David Geelan

Teaching for understanding and/or teaching for the examination in high school physics

Literature on the related notions of ‘teaching for understanding’ and ‘exemplary teaching’ tends to be interpreted as prescribing certain classroom approaches. These are usually the strategies often identified with constructivist teaching, which involve a redefinition of the teachers role: rather than being seen as a source of knowledge and control, the teacher is described as the facilitator of a largely student‐directed search for understanding. More ‘transmissive’, teacher‐centred approaches are held to lead to poor student understanding, low cognitive engagement and rote learning. This paper reports a case study of physics teaching in a government high school in Perth, Western Australia. This case study is part of a larger project spanning 5 years and eight case investigations in Perth schools. While the pedagogical style of the teacher studied could be labelled as ‘transmissive’, we tentatively assert that his practice exemplified high‐quality physics teaching and led to high‐quality understanding on the part of the students. The study suggests that prescriptions for quality teaching must be sensitive to issues of context and content, and that further study in a variety of school contexts is required to expand our understanding of what constitutes good teaching and learning in physics.

Differentiated learning: from policy to classroom

This paper explores the impact of a Teaching and Learning Audit of all government schools in Queensland, Australia. This audit has a concern with the extent to which schools ‘differentiate classroom learning’. We note that in England, since September 2012, one of the standards that teachers have been expected to demonstrate is an ability to ‘differentiate appropriately’, and thus the lessons of how this particular audit was implemented in Queensland have relevance outside of Australia. The paper draws on data collected from Red Point High School, one of the State’s 1257 schools and education centres audited in 2010. We suggest that this requirement to differentiate classroom learning was implemented without appropriate clarity or support, and that it increased teacher surveillance in this school. However, we also argue that some spaces were opened up by this audit, and its concern with differentiation, to articulate a social justice agenda within the school. We conclude that differentiation is a complex concept which is not easy to shift from a policy to a classroom context, and requires more careful explication at policy level and more support for teachers to enact.

Using Butler to understand the multiplicity and variability of policy reception

Understanding how teachers make sense of education policy is important. We argue that an exploration of teacher reactions to policy requires an engagement with theory focused on the formation of ‘the subject’ since this form of theorisation addresses the creation of a seemingly coherent identity and attitude while acknowledging variation across different places and people. In this paper, we propose the utility of Butlerian ideas because of the focus on subjectivity that her work entails and the account she gives for social norms regulating people’s actions and attitudes. We use Butler’s stance on how ‘cultural intelligibility’ is formed to account for the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory ‘take up’ of curriculum policy by 10 teachers at a secondary school case study in Queensland, Australia. We use the phrase ‘policy reception’ to signify a particular theoretical line of thought we are forming with our application of Butlerian theory to the analysis of teacher attitudes toward curriculum policy, and to distinguish it from ‘policy interpretation’, ‘policy translation’ and ‘policy enactment’.

Feyerabend revisited: Epistemological anarchy and disciplined eclecticism in educational research

Discussion between the adherents of various orientations within educational research has often generated more heat than light. A pervasive analogy drawn in these discussions has been between the philosophy of science and educational research. In this paper I explore the value of several influential perspectives within twentieth century philosophy of science as means of understanding what researchers in education do, and why. I suggest that Paul Feyerabend’s ‘anything goes’ epistemological perspective has much to offer in supporting rich educational research. If positivist standards of validity and reliability are no longer considered appropriate for some forms of educational research, however, new standards for justification and representation, explicitly stated within the research, will be necessary.

Teachers Using Interactive Simulations to Scaffold Inquiry Instruction in Physical Science Education

Inquiry instruction is a well-respected and well-supported teaching approach in science education, although the extent to which teachers are able to implement it in classrooms around the world is somewhat disappointing, despite a strongly expressed desire to do so. Reasons for this include pressures on teachers to ‘teach to the exam’, over-full curricula, student expectations and some characteristics of teachers themselves. There is a significant body of evidence to show that, where inquiry instruction is implemented by teachers, it is highly effective not only for addressing students’ misconceptions and helping them to develop deep understandings of correct (canonical) science concepts, but also for developing students’ understanding of the nature of science, evidence and argumentation. Teachers find that they are enabled to engage students in higher-level discussions about the use and evaluation of empirical evidence and to offer students richer, more satisfying learning experiences. Interactive simulations – computer-based visualizations in which students can enter variables and observe the effects – offer significant potential to support teachers in scaffolding inquiry instruction in science. This chapter draws together theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence from the literature and develops an original instructional sequence for the effective use of interactive simulations by teachers implementing inquiry instruction in physical science education.

Open forums for teaching in an open online world

Discussion forums used for teaching and other purposes in university courses are most often ‘closed’, in the sense that they are located within course management systems (CMSs) and password protected. This also means that they typically only last one semester and are associated with a particular course. This approach has advantages, but also costs, and this paper considers the alternative of using ‘open’ forums – forums available to the open internet – for teaching purposes across courses and programmes. An open forum was created and used in courses across one year of science education, drawing in students in the courses, students in similar courses at other universities, alumni, teachers and science educators. The forum will continue to be available to all participants after they complete any particular course, or their programmes at the university, and will develop as a ‘living’ educational community across multiple courses, levels and programmes. The costs and benefits of ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ forums are discussed, and contexts in which each may be more effective considered.

Lessons from Alison: a narrative study of differentiation in classroom teaching

Abstract Teaching is challenging in part because, although school structures are to some extent modelled on industrial approaches in which the ‘raw materials’ are assumed to be very similar, human beings are endlessly diverse. Understanding the many differences amongst students, and treating these differences as teaching resources rather than deficits, is a powerful approach. This paper draws on teacher interviews and classroom observations collected during a two-year study of two regional Queensland schools to explore issues of ‘recognition’, ‘distribution’ and social justice. It uses narrative vignettes from a single classroom to provide an occasion for reflection on the part of the reader on how schooling can better meet the needs of students, and outlines six pedagogical practices for effective classroom teaching.

Technological and methodological challenges of using classroom video to analyse physics teachers’ explanations

Abstract This paper reports a project conducted in twelve Grade 11 Physics classrooms in Edmonton, Canada, that used close analysis of video recordings of teacher explanations to explore the ways in which physics teachers explain concepts. The focus here is on discussion of the research methods and associated technological and methodological issues rather than on the specific issue of teacher explanations. Details of particular approaches to video analysis, including the qualitative video analysis software packages vPrism and Transana are given, and the costs and advantages of using video data discussed.

Personalised or Programmed? Current Practices of University Systems

This chapter explores our own experiences as a means of exploring the tensions and constraints that arise when educators seek to foster (their own developing visions of) personalised learning in their pedagogical practices, within the contexts of degree-granting university courses. In telling those stories and reflecting on those experiences, we live the history of e-mediated learning, and reflect on the tendency towards programmed learning. Finally, we draw on the Productive Pedagogies (Mills et al. 2009) framework to analyse dimensions and issues important to a productive framing of this tension between personalised and programmed approaches to learning.

A Brief History of E-mediated Education

This chapter considers the ways in which the new affordances of computers for learning have influenced learning. While the general scope is broad, the focus is on the ways in which computers make it possible to personalise learning in novel ways for learners. The simple move from reading the same text on a page to a screen and completing the text with a keyboard rather than a pen is not a significant change, if the approach to learning is still massified. Electronic mediation of learning, however, offers new possibilities for tailoring learning to the learner, and this chapter is focused on this possibility and the ways in which it has played out.