Wendy Nielsen

Cooperating Teacher Participation in Teacher Education: A Review of the Literature

Student teachers consider cooperating teachers to be one of the most important contributors to their teacher preparation program. Therefore, the ways in which cooperating teachers participate in teacher education are significant. This review seeks to move conceptions of that participation beyond commonly held beliefs to empirically supported claims. The analysis draws on Brodie, Cowling, and Nissen’s notion of categories of participation to generate 11 different ways that cooperating teachers participate in teacher education: as Providers of Feedback, Gatekeepers of the Profession, Modelers of Practice, Supporters of Reflection, Gleaners of Knowledge, Purveyors of Context, Conveners of Relation, Agents of Socialization, Advocates of the Practical, Abiders of Change, and Teachers of Children. When set against Gaventa’s typology of participation, the resultant grid highlights the importance of negotiated or invited spaces for cooperating teacher participation and provides a new way of thinking about, planning professional development for, and working with cooperating teachers.

Learning Science through Creating a ‘Slowmation’: A case study of preservice primary teachers

Many preservice primary teachers have inadequate science knowledge, which often limits their confidence in implementing the subject. This paper proposes a new way for preservice teachers to learn science by designing and making a narrated stop-motion animation as an instructional resource to explain a science concept. In this paper, a simplified way for preservice teachers to design and make an animation called ‘slowmation’ (abbreviated from ‘slow animation’) is exemplified. A case study of three preservice primary teachers creating one from start to finish over 2 h was conducted to address the following research question: How do the preservice primary teachers create a slowmation and how does this process influence their science learning? The method of inquiry used a case study design involving pre- and post-individual interviews in conjunction with a discourse analysis of video and audio data recorded as they created a slowmation. The data illustrate how the preservice teachers’ science learning was related to their prior knowledge and how they iteratively revisited the content through the construction of five representations as a cumulative semiotic progression: (i) research notes; (ii) storyboard; (iii) models; (iv) digital photographs; culminating in (v) the narrated animation. This progression enabled the preservice teachers to revisit the content in each representation and make decisions about which modes to use and promoted social interaction. Creating a slowmation facilitated the preservice teachers’ learning about the life cycle of a ladybird beetle and revised their alternative conceptions.

The Mentoring Profile Inventory: an online professional development resource for cooperating teachers

We report on the origins, development and refinement of an online inventory to help cooperating teachers focus on selected dimensions of their practice. The Mentoring Profile Inventory (MPI) helps quantify important features of both the motivating and challenging aspects of mentoring student teachers and provides results to respondents in a graphic, easy-to-understand and immediate feedback report (14 sub-scales and 3 summary charts). Psychometric properties of the MPI are shown to be robust. Results can be used individually or collectively to facilitate cooperating teacher professional development by providing the opportunity for dialog around a set of common issues.

Participation rates in physics 12 in BC: Science teachers’ and students’ views

In recent years, participation rates in the British Columbia (BC) provincial physics exams have been low, compared with chemistry and biology. A qualitative study employing questionnaire and interview methods sought the views of teachers and students of senior science courses on why this is the case. Data analysis revealed that students’ decisions about Physics 12 were influenced by their perceptions of the mathematical content of physics, the physics teachers’ personalities and teaching styles, the perceived difficulty of physics, and prior experience of physics. We conclude that enhancing student interest in taking physics at advanced high school levels may necessitate a wider, more articulated exposure to topics in physics, together with more careful attention to mathematical background and skills.RésuméAu cours des dernières années, le taux de participation aux examens provinciaux de physique en Colombie Britannique a été nettement plus bas que celui des examens en chimie et en biologie. Au moyen d’une étude quantitative basée sur des méthodes utilisant des questionnaires et des entrevues, nous avons tenté de cerner l’opinion des enseignants et des étudiants des cours de dernière année en sciences à ce sujet. Une analyse des données révèle que les décisions des étudiants sur la physique de cinquième secondaire sont influencées par leur perception des contenus mathématiques des cours de physique, par la personnalité et le style d’enseignement des professeurs, par la difficulté qu’ils attribuent à cette matière et par leurs expériences passées qui y sont associées. En conclusion, nous estimons que si l’on souhaite favoriser l’intérêt des étudiants pour la physique de niveau avancé au secondaire, il sera peut-être nécessaire d’exposer ces derniers à une plus vaste gamme de sujets dans ce domaine, plus articulés et plus détaillés, et d’accorder une attention plus soignée aux connaissances et aux compétences de base en mathématiques.

Building Scientific Literacy in HIV/AIDS Education: A case study of Uganda

The term scientific literacy is defined differently in different contexts. The term literacy simply refers to the ability for one to read and write, but recent studies in language literacy have extended this definition. New literacy research seeks a redefinition in terms of how skills are used rather than how they are learned. Contemporary perspectives on literacy as a transfer of learned skills into daily life practises capture the understanding of what it means to be scientifically literate. Scientific literacy requires students to be able to use their scientific knowledge independently in the everyday world. Some models for teaching towards scientific literacy have been suggested including inquiry‐based learning embedded in constructivist epistemologies. The inquiry‐based model is posited to be effective at bringing about in‐depth understanding of scientific concepts through engaging students’ preconceptions. In order to establish whether directly engaging students’ preconceptions can lead to in‐depth understanding of the science of HIV/AIDS, a case study was designed to elucidate students’ prior knowledge. From questionnaires and classroom observations, Ugandan Grade 11 students’ persistent preconceptions were explored in follow‐up focus group discussions. The inquiry process was used to engage students with their own perceptions of HIV/AIDS during the focus group discussions. Findings suggest that students need to dialogue with each other as they reflect on their beliefs about HIV/AIDS. Dialogue enabled students to challenge their beliefs while making connections between ‘school’ and ‘home’ knowledge.

Pharmacology students’ perceptions of creating multimodal digital explanations

Students can now digitally construct their own representations of scientific concepts using a variety of modes including writing, diagrams, 2-D and 3-D models, images or speech, all of which communicate meaning. In this study, final-year chemistry students studying a pharmacology subject created a “blended media” digital product as an assignment to summarize an independently prepared technical literature review on a current research topic in pharmacology for a non-expert audience. A blended media is a simplified way for students to combine a variety of modes to complement a narration to explain a concept to others. In this study, the students learned how to create a blended media during a one-hour workshop, and used the technique to create the representation as an assessment task. The research question that guided the study was, “What are the students’ perceptions of making a digital product such as blended media and how did these shape their multimodal awareness?” We draw from theoretical perspectives in multimodalities, representations and meaning making. Data included interviews at three points of the semester, the literature review and the digital media product. We present three case studies with volunteering students, who demonstrated a strong awareness of effective communications techniques as they attended to the audience. Making a blended media is a creative way for chemistry students to summarize complex scientific information and as a task may help to focus their multimodal awareness and developing communications skills.

Development and validation of a social media and science learning survey

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to describe the development and validation of a survey that examines science students’ social media learning behaviours. Inherent in critiques regarding ‘digital natives’ is a need to better understand what the current generation of learners actually do in their social media practices for learning. The survey can help us understand how students actually use social media for learning science. Survey development followed an inductive approach [Brinkman, 2013. Qualitative interviewing. Oxford ebook; Mansourian, 2006. Adoption of grounded theory in LIS research. New Library World, 107(9/10), 386–402; Strauss & Corbin, 1998. Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and technique (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage], where survey design was informed by results of focus groups with secondary and post-secondary physics students and the survey was iteratively revised after two cycles of administration and validation interviews. The final version of the Social Media and Science Learning Survey can be used by educators and researchers to understand how social media tools can be leveraged in order to allow learning to emerge and to use this knowledge to frame recommendations and methods for integrating these tools into classroom-based environments.

Developing a model for a self-study professional learning community

Although the term self-study may suggest an individual teacher educator studying his or her own practice, most self-studies involve pairs or small groups of teacher educators working together in what is often called collaborative self-study. An extension of an informal collaboration is to formalize self-study as professional learning for teacher educators. This means that a group of teacher educators and other academics can study their practices over an extended period of time and share experiences as a community. This chapter identifies and explains the nature of a professional learning framework that underpins a group of academics becoming a self-study community. The framework is developed from previous research with teachers in schools and is adapted for self-study of academic teaching practices. The framework is based on the dynamic interaction of three professional learning influences: (1) content, (2) process, and (3) conditions that support such a community. Development of the framework is based on the progress of a group of ten academics, mostly teacher educators, over a 12-month period. Refinement of the framework is supported by case studies of the experiences of two of the participants in the self-study community.

Preparing to cross the research proposal threshold: A case study of two international doctoral students

ABSTRACT This paper presents a study of two international doctoral students’ perspectives on preparing to formally present the thesis proposal, which we conceptualise as a threshold in the PhD journey. They participated in a thesis writing group (TWG) that aimed to support international doctoral students to develop aspects of their scholarship in the early stages of their candidature. The case students reported feeling ‘stuck’ before joining the TWG run by the authors. After the writing group experience, they reported that they had gained confidence and developed the skills and knowledge required to prepare for their proposal presentation. Their perspectives were gathered through semi-structured interviews that were analysed using the conceptual framework of threshold concepts for doctoral learning. This small-scale study suggests that the collegial support provided by a TWG can be a powerful pedagogy enabling doctoral scholars to confidently negotiate crossing the thesis proposal threshold.

Australia’s supervising teachers: motivators and challenges to inform professional learning

ABSTRACT This paper offers an overview of what motivates and challenges Australian supervising teachers to work with preservice teachers in their classrooms. In the contemporary Australian context of new National Professional Standards for Teachers, a new national curriculum and new standards for Initial Teacher Education programs, what motivates and challenges supervising teachers becomes a focus for professional learning through analysis presented in this paper. Data are reported from a national data set that includes 314 responding supervising teachers who took the Mentoring Perspectives Inventory from 2012–2014. The MPI data are aggregated in this paper to suggest that the wider system of teacher education could benefit from attention at various levels of interest to develop the underlying knowledge base of supervising teachers and our understanding of how they are challenged and motivated in their work with preservice teachers.