Deborah Joy Corrigan

Valuing Assessment in Science Education: An Introductory Framework

In this volume, a range of authors explore assessment philosophies and practices and possibilities from different sociocultural contexts and across educational levels, from early childhood through to tertiary level. This chapter introduces and gives some context for the remainder of the volume. It briefly lays out a framework for considering the multilevel and multidirectional/multicausal interactions that exist between assessment and each of pedagogy, curriculum and policy. Each chapter is then outlined and its place in this framework and the sequence of the chapters is explored.

Developing Understanding: the use of teaching portfolios in preservice education

Abstract 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.

Pursuing Different Forms of Science Learning Through Innovative Curriculum Implementation

‘Science as a Human Endeavour’ is one of three strands of content identified in the new Australian Science Curriculum. All strands (Science as Human Endeavour, Science Understanding and Science Inquiry Skills) are seen as legitimate content areas to be learnt by all students throughout their school science. However, with the pressures of a crowded curriculum, many teachers consider ‘Science as a Human Endeavour’ an additional and somewhat less important burden and fail to appreciate the critical integrative role this strand can play in helping make science meaningful and relevant to all students. Embracing ‘Science as a Human Endeavour’ raises significant challenges for schools in re-assessing what counts as valued learning in science for future students. In this chapter we draw on specific cases from both the John Monash Science School (Victoria) and a Federal (Australian) National Broadband Network project involving the establishment of a virtual science school to illustrate how such shifts in thinking about learning to be valued may be explored and implemented. Importantly, we also consider the challenges that such shifts present to curriculum constructors and implementers. These two contexts are very different in the experiences they offer their students. The first tracks the development of a specialist school (the John Monash Science School) devoted to studying science at senior levels with a focus on providing rich experiences in science for students who already demonstrate interest and aptitude in this area. With its strong design emphasis on open space and the integration of ICT, both the cognitive and physical environments interact to enhance how students are able to engage with learning. In the second case, the focus is on providing access to interested Year 10 students from across Australia to learning experiences in the emerging sciences. In this solely online environment, students engage with their peers and teachers in a virtual classroom with access to resources, opportunities and ‘experts’ that are not normally part of mainstream classroom experiences.

The Role of Values in Teaching and Learning Science

Abstract This chapter explores the nature of science and different values that underpin science as a way of thinking and acting. While teachers and learners can interpret values differently, the focus of this chapter will be on: Building a shared understanding of values and how they may manifest in the science classroom; How such a shared understanding can be developed in teachers through professional learning opportunities; How professional learning involves experiencing reaching consensus from positions of difference and looks at the role this plays in new scientific knowledge being accepted; How values might be embedded in teaching and learning of science and the implications of this for teaching a diversity of students. Teacher reflections captured in the form of cases provide various examples which identify what inclusive practices might look like in primary and secondary classrooms.

Promotion of scientific literacy: Bangladeshi teachers’ perspectives and practices

Background: In Bangladesh, a common science curriculum caters for all students at the junior secondary level. Since this curriculum is for all students, its aims are both to build a strong foundation in science while still providing students with the opportunities to use science in everyday life – an aim consistent with the notion of scientific literacy. Purpose: This paper reports Bangladeshi science teachers’ perspectives and practices in regard to the promotion of scientific literacy. Sample: Six science teachers representing a range of geographical locations, school types with different class sizes, lengths of teaching experience and educational qualifications. Design and method: This study employed a case study approach. The six teachers and their associated science classes (including students) were considered as six cases. Data were gathered through observing the teachers’ science lessons, interviewing them twice – once before and once after the lesson observation, and interviewing their students in focus groups. Results: This study reveals that participating teachers held a range of perspectives on scientific literacy, including some naïve perspectives. In addition, their perspectives were often not seen to be realised in the classroom as for teachers the emphasis of learning science was more traditional in nature. Many of their teaching practices promoted a culture of academic science that resulted in students’ difficulty in finding connections between the science they study in school and their everyday lives. This research also identified the tension which teachers encountered between their religious values and science values while they were teaching science in a culture with a religious tradition. Conclusions: The professional development practice for science teachers in Bangladesh with its emphasis on developing science content knowledge may limit the scope for promoting the concepts of scientific literacy. Opportunities for developing pedagogic knowledge is also limited and consequently impacts on teachers’ ability to develop the concepts of scientific literacy and learn how to teach for its promotion.

Assessment: Where to Next?

At the end of Chap. 1 of this book, the authors of that chapter observe that ‘The concluding messages expressed in each of the chapters in this volume also provide a basis for consideration of where the gaps might be in thinking about assessment in science education and research. In the final chapter of this volume we therefore offer our analysis of what these gaps are, and suggest possible fruitful areas for further investigation in order to enhance assessment’s role in relation to science education policy, curriculum and pedagogy’. This concluding chapter provides such analysis. In particular (but not only), the lack of a student voice in much of the preceding chapters is noted, a lack that the next volume in this series (currently under development) seeks to address.

Approaches to Considering the Professional Knowledge Base of Science Teachers

This chapter provides an introduction to the remainder of the volume by setting subsequent chapters in a broader context. That context is an adaptation of Hargreaves (1998) conceptual framework for the consideration of the nature of teacher professional work. In common with essentially all commentators, Hargreaves notes that teachers’ work is complex, difficult and demanding, and, he argues, requires teachers to engage in intellectual, emotional work, and work organization (the capacity to organize and control one’s own work).

An Approach to Elaborating Aspects of a Knowledge Base for Expert Science Teaching

In the last three years we (with other Monash staff) have been involved in developing for the Department of Education in the state of Victoria a web-based resource to support prep-Grade 10 (ages 4–16) science teachers. The resource has been structured around “focus ideas” (e.g. “friction is a force”, “melting and dissolving”, “internal body organs”, “doing science authentically”). For each focus idea the website gives a brief account of the relevant ideas and beliefs students will bring to the study of the idea, an acceptable (age-appropriate) account of the science idea, our view of the critical teaching ideas and some pedagogical approaches for developing students’ understanding of these critical teaching ideas. The website also contains a number of other features. In the process of developing the resource, we (the chapter authors) have had to examine our own understanding of selected focus ideas in science. This experience has also meant that we have had to combine ideas and beliefs from research, practice and personal experiences in coming to an agreed position about these aspects of knowledge associated with each focus idea. The process provides an informative model for the elaboration of aspects of a knowledge base for expert science teaching, as we elaborate in the chapter.

Beyond Classroom Walls: How Industry Partnerships Can Strengthen Pre-service Literacy Teachers’ Identities

In this chapter, we investigate how a particular partnership between a faculty of education and industry may provide pre-service teachers with experiences that strengthen their understanding of literacy and, as a result, enhance their practices as teachers of literacy. We draw on our work in the ‘Read Like a Demon’ program, a partnership with the Melbourne Football Club in Victoria, Australia, which aims to increase upper primary students’ engagement in independent reading. Our focus though is on the professional learning and identity work of the pre-service teachers (PSTs), who volunteered to participate in the program. Through listening to the stories of the participants, we show how working in alternative sites to schools can provide PSTs with opportunities to evaluate their professional knowledge and reflect on the influence of political and theoretical landscapes on their practice. The PSTs participating in this program identified an increased confidence both in working with a multi-literacy lens and in appreciating literacy as an everyday, situated practice.

Outreach Education: Enhancing the Possibilities for Every Student to Learn Science

A review of the science education literature identifies the importance of outreach in raising public awareness of science while providing students with contextually relevant and meaningful science in ways that enhance their school experiences. The National Virtual School of Emerging Sciences (NVSES) provided just such an opportunity. Established throughout 2012–2014, it enabled 429 secondary students from across Australia to engage with the emerging sciences of Astrophysics and Nanotechnology. Creation of ‘virtual’ science classrooms allowed small groups of students to connect synchronously twice a week under the guidance of subject specialist teachers. To prepare for this context, teachers modified their face-to-face pedagogies to suit the range of technologies readily accessible in the virtual classroom. This chapter discusses how these different pedagogies were utilised by the NVSES teachers to develop lessons that created unique experiences for students within the virtual classroom environment. Data collected from pre and post student surveys, interviews with the NVSES teachers and access to digitally-recorded lessons demonstrate that while NVSES was highly successful, there were challenges for all involved.