among the findings from this 3-year exploratory study were that teachers graduated from their teacher preparation programs with a range of knowledge and beliefs about: how teachers should interact with subject content and processes, what teachers should be doing in the classroom, what students should be doing in the classroom, philosophies of teaching, and how they perceived themselves as classroom teachers. Beginning teachers described their practices as very student-centered. Observations of these teaching practices contrasted starkly with teacher beliefs: While teachers professed student-centered beliefs, they behaved in teacher-centered ways. Undertaking intensive, collaborative studies such as the one described in this article, is the beginning of efforts through which the science and mathematics education communities can strive to address the needs of students, teachers, teacher educators, and other stakeholders working to establish a common vision for excellent instruction and systemic, long-lasting reform.

Teaching the Nature of Science as an Element of Science, Technology and Society

This chapter describes the teaching and learning opportunities in a unit used to introduce aspects of the nature of science to preservice teachers within a Science/Technology/Society (STS) course. The course teaches the nature of science while modeling processes used in science to generate new knowledge. We begin with an overview of the course, its students, and the way the learning opportunities have been arranged to encourage students to use processes of science to generate personal knowledge. Then we describe the unit that introduces the nature of science explicitly, including commercially available materials used and excerpts from a lecture series that describe science as an outgrowth of biological evolution. Finally, we present strategies for assessment and comments about the impact of the course on students. The nature of science unit in our STS course has been adapted and tested with a variety of audiences, including preservice and inservice secondary and elementary teachers of science. Some may elect to adapt this unit for use in preservice methods classes or as a freestanding workshop for inservice teachers.

CARING RELATIONSHIPS IN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS : A SYMBOLIC INTERACTION STUDY

This symbolic interaction study was designed to identify and discover key components about caring science teachers. Grounded theory was generated that emphasizes the notion that caring is important in todays schools and provides insight into what happens in science classrooms. A key pattern that emerged regarding science teachers who are perceived to be caring is that they build a variety of relationships. The kinds of relationships described as caring by the teachers in this study include teacher-student, student-student, and teacher-content. The interaction and integration of these three kinds of relationships results in teacher-student-content relationships. The emergence of relationships and illustrations of the importance of these relationships is described herein.

The culture of traditional preservice elementary science methods students compared to the culture of science: A dilemma for teacher educators

An emergent design qualitative study generated grounded theory explaining what happened when a professor taught five preservice elementary science methods classes modeling inquiry. Data sources included classroom observations, interviews, students’ reflective journals, and artifacts from other student assignments. Member checking was done with individuals and groups during each course and in exit interviews Findings suggested students’ expectations for learning and teaching science originated in the culture in which they lived. Features of their culture, grounded in the data, emerged. The values, assumptions, beliefs, personality profiles, and behaviors that dominated their culture did not support teaching and learning through inquiry. Discrepancies between students’ expectations and course reality led to frustration and anxiety expressed as resistance to inquiry learning and teaching. Students’ culture was compared to the culture of science using five analytical frameworks: (1) the ethics of science presented in the National Science Education Standards, (2) the nature of science as revealed in science teaching, (3) the biological evolution of “curiosity” as a basis for science, (4) social psychological theory relating to need for achievement and fear of failure, and (5) preferred style of social action. Triangulating these analyses, we concluded that the culture of traditional preservice elementary methods students was the antithesis of the culture of science. This cultural class has implications for strategies to enhance preservice elementary teacher education to meet the National Science Education Standards’ focus on inquiry.

Mitigating Resistance to Teaching Science Through Inquiry: Studying Self

This is the report of a qualitative emergent-design study of 2 different Web-enhanced science methods courses for preservice elementary teachers in which an experiential learning strategy, labeled “using yourself as a learning laboratory,” was implemented. Emergent grounded theory indicated this strategy, when embedded in a course organized as an inquiry with specified action foci, contributed to mitigating participants’ resistance to learning and teaching through inquiry. Enroute to embracing inquiry, learners experienced stages resembling the stages of grief one experiences after a major loss. Data sources included participant observation, electronic artifacts in WebCT, and interviews. Findings are reported in 3 major sections: “Action Foci Common to Both Courses,” “Participants’ Growth and Change,” and “Challenges and Tradeoffs.”

Tying it all Together

Toward the end of the semester I asked students to write a note to future students of this course to help them mitigate their struggles with the paradigm shift (see Appendix E for excerpts from students’ advice notes). Much of what was written supported my interpretations in this case study, especially regarding the grade obsession. Each student’s comment said something about grading.

About the Course

This course was required in the preservice program for certification to teach in an elementary school. It was housed in an elementary education department. My faculty appointment was in a secondary education department. This latter department serviced the elementary program by providing methods courses in specialized disciplines such as science, mathematics, and social studies.

Findings about Course Participants

In addition to typical demographics, this chapter suggests characteristics of students participating in this course that affected their willingness to change paradigms and describes the episodes from which they were derived. The demographics in this class were comparable to that of sections of this course my research group and I taught in previous years. The past classes ranged from four to twenty-seven students.

Applying Constructed Knowledge

Face-to-face class meeting time during the second half of the semester, after students reviewed my self reflections, was devoted primarily to students applying the knowledge they had constructed from data gathered in the first half of the semester to developing products and testing inquiry with children in schools. Their products were shared through presentations to the full class and written format uploaded to Canvas.