Tensions between Values and Practices in Learning to Teach Elementary Science
Shinho Jang, Gail Richmond, and Charles W. Anderson
Michigan State University
Presented as part of the Paper Set: A Longitudinal Study of Science Teacher Preparation at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Philadelphia, March 23-6, 2003
Introduction
Elementary teacher candidates often perceive science teaching as a daunting and difficult task. The candidates want to help young students learn science meaningfully as well as making science classroom fun and interesting. Excellent teachers can develop strategies to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously. Teacher candidates, however, have fewer resources—less extensive understanding of science content and students, and fewer good ideas about classroom activities—than they need to fully accomplish their goals. This paper investigates how four elementary teacher candidates pursued these goals as they engaged in two problems of teaching practice: understanding and teaching science content, and understanding students.
Background
Current science education reforms have emphasized the importance of preparing better science teachers by developing their content-specific subject matter knowledge and effective teaching strategies (Kahle, Meece, & Scantlebury, 2000; Kennedy, 1998; Lawrenz & Huffman, 2002; National Research Council (NRC), 1996; 2000; Rodriguez, 1997). In the National Science Education Standards, a vision is presented for the development of professional knowledge and skills among science teachers, focusing on “the learning of science content, the integration of knowledge about science with knowledge about learning, pedagogy, and students (p 4)” (NRC, 1996).
However, it has been widely recognized that the development of appropriate knowledge and better practice in science teaching is a challenging task for teacher educators as well as prospective teachers. A growing body of research on teacher candidates’ efforts to learn to teach points out that new teachers’ practice tends to be more uncertain, but has not radically changed from traditional practices (Borko & Putnam, 1994; Trumbull, 1999). These findings lead us to wonder what makes these efforts so difficult and complicated, and why these difficulties occur. Proposing answers and solving the problem is not a simple task, yet it is essential in order to explore the reasons and the nature of the complexity in science teacher learning and teaching.
Researchers have investigated the ways in which teacher knowledge and practice are related to and influenced by their core values and concerns. The relationship has been discussed in various ways. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) argue that practical knowledge can be meaningfully constructed based on actual teaching practice. Knowledge developed in this way can be used for future teaching contexts and experiences. At the same time, practical knowledge requires purposeful learning on the teacher’s part.
Practical knowledge developed in teacher practice is different from university-based, canonical knowledge. van Driel, Beijaard, and Verloop (2001) describe practical knowledge as action-oriented, person- and context-bound, tacit, integrated, and beliefs based. Practical knowledge is more dynamic because it stems from teachers’ personal experience, specific teaching context in particular content specific situations, and from actual practice and actions, rather than being based on predetermined, codified, and passive knowledge
With practical knowledge, values and concerns are crucially influencing factors, as Helms (1998) suggests. She argues that individual teacher’s values and concerns play significant roles in constructing teacher identity by being intimately connected to and co-influenced by each other. In this study we hope to improve our understanding of how teacher candidates’ values and concerns actually affect their development of practical knowledge and teaching practice.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this paper is to examine a tension that four elementary candidates experienced as they engaged in two problems of teaching practice: understanding and teaching science content, and understanding students. The research questions addressed are as follows:
1. What patterns were apparent in the practices of four elementary teacher candidates as they engaged two problems of practice: understanding and teaching science content, and understanding students?
2. What were the factors and limiting resources that influenced their approaches to teaching practice?
Method
A qualitative ethnographic methodology is used in this study (Spindler & Spindler, 1992). In this paper we investigate our research questions through extensive case studies of four elementary teacher candidates. Our data sources and methods of analysis are described below.
Setting
Four elementary candidates were in a summer section of TE 402 (elementary science methods course) prior to beginning their intern years in Michigan State University’s teacher preparation program. They volunteered to participate in our study exploring their knowledge and practice. All of the four candidates entered the program after completing their bachelor’s degrees at MSU or other institutions.
The first author (Jang) was the instructor of the course as well as a participant observer. Jang observed four teacher candidates both in the on-campus classes and in their school placements during their lead teaching periods.
Background of the Four Elementary Candidates
Amy received her B.A. in Outdoor and Environmental Recreation with a minor in Biology. She worked as a State Park Naturalist and took a yearlong internship at an outdoor science school in the Rocky Mountains. She loves nature and science. Amy taught the animal categories of “carnivore”, “herbivore”, and “omnivore” in fourth grade classroom.
Ken got his undergraduate degree in Elementary Education. He took some science content classes such as chemistry and physics in his first two years of the college, but he did not enjoy leaning chemistry and physics. He had hoped to have more laboratory experiences. Nevertheless, he was confident with his science content knowledge and believed that science had been always an easy subject for him. Ken taught a first grade “Habitats” unit.
Steve entered college as pre-medicine major and took many courses in general chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and biology. He also had two years of laboratory experience in the Medical Center at the University of Michigan. He taught second grade a Life Cycle unit.
Leigh had an undergraduate degree in Botany and Plant Pathology. She worked at the Plant Research Lab helping with a research project for more than 12 years. Her reason for becoming a teacher was “because I want to learn more.” She was very confident about her science knowledge in most subject areas, like biology, physics, and chemistry. She taught a Density unit in the fifth grade in her senior year and a Molecular Movement unit in sixth grade in her internship year.
Data sources
We used the following data sources in constructing our case studies:
1. Interviews about teaching. We interviewed four elementary teacher candidates after their science lead teaching. The questions were about their core values and concerns, and their knowledge and practice of science content, assessment of students, and teaching strategy based on what the candidates taught. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed and analyzed.
2. Observation of classroom teaching. We observed candidates’ during their lead teaching. Observation notes were made while the candidates were participating in classroom activities to describe the candidates’ teaching actions and lesson activities in time sequence.
3. Plans and reports on teaching. All candidates submitted their plans for their science lead teaching and wrote reports on the lessons that they taught in their field placements. These reports included lesson objectives, particular teaching activities, evaluation of student learning, and their reflections on what happened when they taught the lessons and how they would do evaluate their own science teaching.
4. Guidedjournals. All candidates wrote journals during lead teaching. They included their reflections on their science teaching as well as their concerns and problems as they occurred. Sometimes they were asked to include their response on some questions, for example, such as what difficulties they had in science lead teaching.
5. Autobiographies. All candidates wrote autobiographies about how they learned from past science experience and feel about those K-12 experiences, how they perceive science and science teaching, and what made them decide to be a elementary teacher.
Data analysis
Data analysis included transcription of all interviews. All field notes and their artifacts were reviewed. Analysis of data was carried out concurrently with the data collection. We also developed a theoretical framework to characterize their core values/concerns, knowledge and teaching practice.
Results
In this section we briefly discuss the values and concerns expressed by all four of the candidates, then look in more detail at how the candidates enacted their values as they addressed two basic problems of practice in their teaching: Understanding and teaching science content, and understanding and assessing students.
Core values and concerns
The candidates brought with them to their teaching values and concerns that they had formed through many experiences in their lives and their educations. All the candidates wanted to make science fun and interesting for their students. All the candidates also wanted to help their students learn science content. They differed, though, in their interpretations of the meanings of these goals and in their understanding of the relationship between the two goals.
All the candidates believed that making science classes fun was important, especially in the early grades. In order to make the classroom fun and interesting, they frequently tried to find appropriate activities to motivate young students. They focused on providing students with engaging hands-on activities, introducing good stories with beautiful illustrations, and showing exciting and fantastic demonstrations with which could make the students excited and motivated. The following quotes from Leigh and Amy are typical expressions of this concern.
Leigh: Motivation … that’s something I think about a lot, and that’s, I have a long way to go. I’d really like to learn a lot more about that. How can you get this kid that’s just really bored, and, I don’t want to do this, I’m bored, this is boring, things like that, that’s a little bit different, you know (Interview, 07/08/2002).
Amy: I found that many of the students have negative associations with science, or really don’t know much about it. I have worked hard to prepare a lesson that is both fun and engaging, that will help them to practice classification (a science benchmark) and other important concepts. I’d like to think that my excitement about science will rub off on the students and hopefully they’ll realize that maybe they could like science after all (Journal, 05/26/2002).
Amy’s comment suggests an underlying concern that often worried the candidates—that the content they were teaching was itself boring. In this case, the challenge of helping students learn required content while they were having fun would be especially difficult. Nevertheless, all of the candidates expressed their commitment to helping students master important science content in addition to making the classroom fun. Thus, they all hoped to ensure that students learned certain things from the particular activities.
Steve: I want to make sure that I’m not just playing games or doing fun experiments without getting the points across that they’re trying to discover through the experiments like the laws or whatever… But I can conclude I think somewhat strongly that they were able to understand the content that was taught in the presentation of the lesson (Interview, 07/19/2002).
Leigh: Another concern is that our lesson will be too difficult for the kids and they won’t be able to understand the concepts we would like to teach them (Journal, 05/24/2002).
Thus all four candidates expressed their commitment to two goals: making science class interesting and helping students learn science content. Underneath this dual commitment was a fundamental question: Was the content they were obligated to teach interesting to students? If the answer to this question were “yes,” then their problem in teaching was one of helping students to discover the intrinsic interest of the content. If the answer were “no,” then they had to make choices between two goals that were inherently in conflict.
The candidates did not all answer this question in the same way. The differences among their answers depended on part on how they understood the science content that they taught. Their differing views on science content are discussed in the next section.
Understanding and teaching science content
The four elementary candidates made different choices about goals and teaching practices in teaching science content. For each of them the choices were reasonable given their understanding of science. However, these reasonable choices led to different approaches to reconciling their desire to make science interesting with their desire to help students understand science.
Amy and Ken emphasized hands-on experiences as central to scientific understanding. They wanted the students to experience and be amazed by how natural world works, for example, by going outside to watch birds, collecting fallen leaves, seeing the life cycle of a butterfly, and playing with simple machines. They often relied on games, demonstrations, and interesting activities.
Amy: They should get a hands-on idea because they’re in the game, they’re really experiencing it, how much food a black bear would need to eat, what exactly the black bear eats, um, it seemed like by the end of the game, even though I didn’t see kids going, oh wow! I didn’t know they ate all of that, it was just like, oh yeah, they eat insects and berries, you know, and it was like they seemed empowered with that information, and I think it stuck a lot better through this kind of activity than just giving them the information. (Interview, 06/21/2002)
Excerpts from their lesson plans also show their emphasis on interesting activities and hands-on experiences:
Amy: This (lesson) will be accomplished through student involvement with a hands-on activity in which they pretend they are black bears in a forest gathering food (Lesson plan, 06/10/02).
Ken: The purpose of this lesson is to let the students explore river water for organisms. Once the students find the organisms they will draw and identify them. … The students will be given spoons to scoop out insects from the water. They will then draw them on their paper and give them their own names (Lesson plan, 05/24/02).
However, they each had different reasons for preferring activity-oriented teaching. As her interview quote above indicates, Amy tried to make connect the classroom activities to specific goals for student learning. She wanted to provide students with rich experiences that would ultimately work as basis for conceptual understanding and grasping the nature of the material world.
Ken was much vaguer than Amy about what students would learn from their experiences. For Ken, the hands-on activities were used to guide the students to independently explore the natural world and discover important and meaningful patterns on their own.
Ken: I believe that science can almost teach itself to students as long as it is set up properly for the students to discover and explore. That is how I learn best and how a lot of children learn best. … I see my role as a teacher as I do a guide on some tour in a museum or in a park. I cannot simply stand in front of people and lecture them. … The role of the teacher is to set up situations where students can learn best and then get out of the way (Autobiography, 05/23/2002).
Amy and Ken differed in their teaching practices as well as the purposes they gave for science teaching. Amy looked for the most effective way of helping students understand science concepts. “It’s kind of an abstract idea. That’s why I like this activity, because if you just talk about limiting factors, it’s hard to really visualize and understand what they mean (Interview, 06/21/2002).” She thought that games and activities would be most useful to engage the students in difficult concepts involved classroom. Amy used games and simulations to reduce the degree of difficulty in getting the scientific concepts.
Ken often let the students find answers rather than himself providing and supplying the facts. He sometimes justified his approach using the rhetoric of constructivist learning or discovery learning, advocating that students should explore the natural world following their own interests and discover patterns of how the world works during their explorations.
Ken: I want to be a guiding post... I want to push the kids along. I don’t want to say E=MC2 because I want to be the kind of person that says, this may be the answer, but why? And you explain it back to me, and I can help you along with that, and I’ll set up lessons so you can build and construct your way up to that. But, just shoveling answers at kids isn’t going to do them any good at all, even if they can remember it for a week or two, if even then (Interview, 06/26/2002).