Patterns of Teaching Practice with Respect to Science Content
In-Young Cho and Charles W. Anderson, Michigan State University
This work was supported in part by grants from the Knowles foundation and the United States Department PT3 Program (Grant Number P342A00193, Yong Zhao, Principal Investigator). The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorsement of the supporting agencies.
Keywords: teaching practice, patterns of practice, problems of practice, situated decision, inquiry, problem solving, and teacher education
Introduction
This is a study of science teachers at the beginning of their careers. We focus on three interns in a five-year teacher education program. Our data come from their intern years, when they were in school classrooms for at least four full days every week. Like other beginning teachers, these interns had to respond to expectations and influences from different communities of practices, and to make curricular decisions on a daily basis. We explored the ways teacher candidates developed their curriculum in actual classrooms as they learned how to teach science content and to develop students’ learning goals. In particular, we focus on how these candidates engaged students in inquiry and taught problem solving to their students.
Research questions
• What were the candidates’ patterns of practice for teaching scientific inquiry and problem solving?
• What factors led the candidates to decide on their patterns of practice?
Background
Inquiry and problem solving have been extensively discussed in the science education literature, both as methods of science teaching and as goals for science learning. Inquiry pedagogy has been the central theme of National Science Education Standards, yet different conceptualizations of inquiry teaching include various forms of pedagogical practices. The early history of advocating the teaching of science through inquiry argued the importance of engaging students in a process of inquiry. John Dewey placed inquiry at the center of his educational philosophy and emphasized the process of educating reflective thinkers. He stated that science teaching should be dynamic, truly scientific, because the understanding of process is at the heart of scientific attitude (Dewey, 1916/1945). Joseph Schwab (1962) advocated ‘inquiry into inquiry’ as an approach to the teaching of science. Bruner (1962) asserted that students should develop the inquiry skill by cultivating their abilities to formulate and critique their own ideas and theories.
In the academic curriculum period of the 1960s, following the Woods Hole conference and typically represented as alphabet soup curriculum, inquiry teaching focused on giving students a better idea of the nature of scientific investigation and the way scientific knowledge is generated. And most importantly, the idea of the science laboratory was put into the essential part of the development of this goal. The basic belief about inquiry of this academic curriculum is the importance of the fundamental rational structure of knowledge, logical relations and criteria for judging claims to truth.
In the 1970s, new social concerns such as multicultural education, functional literacy, and humanistic psychology became important issues. Subjective and personal knowledge as objective knowledge that can be tested through reason and empirical evidence attracted more attention. Therefore, the concept of inquiry moved to more subjective, humanistic orientation of knowledge construction.
Since ‘Nation at Risk’ (1983), AAAS’s Project 2061 identified desired learning goals, and ‘Science for All Americans’ emphasized nations’ excellence in science, mathematics and technology learning. This envisioned scientific inquiry teaching and learning as the central strategy of science for all students by the NSES (NRC, 1996). During this period, science education studies developed perspective of inquiry in school science teaching as a process that can construe both content understanding and the nature of science.
Studies about the role of teachers’ practical knowledge in reform-oriented inquiry teaching (Eick & Dias, 2005; van Driel, Beijaard, & Verloop, 2001; Supovitz, & Turner, 2000; Adams & Krockover, 1997) indicated the importance of direct and explicit exposure to inquiry learning during method courses in teacher education or via professional development programs. Practical knowledge as a constructed knowledge of content and contextualized knowledge of classroom (Munby, Cunningham & Lock, 2000) plays a major role in shaping teachers’ actions in practice and the core of teachers’ professionality (van Driel et al, 2001). Meanwhile, studies on the relation between teacher beliefs, knowledge and practice of inquiry teaching (Wallace & Kang, 2004; Keys & Bryan, 2001; Lumpe, Haney, & Czerniak, 2000; Bryan & Abell 1999; Richardson, 1996) repeatedly reported that teachers’ core belief systems play a central role in teachers’ curricular actions, which mostly preside on the institutional school curricular influences (Munby et al, 2000; Yerrick, Parke, & Nugent, 1997; Tobin & McRobbie, 1996).
Inquiry in these studies often suggested a broad definition of inquiry as the incorporation of application into the scientific investigation processes and scientific reasoning skills. This argument was validated by claiming that the broad perspective of inquiry, which includes application and problem solving as well as inquiry as induction of concepts, can be more viable for science classrooms because students can learn both the content and the nature of science through rich applicative processes. Therefore, scientific inquiry often indicated both making inferences and convincing arguments from data, and data analysis as scientific application (Roth, McGinn & Bowen, 1998; Hofstein & Walberg, 1995). Likewise, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 2000) envision that “inquiry abilities require students to mesh these processes – cognitive abilities and science process skills - and scientific knowledge as they use scientific reasoning and critical thinking to develop their understanding of science” (p. 18). What cognitive abilities means is not explicitly indicated in the document, but if we consider it being distinguished from scientific process skills, it can be understood as constructing and applying scientific knowledge. What we suggest here as inquiry is a method of scientific investigation of the process of scientific knowledge construction. That is, the models/theories which meet the criteria of scientific knowledge suggested by school science curricula based on the knowledge of current professional communities of science. This needs to be distinguished from scientific practice as an application of the scientific knowledge in our conceptual framework for the perspective of inquiry in this study (Anderson, 2003).
Similarly, studies of problem solving teaching are informed significantly by the emphasis of process which accompanies content understanding. Windschitl (2004) asserted that current pedagogical discourses in the reform-oriented science education community are more focused on aligning instruction with problem solving and inquiry than content knowledge. Considering the complexities of the situation in which our teacher candidates are located in light of current school science scientific inquiry practices and reform recommendations, Windschtl’s observation should be taken seriously. Teacher candidates’ most often-used teaching practice of scientific inquiry and problem solving comes from their undergraduate years. Moreover, undergraduate science courses focus more on acquiring core classical disciplinary knowledge approved by the current professional scientists’ community than discussions about how new scientific knowledge becomes constructed in the professional scientific community. Candidates also experience tightly controlled laboratory courses during undergraduate years (Trumbell & Kerr, 1993). The implication is that teacher education programs need to provide scientific practice skills such as scientific inquiry and problem solving practices as well as a disciplinary knowledge base by the way of legitimate peripheral participation of apprenticeship (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Literatures contend that two main goals for teaching physical science and chemistry at secondary and tertiary levels are to foster conceptual understanding and problem solving ability. In chemistry and physics education specifically, problem solving is a dominant exercise in the secondary and tertiary classrooms (Champagne & Klopper, 1977; Shuell, 1990; Malony, 1994; Mason, Shell, & Crawley, 1997; Taconis, Ferguson-Hessler, & Broekkamp, 2001). However, early research on problem solving focused on the same issues as science textbooks and teaching practice. Procedures for working with symbols and data were the main component of the practice, which primarily focused on quantitative problem solving procedure. More recent research has focused on the meaning of problem solving procedures to students. The connection between qualitative conceptual understanding and quantitative procedural skills became a critical issue for the teaching problem solving in chemistry and physics classrooms. However, the research shows that many students still acquire procedural skills without conceptual understanding.
Traditional problem solving teaching practices rely heavily on exercising a large number of problems so that the instruction is concerned about the sequence of problem solving steps rather than conceptual understanding (Taconis et al., 2001). In addition, typical textbook problems reinforce this tendency by referring to idealized objects and events, which are not connected to the students’ real world experiences.
In the 1980s, cognitive processes of problem solving were widely investigated in relation to mental capacity and domain specific or general knowledge (Mayer, 1992). Accordingly, that research focused on the application of those developmental psychological and learning theories into problem solving instruction. In this tradition, research on problem solving was focused on the difference between novice and expert problem solving strategies and the effect of innovative problem solving instruction versus traditional or textbook problem solving instruction. The results showed that novices lack problem solving experiences, problem solving procedures, and an understanding of the domain specific knowledge, all of which are needed in developing solutions to physics problems (Eylon & Lynn, 1988).
In the 1990s, researchers focused increasingly on the qualitative meanings that learners saw in quantitative problem-solving procedures. These researchers saw qualitative understanding of quantitative problem solving as a desirable goal for problem solving instruction in science classrooms. Stewart & Hafner (1991) contrasted two viewpoints of practicing science: forward-looking point of view - or “science-in-the-making” in Latour’s (1987) term - and retrospective point of view, or “ready-made-science” according to Latour (1987). They recommended that research should emphasize questions about what students learn from solving problems and how they revise in response to anomalies in data, in addition to questions relating to model using situations. Some research has found that novices learn procedural display without understanding logical principles of the content underlying chemistry and physical science problems (Heyworth, 1999; Mestre, Dufresne, Gerace, Hardiman, & Touger, 1993; Mestre, et al., 1993; Bunce, Gabel, & Samuel, 1991). The complex relation of quantitative problem solving and qualitative understanding is well documented in Huffman’s (1997) study. The finding is that explicit problem solving instruction which address both problem-solving performance and conceptual understanding demonstrated more improvement in the quality and completeness of physics representation, but has no significant difference in students’ logical organization of the solution.
Conceptual framework for inquiry and problem solving
Our data analysis for understanding teacher candidates’ patterns of teaching practice principally based on the O-P-M model (Observations-Patterns-Models) for understanding the nature of scientific knowledge and practice in science teaching for motivation and understanding (Anderson, 2003). First, this framework claims scientific knowledge as three components, “Observations, Patterns, and Models.” Second, scientific practice includes both Inquiry and Application. “Inquiry” in this framework denotes reasoning from evidence and “Application” signifies important uses of models and patterns. Therefore, scientific “Inquiry” has a narrower sense than traditional inquiry literatures which include reasoning from patterns and models. Also, “Application” is used in a broader sense that is not restricted to the quantitative problem solving, but it includes important use of models and patterns, including explaining phenomena and making predictions and so qualitative problem solving. Based on this conceptual framework, we investigated our teacher candidate’s patterns of teaching practice for science content teaching and students’ learning goals. The unit of analysis was inquiry and problem solving teachings. In the analytical process, we developed a general problem solving model which includes all three case studies from the previous year’s paper.
Observations-Patterns-Models model
Explaining scientific knowledge and practice in reform-based science teaching and learning, Anderson (2003) depicted three components of scientific knowledge as the tool of making sense of the material world: a) experiences in the material world, b) patterns in experience, and c) explanations of patterns in experience. Each corresponds to Observations, Patterns, and Models in a new model for initial framework in Teaching Science for Motivation and Understanding. In thinking about scientific knowledge, it is essential for candidates to understand the key experiences, patterns and explanations relevant to the topics that they taught, and to distinguish among them. In thinking about scientific practices, scientific inquiry and application are essential and the most fundamental kinds of scientific practices that candidates need to know and apply.
National standards documents emphasize enhancing students’ scientific thinking skills by means of scientific inquiry teaching and learning. The content standards are statements of patterns in observations or models that scientists use to explain those patterns — the two right-hand ovals in Figure 1. However, those patterns and models are always based on specific observations — the left-hand oval. The arrows indicate that assessing understanding of patterns often involves asking students to relate them to specific observations, as when we assess understanding of the benchmark about plants’ need for water and light by asking students to predict what would happen to bean plants grown under different circumstances.
The ovals in Figure 1. also indicate a variety of synonyms for the Observations, Patterns, and Models. The rich vocabulary that scientists and science educators use to make these distinctions indicates how important they are in both science and science education. There are also some commonly used terms that are not included or used with restricted meanings:
· “Fact” are not found anywhere in this framework. Observations, patterns, and models are all sometimes referred to as facts.
· “Concepts” is another missing term. Again, this term is used with many meanings in science education, usually referring to either patterns or models.
· “Skills” are also missing. The arrows connecting the ovals could be labeled as skills, but that decision is complicated. More on this in the notes on Chapter Four.
· “Hypotheses” are listed in the Models oval as tentative models or theories. However, specific predictions based on tentatively held models are also sometimes called hypotheses (e.g., “the null hypotheses.”)]
· “Inquiry” is used in this figure in narrower sense than is typical in science education. Science educators often use inquiry to denote the entire process of conducting scientific investigations, which includes both reasoning from evidence and reasoning from models and patterns. In this figure inquiry is restricted to reasoning from evidence. Some educators also use a narrower definition of inquiry, suggesting that all scientific inquiry takes the form of experiments with independent variables, dependent variables, controls, etc.