Vision For Science Education Research Articles

Exploring the tensions science teachers navigate as they enact their visions for science teaching: what their feedback can tell us

ABSTRACT This paper reports on inservice science teachers’ collaborative feedback to each other on videos of their classroom teaching during debrief sessions. We aimed to understand how the teachers’ feedback reflected their vision for science education and how they collaboratively identified and discussed the misalignments between their vision and actual classroom practices. Ten videos of debrief sessions involving 17 K-12 science teachers participating in a teacher leadership professional development program were analysed. The feedback captured the teachers’ reflections as they collaboratively identified issues that were important to them and attempted to resolve them together. Our initial analysis of the data led us to frame our study within the literature on critical reflection, democratic practices, and student agency in science education. The teachers had a deep awareness of the need for democratic practices and shared power in their classrooms. Their feedback, however, revealed the tensions that arose as they discussed enactments of each of these tenets in the classroom. This study contributes to the literature on feedback given among inservice science teachers and proposes a professional development model that supports teachers’ professional learning in a social and democratic setting.

БАЗИРАНИЯТ НА ПРИРОДАТА, СОЦИАЛНО-ЕМОЦИОНАЛЕН ПОДХОД И ПРИРОДОНАУЧНОТО ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ НА ДЕТЕТО В НАЧАЛНОТО УЧИЛИЩЕ – ЕДНА НЕОБХОДИМА СВЪРЗАНОСТ

The article presents the Nature-based socio-emotional approach and science education for primary school child as a necessary relation on two levels. At the conceptual level the approach is analysed through the prism of the cumulative effects of nature and society to the cognitive and socio-emotional development of the child’s personality: in primary school age cognitive and emotional-volitional mental processes are socially predetermined and have the essence of a result. At the applied level, the Nature-based socio-emotional approach is analysed through active learning in nature as an authentic learning environment – the focus is on the acquisition of knowledge, the formation of cognitive and socio-emotional skills to overcome consumer culture and sustainable development of nature. In this regard, the effects of active learning are viewed in sync with the learning environment, which collectively generate added value to learning and become a kind of „key“ to creating a modern vision of science education in primary school today .

Perception of the Next Generation Science Standard instructional practices among Vietnamese pre-service and in-service teachers

STEM education has been emphasized in many countries around the world because of its benefits for students in the new century. In response to STEM education, Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) has released for a new vision of science education in which learning disciplinary content and crosscutting concepts is through engaging science and engineering practices. Educational reforms lead to a need for science teacher education programs and professional development. To prepare better for pre-service teachers, it is necessary to know their perception about these science and engineering practices. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the perception of pre-service teachers and in-service teachers’ implementation of instructional practices that align with NGSS as well as school principals’ views of science teaching. To get the goal, a convergent parallel mixed-method research design was employed in which quantitative data is a survey of science instructional practices from 187 pre-service teachers and 100 in-service teachers and qualitative data is interviews of 10 school principals in Can Tho city, Vietnam. The finding indicated that pre-service teachers highly evaluated science and engineering practices in teaching science while in-service teachers’ implementation of these practices was lower. In-service teachers tend to use more traditional instruction and incorporate students’ prior knowledge in their teaching. Although school principals revealed their appreciation toward teaching science through practices, they admitted that currently, implementation of these practices has been still limited.

Creating a system of professional learning that meets teachers’ needs

State-level leaders face a difficult challenge of determining where to invest scarce professional learning dollars. To address this challenge, a team of researchers and state-level science educators surveyed teachers to learn more about their vision for science education and what kind of learning opportunities they preferred. The survey enabled the team to determine how well teachers’ ideas about science education aligned with the Framework for K-12 Science Education. They then set state-level aims for professional learning that took into account teacher preferences and any gaps between teacher visions and the vision of science education in the framework. Together, the researchers and state leaders created free learning resources that could help teachers achieve these aims.

Developing a Three-Dimensional View of Science Teaching: A Tool to Support Preservice Teacher Discourse

ABSTRACTThe Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) on which they are based, describe a new vision for science education that includes having students learn science in a way that more closely aligns to how scientists and engineers work and think. Accomplishing this goal will require teacher educators to make important shifts in the ways they prepare future science teachers (NRC, 2012). Many science teaching methods courses are being reformed to better support future science teachers to meet the ambitious goals of the NGSS. Specifically, these reform efforts require evidence-based and standards-aligned tools to help preservice teachers align instruction with the new science standards. This study utilized the methodology of Improvement Science “Plan, Do Study, Act” cycles in order to design a Three-Dimensional Mapping Tool (3D Map) as a visual scaffold for use in science teaching methods courses to support preservice teachers in unpacking the components of NGSS and to promote discourse related to the three-dimensionality of planning instruction. The 3D Map provides a visualization of key elements of the NGSS, while being flexible enough to accommodate established teaching strategies.

Organizing for Teacher Agency in Curricular Co-Design

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) approaches to intervention aim for transformative agency, that is, collective actions that expand and bring about new possibilities for activity. In this article, we draw on CHAT as a resource for organizing design research that promotes teachers’ agency in designing new science curriculum materials. We describe how CHAT informed our efforts to structure a collaborative design space in which teachers and other participants sought to develop new curriculum materials intended to help realize a new vision for science education. Specifically, we describe the tools and routines we deployed to support the design process, and we analyze the ways in which teachers took up elements of our design process as well as how they adapted, resisted, and suggested alternative tools and strategies to help develop new curriculum materials. In so doing, we illustrate ways in which CHAT can serve as a guide both for organizing collaborative design processes and for analyzing their efficacy.

Leading Learning: Science Departments and the Chair

In this article, we have considered the role of the chair in leading the learning necessary for a department to become effective in the teaching and learning of science from a reformed perspective. We conceptualize the phrase “leading learning” to mean the chair's constitution of influence, power, and authority to intentionally impact the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political aspects of teachers’ work. The data for this article are based on our ongoing work with one science department, over the past nine years, and have been woven into a longitudinal narrative study of a chair who has led the learning of an effective department since 2000. In considering the data, we can reach two major conclusions. First, for a chair to lead learning is to build a professional commitment to a vision of science education, not a particular program. Second, in leading learning, chairs afford opportunities for teacher empowerment. This affordance, however, is only half the issue. It is commitment to a vision that drives a desire to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. In leading learning that reflects changes in the broader science education community, learning opportunities are opened beyond the department.

Measuring Science Instructional Practice: A Survey Tool for the Age of NGSS

Ambitious efforts are taking place to implement a new vision for science education in the United States, in both Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-adopted states and those states creating their own, often related, standards. In-service and pre-service teacher educators are involved in supporting teacher shifts in practice toward the new standards. With these efforts, it will be important to document shifts in science instruction toward the goals of NGSS and broader science education reform. Survey instruments are often used to capture instructional practices; however, existing surveys primarily measure inquiry based on previous definitions and standards and with a few exceptions, disregard key instructional practices considered outside the scope of inquiry. A comprehensive survey and a clearly defined set of items do not exist. Moreover, items specific to the NGSS Science and Engineering practices have not yet been tested. To address this need, we developed and validated a Science Instructional Practices survey instrument that is appropriate for NGSS and other related science standards. Survey construction was based on a literature review establishing key areas of science instruction, followed by a systematic process for identifying and creating items. Instrument validity and reliability were then tested through a procedure that included cognitive interviews, expert review, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (using independent samples), and analysis of criterion validity. Based on these analyses, final subscales include: Instigating an Investigation, Data Collection and Analysis, Critique, Explanation and Argumentation, Modeling, Traditional Instruction, Prior Knowledge, Science Communication, and Discourse.

Improving Education Standards

![Figure][1] CREDIT: (TOP LEFT) MARK SANCHEZ; (BOTTOM LEFT) TOM KOCHEL This month, achieve, an organization established by the 50 U.S. state governors to improve academic standards and testing, will begin finalizing its draft document (released in January 2013) of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).[*][2] This document aims to establish new common standards for science education for students aged 5 to 18 in the United States, and it explicitly builds on the U.S. National Academies' 2011 Framework for K-12 Science Education.[†][3] The Framework put forth a vision of science education that is notable for emphasizing student participation in key science and engineering practices, such as asking questions and defining problems; developing and using models; engaging in argument from evidence; and learning cross-cutting concepts such as energy and matter, cause and effect, and structure and function. To allow room for these in the school day, the Framework stressed the importance of minimizing the number of disciplinary core ideas that standards require to be taught. Now that the NGSS document has entered its final revision stage, it is important to ask how well these standards match the powerful vision for them that was laid down by the Framework. ![Figure][1] CREDIT: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM There is much to be commended in the draft. In particular, its emphasis on science and engineering practices could lay the groundwork for productive shifts toward helping students understand how science helps us make sense of the natural world, instead of just what science has learned. But the sheer volume of content referenced in the Framework moves to the foreground in the NGSS draft and threatens to undermine this promise. Any emphasis on practices requires a science-rich conceptual context, and certainly the core ideas and cross-cutting concepts presented are useful here. However, the draft contains a vast number of core disciplinary ideas and sub-ideas, leaving little or no room for anything else. In the three grades of middle school (ages 11 to 13) alone, the NGSS draft specifies more than twice the disciplinary content than did the 1996 National Science Education Standards. Thus, before finalizing the new standards, we urge Achieve to quickly convene small groups of the nation's best teachers at the primary, middle-school, and high-school levels. Although teachers have been involved in the writing effort, their new charge should be to bring ground truth to the NGSS by determining the maximum number of disciplinary core ideas that can be covered in a single school year, while still leaving time for a productive focus on practices and cross-cutting ideas. And scientists should immediately be charged with prioritizing the disciplinary core ideas in the current draft (and their performance expectations) to reduce them to a more feasible number. The welcome shift in priorities to teaching science and engineering practices along with the content brings an assessment challenge. The NGSS draft document addresses this challenge by delineating many performance expectations. However, current measurements and approaches do not allow these types of performances to be assessed easily; it is much more difficult to evaluate the quality of such engagement than to determine the accuracy of an explanation or a word definition. Urgently needed is a vigorous R&D agenda that pursues new methods of and approaches to assessment. This will be difficult but critically important long-term work. A systematic commitment to the wrong quantitative measures, such as the inexpensive multiple-choice testing of factoids, may well result in the appearance of gains at the tremendous cost of suppressing important aspects of learning, attending to the wrong things in instruction, and conveying to students a distorted view of science. Outstanding scientists must be willing to work side by side with measurement specialists and science educators to develop methods for evaluating what is important to measure, after completing the short-term task of prioritizing and reducing the number of disciplinary core concepts in the new standards. [1]: pending:yes [2]: #fn-1 [3]: #fn-2

The ‘M’ in SMEC: a short history of the mathematics education presence

In this paper I examine the history of the integration of mathematics education into the Science Education Centre, which had been established by physicist, John de Laeter, within the School of Science and Engineering at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. De Laeter’s vision for science education was that teachers should have access to professional education that allowed them to extend their discipline and pedagogical knowledge using strategies that brought together theory and practice in ways that were meaningful for teachers. This model was expanded when mathematics education was also included, paving the way also for technology education. I present the history of this integration laying out the themes that are important for the continued educational effectiveness of the Science and Mathematics Education Centre (SMEC) and the role that mathematics education has played in this process. As the title suggests, this article focuses on the activities of the group of mathematics educators who have worked within the Science and Mathematics Education Centre of Curtin University since it was established 30 or so years ago and who have contributed to its reputation. The two streams operated then and now more-or-less independently in matters of student thesis topic choice but offered students opportunities for interaction that might not have been available if the “M” had not been incorporated into the Science Education Centre (SEC). This article’s focus is on the mathematics educators who contributed to the Centre’s success and reputation, highlighting the synergistic relationship between mathematics and science that helped to make SMEC a leading center for mathematics and science education.

A Vision for Science Education: Responding to the Work of Peter Fensham

A Vision for Science Education: Responding to the Work of Peter Fensham

A Vision for science education: responding to the work of Peter Fensham

Section 1: Peter James Fensham (1927 - ) 1. Living the Dream: Peter James Fensham, Social Justice and Science Education Section 2: Science for All 2. Science for All, Learner-centred Science 3. Making Science Matter 'Science for All': Reflections from Indonesia Section 3: Science, Technology and Society: Learning for the Modern World 4. STS Education: a Rose by any other Name 5. Peter Fensham and the Movement for Science Technology and Society (STS) Education Section 4: Gender in Science Teaching 6. Science for All? Science for Girls? Which Girls? 7. Understanding Gender Difference in Science Education: Peter Fensham's Contribution Section 5: Theory and Practice of Science Teaching 8. Fensham's Lodestar Criterion Section 6: Politics of the Science Curriculum 9. Partners or Opponents: the Role of Academic Scientists in Secondary Science Education 10. Perspectives and Possibilities in the Politics of Science Curriculum Section 7: Peter Fensham's Reform Agenda: the 'Vision Thing' 11. Visions, Research, and School Practice 12. Changing the Script for Science Teaching Section 8: Peter Fensham's Impact on Science Education in Australia and Science Education Research around the World 13. Impact of Science Education Now and in the Future 14. The Importance of Being Able to See 'the Big Picture': a Personal Appraisal of Fensham's Influence on Science Education Research and Development

Feminist Pedagogy, Interdisciplinary Praxis, and Science Education

As a theoretical and methodological practice, feminist pedagogy embraces a commitment to incorporating the voices and experiences of marginalized students into the academic discourse as well as educating all students for social justice and social change (Kenway and Modra; Maher; Rosser; Shrewsbury). At its core, feminist pedagogy is a commitment not only to the development of cooperative, multicultural, and interdisciplinary knowledge that makes learning inviting and meaningful to a diverse population but also to the development of a critical consciousness empowered to apply learning to social action and social transformation. Although the theory and practice of feminist pedagogy is an increasingly familiar concept to women's studies educators around the country, few science educators have yet to acknowledge its potential to transform the traditional conceptualizations of scientific thought that fail to investigate the role of culture in the production, dissemination, and utilization of scientific knowledge (Bleir; Harding, Forum; Shulman). This article focuses on our vision of how social, scientific, and feminist inquiry and teaching can be drawn together to create a new vision of science education. What follows reflects our experience as two feminist educators teaching a unique interdisciplinary course, Earth Systems: A Feminist Approach. Earth Systems infuses geological education with the insights of sociological inquiry and feminist pedagogy and was offered in Spring 1995 for credit through the departments of geology, sociology, and women's studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Seventeen white undergraduate students (fourteen females and three males), ranging from sophomore to senior level, enrolled for and completed the course. Twelve students were social science or humanities majors; three students were women's studies majors; two students were natural science majors. In addition, we granted permission to one female graduate student from the environmental studies program to enroll in the course. She received