Teaching and learning about force with a representational focus : pedagogy and teacher change

A large body of research in the conceptual change tradition has shown the difficulty of learning fundamental science concepts, yet conceptual change schemes have failed to convincingly demonstrate improvements in supporting significant student learning. Recent work in cognitive science has challenged this purely conceptual view of learning, emphasising the role of language, and the importance of personal and contextual aspects of understanding science. The research described in this paper is designed around the notion that learning involves the recognition and development of students’ representational resources. In particular, we argue that conceptual difficulties with the concept of force are fundamentally representational in nature. This paper describes a classroom sequence in force that focuses on representations and their negotiation, and reports on the effectiveness of this perspective in guiding teaching, and in providing insight into student learning. Classroom sequences involving three teachers were videotaped using a combined focus on the teacher and groups of students. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation. Stimulated recall interviews were conducted with teachers and students. The paper reports on the nature of the pedagogies developed as part of this representational focus, its effectiveness in supporting student learning, and on the pedagogical and epistemological challenges negotiated by teachers in implementing this approach.

Teacher change in exploring representational approaches to learning science

The researcher worked closely with two biology-trained teachers to plan three teaching sequences in the topics of forces, substances and astronomy that were subsequently taught to Year 7 students. The sequences sought to develop a model of classroom practice that foregrounds students’ negotiation of conceptual representations.

The difficulties encountered by individuals in learning science point to the need for a very strong emphasis of the role of representations in learning. There is a need for learners to use their own representational, cultural and cognitive resources to engage with the subject-specific representational practices of science. Researchers who have undertaken classroom studies whereby students have constructed and used their own representations have pointed to several principles in the planning, execution and assessment of student learning (diSessa, 2004; Greeno & Hall, 1997). A key principle is that teachers need to identify big ideas, key concepts, of the topic at the planning stage in order to guide refinement of representational work. These researchers also point out the need for students to engage with multiple representations in different modes that are both teacher and student generated. A representation can only partially explain a particular phenomenon or process and has both positive and negative attributes to the target that it represents. The issue of the partial nature of representations needs to be a component of classroom practice (Greeno & Hall, 1997) in terms of students critiquing representations for their limitations and affordances and explicitly linking multiple representations to construct a fuller understanding of the phenomenon or process under study. The classroom practice should also provide opportunities for students to manipulate representations as reasoning tools (Cox, 1999) in constructing the scientifically acceptable ideas and communicating them.

Research question: What impact was there on the participating teacher’s practice through the adoption of a representational focus to teaching science?

Data collection included video sequences of classroom practice and student responses, student work, field notes, tape records of meetings and discussions, and student and teacher interviews based in some cases on video stimulated recall. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation.

The teachers in this study reported substantial shifts in their classroom practices, and in the quality of classroom discussions, arising from adopting a representational focus. The shifts were reported by them as a three-fold challenge. First, there was an epistemological challenge as they came to terms with the culturally produced nature of representations in the topics of force, substance and astronomy and their flexibility and power as tools for analysis and communication, as opposed to their previous assumption that this was given knowledge to be learnt as an end point. The second challenge was pedagogical, in that this approach was acknowledged to place much greater agency in the hands of students, and this brought a need to learn to run longer and more structured discussions around conceptual problems. The third challenge related to content coverage. The teachers sacrificed coverage for the greater depth offered by this approach, and were unanimous in their judgment that this had been a change that had paid dividends in terms of student learning.

S(t)imulating learning : pedagogy, subjectivity and teacher education in online environments

Australian higher education increasingly relies on flexible modes of delivery as a means of attracting and retaining students in a highly competitive global education market. While education is among those disciplines that have been most actively involved in the shift from face-to-face to online learning and teaching, the transition for many teacher educators is fraught with tensions and contradictions. For some, teaching online is seen as primarily a cost-cutting exercise on the part of universities, and has little to do with improving the quality of student learning. For others, the online environment offers multiple pedagogic possibilities that have yet to be fully explored. Yet others consider online environments as problematic, posing challenges to pedagogic and peer relationships that are generally seen as integral to 'good' teaching. This paper draws on an empirical study of teacher education faculties in five Australian universities, and analyses excerpts from interviews about learning and teaching with teacher educators, educational designers and faculty management. We argue that understanding how teacher educators constitute learner and teacher subjectivities through their beliefs about and approaches to pedagogy is crucial to the future of online tertiary education. In particular, we consider how teacher educators' attitudes toward and approaches to online learning and teaching are predicated on their perceived subject positions as either 'stimulating' or 'simulating' particular kinds of learning interactions.

Regenerating rural social space? Teacher education for rural-regional sustainability

The complex interconnection among issues affecting rural-regional sustainability requires an equally complex program of research to ensure the attraction and retention of high-quality teachers for rural children. The educational effects of the construction of the rural within a deficit discourse are highlighted. A concept of rural social space is modelled, bringing together social, economic and environmental dimensions of (rural-regional) sustainability. This framework combines quantitive definitional processes with more situated definitions of rural space based on demographic and other social data, across both geographic and cultural formations. The implications of the model are examined in terms of its importance for teacher education.

Values in science, environmental education and teacher education

The aim of this chapter is to establish values as a key component of science and environmental education, consistent with the troika framework, and to explore the implications of this for teacher education. In the chapter, we review research that has increasingly placed values at the centre of the process of learning science, and central also in framing students' responses to school science. We then present findings from three projects that explore the relationship of values to teaching and learning science: first, an exploration of the pedagogies of effective teachers of science; second,an environmental education project in which students explore science and sustainability ideas in the context of a community exchange program in Mexico and Alaska; and, third, a teachcr education initiative focused on place-based education. In the chapter, we argue that learning science and engaging with the environment entails pedagogies that link conceptual learning, values and community.

The continued underrepresentation of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses : a direct challenge to teacher education

The participation rates of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses of Australian universities and high schools have remained low (less than 30%), despite three decades of research and analysis. In seeking to better understand this phenomenon, this paper draws upon data collected during an Australian Research Council Linkage project to investigate first, the reasons that teachers and students in contemporary Australian high schools put forward to account for girls' underrepresentation; second, the assumptions about gender that underpin these explanations; and third, the extent to which teachers appear able to respond to the full range of factors shaping girls' decision making. The paper argues that attempts to improve girls' participation rates might continue to falter unless teacher education programs explicitly prepare teachers to conceptualise educational reforms based on understandings of post-structural perspectives on gender; perspectives that challenge the more common explanations for girls' behaviour associated with both essentialist and socialisation mindsets.

Doing the ultimate public good through teacher education

It is argued here that the many public goods associated with education are derivatives of an ultimate good. This ultimate good is the overall purpose of life in general and is similar to a telos as understood in ancient Greek culture. This paper reviews the notions of ‘good' and telos, and examines implications of Bauman’s analysis of our present individualizing era, the role of personal meaning making and the nature of education. It is then argued that preservice teachers can do the ultimate public good in a postmodern society, by articulating a developed personal, professional perspective that expresses a purpose (telos) of life.

The Civic School : Australian-Indonesian professional collaboration to model and audit the development of democratic primary classrooms and teacher language using the index for inclusion

The study is a pilot project in Australian-Indonesian institutional collaboration for the professional development of primary school teachers in West Sumatra in citizenship education. Senior staff in the department of Pancasila and Citizenship Education at the State University of Padang (UNP), West Sumatra initiated the project. UNP staff sought the collaboration of the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania for bringing about and sustaining changes in teacher practice needed to implement the new civic goals in the 1999 Suplemen. The Index for Inclusion was used to model and audit the development of democratic primary classrooms and language use in a cluster of Padang schools in West Sumatra. The paper describes the background to the project and how the Index for Inclusion was understood during the initial two-week implementation phase by teachers and school principals. The significance of the study lies in the potential of the Index for Inclusion internationally to citizenship education, a field of education that was not considered in the initial development of the Index project and the contribution of the multiple fields of inquiry to the evolving theoretical understandings of inclusive education.