Judith Mulholland

Teacher Induction and Elementary Science Teaching: Enhancing Self-Efficacy.

Abstract This paper reports on a longitudinal case study of an elementary teacher, Katie, during her transition from preservice to inservice teaching. The concept of self-efficacy belief is used as a framework for presenting the findings of the study. Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in ones capabilities to organise and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments. Katies experiences in science teaching can be seen as potentially belonging to one of four categories described as sources of information from which efficacy beliefs are constructed and thus providing her with information about her competency as a teacher. Her experiences had the capacity for both positive and negative effect on her self-efficacy beliefs, but her persistence with science teaching can be interpreted as evidence of existing high self-efficacy in this domain.

Breaking the cycle: Preparing elementary teachers to teach science

This Australian study describes the experiences of five mature-age preservice teachers in a semester unit of science education. The unit was designed to help teachers examine and make explicit their ideas about science and science teaching and consider ways in which they might put those ideas into practice. The preservice teachers expressed a need for a supportive learning environment in which concepts were built gradually and introduced using concrete examples. Previous science experience was found to be a major influence on the attitudes the participants brought to the present course. Changing attitudes to science during the preservice experience is seen as an important step in breaking the cycle of the impoverished state of elementary science.

Assessment of Science Teaching Efficacy of Preservice Teachers in an Australian University.

Research investigating science teaching efficacy was conducted in 1 Australian university. A sample of 314 elementary preservice teachers responded to the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI; L. G. Enochs & I. M. Riggs, 1990), which assesses 2 teaching efficacy dimensions: Personal Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs (PSTEB) and Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy (STOE). Confirmatory factor analysis substantiated this 2-factor structure. The use of this instrument revealed that the completion of 2 science teaching subjects within the preservice program had a significant effect on the PSTEB, but not the STOE. Similarly, the number of high school science subjects studied by these elementary preservice teachers had a significant effect on PSTEB, but not STOE. However, neither gender nor the particular high school science subjects studied by these elementary preservice teachers had a significant effect on either the PSTEB or the STOE.

Caring and elementary teaching : The concerns of male beginning teachers

This article reports findings from a research project on the early career path of a group of male elementary school teachers. Issues of caring for children and disparities between how male and female teachers are permitted to relate to their elementary-age students are explored. In the preservice situation, the participants experienced tensions between how they, as male teachers, would naturally be inclined to show care toward students and the limitations that they felt were imposed on them by societal concerns about issues of child protection. During their 1st year of teaching, some of these frustrations endured, but participants found different and more acceptable ways of showing care. These ways of showing care can be described as being located on a professional rather than a parental end of a continuum of caring.

Strength, Sharing and Service: Restorying and the legitimation of research texts

This article uses data from a longitudinal qualitative research project exploring the experiences of elementary teachers as they both learnt and taught science in the transition from a pre-service to an in-service situation. Interviews, journal entries and observations were the original data sources from which case studies were derived by narrative analysis. The material used in this article concerns a single participant. The purpose is to examine a narrative device, restorying, and explore its usefulness as a way of enhancing legitimation in narrative inquiry. Three sets of criteria for legitimation of qualitative studies are suggested; a set that requires research to be conducted in ways that provide evidence of thoroughness and fairness; a set that allows the reader to experience vicariously the world of the participants; and a set concerned with the ways in which education is enhanced for researcher, participants and reader. The authors suggest that a single text cannot fully satisfy all of these criteria sets but that by using multiple tellings or restorying, the legitimation of findings in qualitative research can be enhanced.

Men who become Primary School Teachers: an early portrait

This paper reports the findings of a study which sought to provide improved understanding of what motivates young men to choose primary teaching as a career and their experiences of their university course. It is hoped that the understanding so derived can be used to encourage males to enter the teaching profession at primary level. Sixteen new male graduates were interviewed, just over half had begun the education degree immediately after leaving high school. Working with children was a positive motivation, but teaching was also seen as a desirable career with good working conditions. Parents, both mothers and fathers, were supportive of teaching as a career for their sons. The university course became more interesting for these male students once they were involved directly in schools. They described themselves as less conscientious than female students, but as having interests other than study which gave them an edge in the classroom.

Do single-gender classrooms in coeducational settings address boys' underachievement? An Australian study

This paper reports a research project developed in partnership with the Principal and Leadership Team of an Australian secondary school. It monitored a school-based initiative designed to address the underachievement of male students. Students in Year 9 selected single-gender or coeducational classes in mathematics and English during the second half of a school year. Student scores in standardized tests and school-based assessment in these subjects were obtained before and after the establishment of the initiative. Results indicate no significant difference in mathematics achievement that can be attributed to gender or class composition. However, scores in school-based English improved for students in single-gender classes. Improvement for girls in single-gender classes was greater than that for boys in single-gender classes.

Beginning primary science teaching: Entryways to different worlds

This paper reports on a longitudinal interpretive case study of the transtion from preservice to inservice science teaching. We describe four sets of overlapping worlds that provide vantagepoints for the study. Three sets describe the experiences of Katie, the participating teacher. These are the world of the person who is good at science and the world of the person who is not, the world of the student teacher and the world of the novice teacher, and the world of the primary science classroom and the world of the primary classroom during other subjects. The final set describes our development as researchers during this period—the world of the specialist science teacher and the world of the generalist teacher. In our analysis of the transition experience, we employ the term entryways to describe understandings and strategies that helped the teacher and ourselves to move between contrasting perspectives.

Professional learning in the lives of teachers: towards a new framework for conceptualising teacher learning

This interpretative study of teachers as learners explored the continuing professional learning of teachers in a range of Australian schools. While teacher learning is regarded as a cornerstone of school reform, knowledge of how and why teachers engage in ongoing learning is scant. Research participants completed an open-ended questionnaire about their professional learning experiences and participated in semi-structured interviews in which they shared their learning narratives. The study found three sets of major influences on teachers’ engagement with professional learning and the quality of that learning. These influences were isolation (both geographic and professional), cost (both educational and emotional), and the professional and personal life stages of teachers. A new descriptive framework through which to understand the intricate interconnections between teacher-learners, professional learning and learning contexts across teaching careers is proposed.

Facilitating Primary Science Teaching: A narrative account of research as learning

This paper is, in part, a narrative account of a teacher educators professional growth during a longitudinal case study of three primary science teachers, Katie, Jean and Ruth, as they made the transition from pre-service to inservice teaching. The study sought to explore ways in which the beginning teachers perceived and dealt with constraints to science teaching in the primary school, and how they changed and adapted the knowledge and skills developed at university in a practical situation. The findings of the study are organised by considering what we, the researchers, saw as three categories of challenge for these beginning primary science teachers, their initial alienation from the study of science, the differences between teaching science and teaching other subjects in the primary school, and the impact of novice status on science teaching. Working with participants to help them respond to these challenges became an occasion for our own development as science educators.