Use of Microethnographic Strategies to Analyze some Affective Aspects of Learning-Cycle-Based Minicourses in Paleontology for Teachers

Abstract

Ethnographic qualitative research methods were used to determine the changes in affective attributes of middle-school earth-science teachers taking a series of three minicourses in paleontology based on an activities-oriented teaching strategy modeled around the learning cycle. Analysis of journal entries, focus-group interviews, and survey instruments provided a rich source of data with which to answer specific questions about the role of a teaching pedagogy (the learning cycle) in influencing attitudes, values, interests, and confidence in teaching paleontology. The results of this study indicate that the minicourse format using the described pedagogy is very effective in causing a positive gain in the aforementioned affective attributes. The ability to reliably determine these changes is directly attributable to the qualitative methods employed.