MasterClass in Science Education

Transforming Teaching and Learning

Keith S. Taber

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781474289443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology

Worried about teaching natural selection, submicroscopic particle models or circuits? Keith S. Taber explores a range of issues faced in secondary science teaching and discusses strategies for teaching the nature of scientific knowledge, making practical work effective and challenging gifted young scientists. MasterClass in Science Education shows how to become a master science teacher by developing and adopting the habits and mind-set of a teacher-as-scientist. The author introduces the three pillars of this approach: subject knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, and classroom research. The body of subject knowledge in the sciences is both vast and constantly evolving as it is challenged, updated and developed, and this text supports you to understand the dynamic nature of knowledge and the implications this has for your teaching. Taber shows how to use a knowledge-in-action approach, enacting knowledge in the complex and dynamic classroom environment. He supports you to critically examine classroom experiences, drawing on a wide-range of research-informed perspectives that offer insights into facilitating effective student learning. He also guides you to understand how to use recommendations from published research studies as components of a toolkit to improve your teaching and learning.

Part I

Introduction

1

Enquiring into Science Teaching

Chapter outline

Teaching science, or teaching a science?

Every teacher of science is a learner of science

Every teacher of a science is a science teacher

The teacher as an evidence-based practitioner

Developing as a leader in science teaching

Suggested further reading

This book in the MasterClass series is designed to support teachers of school science subjects who wish to develop their professional skills and standards. This introductory chapter introduces the approach taken in the book and the philosophy informing that approach – the notion of the ‘fully professional science teacher’. First though, I briefly explore a potential tension that may be felt in science teaching between being a teacher of ‘science’ and a teacher of ‘a science’ subject.

Teaching science, or teaching a science?

In preparing this book, I have assumed that the readership will in broad terms be science teachers (or those preparing to be science teachers). However, it is recognised that for some readers there may be a tension between being a ‘science teacher’ and being, for example, a biology teacher. Other teachers may not recognise this tension, either considering themselves to simply be a ‘science teacher’ or accepting they can be both a science teacher and a biology teacher (or chemistry teacher, or physics teacher etc.) without this being problematic in any way.

More broadly, some secondary teachers (like many primary teachers) see themselves as a teacher first, and see the subject(s) they happen to teach as less critical to their professional identity. There is the story of the conversation at a dinner party which included the following exchange:

‘I understand you are a teacher – what do you teach?’

‘Children.’

Yet many science teachers consider themselves primarily as scientists who have entered teaching and may even think of themselves as having more in common professionally with other (non-teaching) scientists than teachers of other subjects (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Two ways of conceptualising nested identities – as a category of scientist or as a category of teacher.

Identity may be complex and nuanced, and there is nothing wrong with being, say, ‘a teacher’, ‘a secondary teacher’, ‘a chemist’, ‘a scientist’, ‘a science teacher’ and ‘a chemistry teacher’ – with these different emphases coming into focus at different moments. So the reader may be a teacher of secondary-age children, and of science and of (say) physics, without any contradiction (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 A way of conceptualising science teacher identity as both scientist and teacher.

Some readers will be largely teaching within a science specialism, and perhaps in some school contexts mainly working with students at the high-grade levels of the school system. Others will teach an undifferentiated curriculum subject that is labelled as ‘science’. Many others will shift between subject labels within their timetable according to the particular group they are teaching at a particular moment. Teachers will also differ considerably in terms of both the extent to which they feel their preparation for teaching was focused within a specific science subject and in the extent to which they feel their own academic background supports teaching across the wider science curriculum.

In the English system (where the author of this volume has worked in schools, further education and initial teacher education), teaching candidates may enter graduate training courses for science teaching with a wide range of degree backgrounds such as geology, genetics, astrophysics, psychology, industrial chemistry and electrical engineering. A candidate should hold a degree where at least half the material studied is relevant to the school curriculum subject. This was easily met by such a range of graduates from different science disciplines – but, of course, having a degree which is mostly relevant to what is taught in school science is not the same as having a degree which is relevant to most of what is taught in school science (see Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 Schematic suggesting that even when science degrees are mostly linked to school curriculum topics, they may offer limited coverage of the school science curriculum.

There is generally an issue then that teachers’ own subject knowledge, even when very advanced, is unlikely to be a perfect match for the range of topics they may be expected to teach. That is often true even if someone is only teaching (or intending to teach) biology or chemistry or physics. The graduate in marine biology or biochemistry or chemical engineering or astrophysics will find their degree-level preparation does not cover all of the topics taught within a school science subject.

In some other national contexts, it is commoner for teachers to focus on one teaching subject (chemistry, say) and to enter undergraduate degree courses designed to prepare them for teaching just that particular specialism. There can be a much greater fit between degree- level education and later teaching practice in such a system. However, sciences do not remain static: so even in this situation the teacher will find new curriculum topics introduced which they may feel are outside their area of expertise. I recall changes in teaching schemes during my own time teaching in schools that introduced some topics which I had never studied during my own school or university education.

I was also asked to teach courses with content outside my own background. For example, on moving to a new school where I was to teach physics and chemistry, I was asked if I could take on the ‘physical environment’ section of an environmental science course that some senior students in the school chose as one of their (A level) options. I was receptive to the idea, and it was sold to me on the basis that this part of the syllabus was really chemistry and physics. It transpired that although the material I was to teach was underpinned by physics and chemistry, it included a lot of earth science I had never studied myself. As a teacher there are three attitudes one can take in responding to such challenges:

1. I am a specialist, with specialist knowledge, and that is what I teach.

2. The school knows what my background is, and if they timetable me to teach anything else, it is their responsibility to prepare me properly for teaching new subject matter.

3. I am a scientist, and a qualified teacher, and I should be able to develop both subject knowledge (what I need to teach) and specialist pedagogic knowledge (how to effectively teach particular subject matter) from within any area of science.

Only the last approach seems appropriate for a professional science teacher. That is not to say that schools should ignore teacher specialisms (or indeed preferences) and assign teaching without negotiation in order to fill gaps in timetabling. Yet as teachers we should value learning and personal development: none of us would be very impressed with students in our classes who claimed they enjoyed learning about acids (or plants or magnetism) but had no intention of making any effort to learn about rates of reaction (or food webs or optics) as that was not something they were interested in – not ‘their topic’.

Every teacher of science is a learner of science

An assumption underpinning this book then is that although science teachers, or teachers of specific science subjects, should be well prepared in terms of subject knowledge, it can never be assumed that just because someone is a graduate or a qualified science teacher they know enough science to support all the curriculum topics they will be expected to teach. Becoming a ‘master’ teacher will involve continuing to learn science throughout a teaching career – whether this means topics outside a specialist background, completely new areas of science or the latest applications and theoretical developments in areas of strength.

Without wishing to unduly alarm or insult readers, I would also suggest that readers of this book will also have got some of the science they think they understand wrong. Perhaps there are some exceptions among the discerning readers selecting to pick up this volume … but I actually suspect not. That (perhaps seemingly arrogant or condescending) claim is based on both personal experience and a wealth of research in science education. As a teacher in schools and further education I found even the most committed and capable students sometimes misunderstood concepts they were being taught. I also sometimes found some of my teaching colleagues got things wrong – including things they had been confidently teaching for years. I am sure that I was no exception to this general rule – although of course it is easier to spot flaws in another’s knowledge than our own. I have interviewed graduates with excellent degree results from prestigious universities applying for teacher preparation who have demonstrated errors in their understanding of basic concepts – sometimes in topics they have specially prepared to present at interview. On one occasion I remember one candidate with a master’s degree telling a colleague on the interview panel that she, the applicant, was right and that the interviewer (a very experienced teacher and teacher educator, and a fellow of both a Cambridge college and the Institute of Physics) had got her physics wrong. The applicant misunderstood her physics, but was convinced that her incorrect understanding was the accepted science.

Confidence is generally something positive in classroom teaching, but there is a balance to be reached between being confident in what we know and accepting that we cannot know everything about our subject, and that being human we can also be wrong sometimes. Talking to graduates on teacher preparation courses, or reading their work, or observing them teaching also reveals such problems. Teacher subject knowledge is generally flawed (see Chapter 4), that is, not perfect. When we think about why that could be, it becomes obvious this is almost inevitably going to be the case. Beyond personal experience, the research literature suggests that in just about any topic one might select, learners commonly demonstrate misunderstandings of science concepts (Taber, 2014). This is discussed further in Chapter 6.

Given the nature of human learning, and the nature of scientific concepts, intended learning is something often achieved only with considerable effort by students, and great skill on the part of the teacher. Students generally come out of science learning having misinterpreted and misunderstood some (and in some cases, a good deal) of what they were expected to learn (Driver, 1983). That even applies to some extent to those who go on to teach the subject. Indeed it may be that in some especially tricky science topics, misunderstandings of teachers are being effectively taught to students, some of whom will go on to become teachers and teach the flawed ideas themselves (Taber & Tan, 2011).

It is important not to be alarmist or overly pessimistic here. Of course, students do often develop strong knowledge in some topics. However, this issue of flawed subject knowledge is one key theme of this book because common sense might suggest to us that when students are taught topics, they will learn what they are taught to some extent. That is, the expected likely outcome of studying will be a point somewhere on a dimension between ignorance of the topic (knowing nothing) and correctly learning all the material (see Figure 1.4). Perhaps we might conclude from an assessment a student has learnt 65 per cent of the topic material and still has to learn 35 per cent.

Figure 1.4 Representation of a naive notion of the task of the teacher.

Yet that common-sense view is not reflected in practice. Student knowledge is not just either (somewhat) present or (largely) absent – but is very often somewhat different to what is being taught (see Figure 1.5). Ignorance, what might be considered as a gap in expected knowledge, is relatively easy to identify and respond to. Knowledge that only partially matches the canonical account, and which can differ from it in a wide range of ways, and to various degrees, is a much greater challenge for the teacher – in terms both of ‘diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’. The same problem exists, even if to a much lesser extent, regarding the imperfections in teacher knowledge, which are often likely to be more extensive when one is teaching outside a main science specialism.

Figure 1.5 A representation of a more realistic notion of the task of the teacher.

Every teacher of a science is a science teacher

This book is then addressed to teachers of science, including teachers who primarily identify with particular science subjects. Every science topic has its own challenges for teachers: particular challenges that are specific to that topic. Later chapters give some examples of this. Chapters 11–13 highlight rather different challenges relating to three particular school science topics, whilst raising issues that will be met by all science teachers.

Moreover, there are particular issues that tend to occur across topics within the particular science subjects. An example might be the application of mathematics. This can be an issue in all sciences, but may be a particular problem for some students in physics, as in the higher grades most topics involve what appears to many students...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Perspectives on Science Teaching
• Part III: Issues in Teaching Science Subjects
• References
• Index
• Imprint