Leadership and Professional Development in Science Education

New Possibilities for Enhancing Teacher Learning

John Wallace, John Loughran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134399949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Leadership and Professional Development in Science Education provides invaluable insight into the role of science teachers as learners and thinkers of change processes. The fourteen chapters, by an eminent international team of science educators, explain and explore the relationship between professional development, teacher leadership and teacher learning. Research-based practical and theoretical exemplars reflect state of the art science teacher leadership in a broad range of international contexts.The book is divided into three parts, reflecting a multi-layered approach to teacher learning: * Personal initiatives in teacher learning, focusing on individual teachers;
* Collegial initiatives in teacher learning, focusing on groups of teachers;
* Systemic initiatives for teacher learning, focusing on system-wide issues.Student teachers and practising teachers will find the text highly valuable as they consider and review the challenges of teaching practice and ways of working with colleagues, while school leaders and policymakers will benefit from the book's insight into system-wide issues of professional development.

Part I

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Personal initiatives in teacher learning

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Chapter 1

Changing the balance of a science teacher's belief system

Garry F. Hoban

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Background

The aim of this chapter is to describe how a novice science teacher changed the balance of his belief system while participating in a two-year professional learning project. A unique feature of the project was that teachers listened to taped interviews of their own students talking about their learning in science (and in other subjects). The project brought about real change as shown in the detailed story of this novice teacher. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the difficulties of changing a teacher's belief system and what that might mean more generally for teacher change.

Introduction

There are many considerations when thinking about how to teach high school science – the subject matter, personal style, type of children, the curriculum, external examinations, existing policies of the school or district, resources, school context, parental expectations and school structure. These influences, however, are not independent, rather, they are interrelated with each one affecting the others. Also, there is often a social pressure on teachers to conform to the way that colleagues organize their instruction. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for teachers to fall back on their own experiences as high school students and teach in the way they were taught. Lortie (1975) calls this the ‘apprenticeship of observation’. Because of these many influences, teachers often develop a pattern of instruction that is difficult to change in spite of professional development (Day, 1999; Grossman, 1991).

A teacher's pedagogy, therefore, is underpinned by different types of teacher knowledge. For instance, Elbaz (1983) highlighted five categories of practical knowledge:

1 knowledge of self;

2 knowledge of the milieu of teaching;

3 knowledge of subject matter;

4 knowledge of curriculum development; and

5 knowledge of instruction.

Barnes (1992) suggested that Elbaz should also include, ‘knowledge of students and student learning’ and identified five interrelated beliefs for influencing how secondary teachers develop their practice:

1 the nature of personal commitment to teaching;

2 beliefs about subject matter;

3 beliefs about student learning;

4 beliefs about the role of students; and

5 beliefs about priorities and constraints inherent in the professional and institutional context.

Therefore it can be argued that how a teacher thinks about his/her practice is underpinned by a combination or system of beliefs that guides classroom instruction.

However, the influence of these beliefs is not always equal. If one of these beliefs is held more strongly than others, it will drive the type of instruction in classrooms, with other beliefs having less influence. For instance, the notion that science teaching is ‘transmissive’ (Barnes, 1992) or teacher-centered means that the prime belief driving the organization of pedagogy concerns the delivery of subject matter. A teacher with such a mindset may plan lessons based on a sequence of content while beliefs about how students learn or the resources needed become a secondary concern. This approach is common among secondary science teachers because their pedagogy is often dominated by a prescriptive curriculum that puts pressure on them to cover a large amount of specific content. Alternatively, teaching which is described as ‘student-centered’ may primarily focus on how students learn, thus taking into consideration students' prior knowledge or the structuring of social interactions with peers and the teacher. Covering subject matter is still a consideration in student-centered lessons, but it is not as dominant as in a teacher-centered approach. Although the terms ‘teacher-centered’ and ‘student-centered’ present a dichotomy, they are useful for representing how some teachers think about their practice and how some beliefs are more dominant than others, resulting in a different type of instruction. However, it is only one way of representing the situation.

Thinking about teaching as a set of interacting beliefs explains why teacher change is such a difficult process (Fullan and Stiegelbauer, 1991; Hoban, 2000), because, over a period of years, a teacher's pedagogy often develops into a pattern or system with some beliefs being more dominant than others. Teacher change, therefore, will rarely be an instantaneous action. Instead, changing teaching means altering the balance or equilibrium between different beliefs and it requires considerable time to develop a new balance. For this reason, one-off professional development workshops rarely promote change – they have little influence on shifting teachers' beliefs and, in some cases, reinforce existing practices. Sachs and Logan (1990) claim that brief in-service courses do not encourage teachers to be reflective or empower them to control their own learning:

Rather than initiating programmes that are intellectually challenging and rigorous, in-service education, with some exceptions, has reproduced current practice by catering for teachers' preoccupation with ‘practicality’ and ‘relevance.’ One consequence is that teachers' professional knowledge is being controlled, devalued and deskilled.

(1990, p. 497)

Therefore, changing the balance of a teacher's belief system requires: a long-term effort with teachers taking responsibility for their own learning; being reflective; believing that teaching is a lifelong endeavor; and, working collaboratively to help other teachers to learn about their practice (Hoban, 2002). Furthermore, a catalyst for change is needed which Huberman (1995) called ‘conceptual inputs’ to provide a different perspective on how teachers frame their beliefs. This can be in the form of reading research articles (Bell and Gilbert, 1994), conducting teacher research (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999) or listening to the ideas from other teachers when they work as a community (Baird and Northfield, 1992; Grossman and Wineburg, 2000).

Context of the professional learning project

Participants and procedure

At the end of 1994, I approached three science teachers at a small high school to invite them to participate in a long-term professional learning project. The three male teachers constituted the entire science department at the school. At the beginning of the study, David (pseudonyms are used for all participants) was in his first year of teaching, Craig was in his fifth year of teaching and Geoff (head of department) had taught for fourteen years. The focus of the project was to encourage teachers to reflect on their practice after listening to recorded student interviews in which the students commented on effective teaching and learning across different subjects in the school (Hoban, 1996). The teachers listened to the tapes in monthly meetings after school during 1995 and 1996. Most of the meetings went on for 60–90 minutes during which time the teachers stopped the audiotape at will and discussed implications for their own practice.

I had three main roles in the professional learning project. One was to interview the students, categorize the data and re-record sections of the interviews onto ‘thematic audiotapes’ for the teachers to listen to during their meetings. Another role was to interview the teachers to ascertain how they framed their beliefs and to explore how this framing was or was not influenced by listening to the tapes. During the two-year study, the teachers were interviewed four times individually and five times as a group. In addition, the teachers completed two surveys about their beliefs. In this study, the concept of ‘frame’ refers to the ‘underlying assumptions that influence teachers’ actions' (Barnes, 1992, p. 10). A change in how the teachers framed their practice was an indicator that reflection had occurred (Schön, 1983, 1987).

My third role was to assist the teachers to change their teaching in any area that they selected as a result of the professional learning project. This was a particularly important aspect as each teacher needed to show leadership in determining the focus of their own professional learning rather than having me set the agenda.

At the beginning of the study, ten students were interviewed from each teacher's Year 9 science class using a standardized open-ended interview (Patton, 1990). This interview consisted of six main questions but with flexibility to probe students to explain their responses (see the Appendix for the interview schedule). In all, thirty students were interviewed. They were asked to describe their interests and then answer several questions about their perceptions of teaching and learning across different subjects in the school.

I then collated the data by re-recording responses onto sixteen separate audiotapes that provided eight hours of student comments focusing on different themes related to teaching and learning across different subjects. Four of the tapes related to personal influences on learning (e.g. prior knowledge, responsibility, reflection, interest), seven related to teaching or social influences on learning (e.g. relationships, modeling, expectations, practice, trial and error, feedback and discussion) and five tapes related to subject specific data (e.g. science practicals or labs, writing, reading, best science teaching, and best subjects for learning). For example, the tape on prior knowledge had anecdotes from twelve students describing how knowledge from previous learning experiences helped them to understand particular concepts in science and other subjects. The teachers listened to these tapes in monthly professional development meetings and sometimes this discussion would lead to ideas to try out in their own practice (Hoban, 2000).

The next section will focus on how the belief system of one of the teachers, David, changed during the project.

Beliefs underpinning David's teaching

At the beginning of the project in 1994, David was 23 years old and completing his first year as a secondary science teacher. His professional qualifications included a Bachelor of Applied Science degree and a twelve-month Postgraduate Diploma of Education completed after his science degree. His duties at school focused on the teaching of general science to Years 7–9, Year 11 Science for Life and Year 12 Biology. In addition, David was also the Year 7 patron, providing pastoral care to students in their first year of high school. His teaching-related interests included reading about research concerning platypuses, bush walking, and reading about experiments in journals published by the New South Wales and Australian Science Teachers' Associations. His expectations for his involvement in the professional learning project were ‘to gain a better understanding of the ways in which students at the school learn best; to gain a better understanding of my own beliefs about teaching; and to improve my teaching’ (Survey 1, Dec. 1994, Qu. 11). He described his teaching as ‘fairly structured’ because he wanted students to get something concrete out of every lesson:

I think I have a fairly structured style as I said earlier. I hope the kids get something, at least one thing concrete out of each lesson, I am fairly straight down the line. I don't like a lot of, for example, movement in the classroom and things like that. A kid moving around unnecessarily when doing theory or something like that, I have difficulty with that, basically things like that, fairly structured, fairly straightforward would be the word.

(Int. 1, Dec. 1994, TU 27)

In the following sections I will use the five categories identified by Barnes (1992) to show the change in David's beliefs during the professional learning project.

David's beliefs about commitment to teaching

David has always been committed to his teaching. In his first year he not only taught his science classes but also volunteered to be a year patron – an unusual role for a first year teacher. In our second interview in December 1994, he described himself as ‘enthusiastic’ and was disappointed by other teachers who were not prepared to do extra work to change. In May 1995, he stated that his involvement in the professional learning project was providing him with more satisfaction from his teaching than he had previously experienced and he believed that his students were learning more than before. Comments in an interview at the end of 1996 indicated

Table 1.1 David's beliefs about commitment to teaching

December 1994	May 1995	June 1996
I am enthusiastic, I am keen, I like trying different things, experimenting around. You notice that on staff development days, there would be a couple of us who are really keen and saying, ‘That might work quite well, we will have to modify it here and there but in general, great.’ And from others you hear, ‘Oh, we can't be bothered with that, it is more work you know.’ (Int. 2, Dec. 1994, TU 76)	If I'm getting more satisfaction out of what I'm doing now, and the kids are learning more, why would you go back, do you know what I mean? I think, to me, teaching is all about me feeling that I'm doing a good job. And if I feel I'm doing a good job, I feel much happier, I'm a much happier person. (Int. 3, May 1995, TU 317)	I think in a way we might be reaching a point that from my personal view, where I am up to, where I need something, a new section or a new something to concentrate on, to work towards. I am thinking we might go back and resurvey the kids and look at change. (Group Discussion, June 1996)

that his enthusiasm about the professional learning project had not waned, and he was looking for a new stimulus, ‘to concentrate on, to work towards.’ Data collected at different times during the study that relate to David's commitment to teaching are shown in Table 1.1.

David's beliefs about subject matter

At the beginning of the project in December 1994, David described himself as a ‘structured’ teacher and his role was to provide students with science knowledge for future use in their schooling to ‘give the kids what they really need to know’ (Survey 1, December 1994, underlining in original). His beliefs about subject matter dominated his teaching because he organized his lessons according to a sequence of knowledge such that he ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: learning about teacher learning: reflections of a science educator
• PART I Personal initiatives in teacher learning
• PART II Collegial initiatives in teacher learning
• PART III Systemic initiatives for teacher learning
• Notes on contributors
• Index