Call number: LD2668 .T4 1937 S51

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International test results posed concerns about the future of science education in Canada, the UK, and the USA. Stakeholders such as Let's Talk Science and AMGEN Canada and The Royal Society, UK observed that fewer students were pursuing post-secondary studies and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields in their countries, compared to their counterparts in China, India and Singapore. These stakeholders contended that science teachers required the agency to enhance their classroom efficacy and to challenge their students to pursue post-secondary studies and careers in STEM related fields. Reform initiatives, including professional development programmes, have been established across western countries to support science teachers' agency to act as change agents. This study was based on two assumptions; first, science teachers need professional development, experiences to shape their professional identity to act as change agents in science education reform, and secondly, science teachers' professional identity may be influenced and reshaped through experiences during professional development. This research explored the influence on secondary school science teachers' professional identity by their experiences of professional development programmes. A methodological approach of hermeneutic phenomenology facilitated the understanding of science teachers' experiences, while a sociocultural theoretical framework based on Wenger's community of practice, underpinned the research. Narrative interviews, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire provided evidence from thirteen purposefully selected science teachers in one school board in Canada for this study. Interpretive phenomenological analysis of interviews and qualitative survey analysis of the questionnaire, identified cognitive development, social interactions, emotional changes, and change in beliefs and classroom practice as the science teacher's experiences of their professional development programme. Such experiences are regarded as indicators of influence on professional identity. The cognitive development, social interactions, and emotional changes experienced by the science teachers, are considered as their dimensions of experiences during learning. Although nine science teachers experienced change in their practice, two of the reported change sin their professional beliefs. It is significant that eleven science teachers did not experience a change in their beliefs, despite changes in their classroom practice. The science teachers who did not experience a change in their beliefs were confident of their existing professional identities that influenced their learning and their views regarding changes in their beliefs and practice. It appears that science teachers' prior professional identity was a determining factor in influencing and reshaping their professional identities. Nevertheless, findings from this study imply that, to some extent, science teachers' professional identity was influenced, perhaps not reshaped, by their experiences of their professional development programme. Findings fro my research have implications for science education reform-minded stakeholders and providers of in-service professional development programmes. They would be informed of research on the role of professional identity in professional learning and classroom practice in a climate of science education reform, as well as the role of prior professional identity in such initiatives.

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This dissertation explores what cooperating secondary science teachers attend to during observations of pre-service teachers as they enact lessons in their classrooms and how they make sense of what they see. This study applies the teacher noticing framework, recently used in research with mathematics, to the secondary science context and uses it to describe teacher attention. The study also aims to determine if cooperating teachers use the act of noticing to engage in pedagogical reasoning and draw connections to their own teaching practice. As an interpretive qualitative study, the format for data collection and analysis utilized a case-study methodology with cross-case analysis, and used semi-structured interviews, lesson debriefs, collected artifacts, and classroom observations. Data on the four study participants was collected over the 2011-2012 school year. Findings support several conclusions. First, the cooperating science teachers in this study regularly engaged in reflection and pedagogical reasoning through the act of noticing. Second, the cooperating teachers made regular connections to their own practice in the form of vicarious suggestions, reflective questions, comparisons of practice, and perspective shifts. These connections fostered the emergence of "pivotal moments" or times when the cooperating science teacher self-identified a desire to change their current practice. Third, cooperating teachers used observations of pre-service teachers in their classrooms as a form of professional experimentation and built knowledge in practice through the experience. Lastly, the findings suggest that observations of pre-service teachers be added to the list of professional development activities, like video analysis and lesson study, that help teachers reflect on their own practice. For science teacher educators, this study demonstrates the importance of attending to field experiences as a learning opportunity for the science cooperating teacher. It provides a new way of looking at classroom observations as professional development opportunities and it recommends that teacher preparation programs reconceptualize the tasks they ask cooperating teachers to engage in. Suggestions include designing observation tools that direct teacher noticing toward student learning in science, viewing cooperating science teachers as learners, including metacognitive activities for cooperating science teachers, and reorienting lesson debriefs toward a notion of classroom inquiry. / text

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The purpose of this study was to better understand the nature of the contribution of the mentor teacher and the methods instructor in the development of professional knowledge of pre-service teachers (PSTs) to teach elementary science. The PSTs' conceptions of teaching science were also explored to see if there were changes in their ideas about teaching science and what influenced these changes during the methods semester of a field-based elementary teacher preparation program. Specifically, this study examined the perceptions of the PSTs regarding the nature of mentorship that they received for the teaching of elementary science. Participants were 144 PSTs from five field-based elementary methods sites, their mentor teachers, and their methods instructor from a university program in a large urban area. Of interest in this study was examining the extent to which PSTs actually observed science teaching in their mentor teachers' classrooms during the methods semester. Analysis of an end-of-semester survey revealed that more than one-third of the PSTs never observed their mentor elementary teachers teach science. On an encouraging note, 62% of PSTs who observed at least some science teaching reported that they perceived their teachers as modeling inquiry science teaching strategies. Regarding the perceived quality of mentor support for learning to teach science, more than 90% of PSTs reported that they felt supported by mentor teachers in their growth of science teaching even if the mentor teachers did not incorporate science lessons into their school day. In addition, half of the PSTs' conceptions of teaching science changed over the methods semester, with the methods course and the elementary classroom as the two most influential factors.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:31:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2012-05-10Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:02:10Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 parente_agl_dr_bauru.pdf: 992361 bytes, checksum: 57fd2799bc8d3520f4e28b256e89bab6 (MD5) / No contexto de carências de práticas investigativas, da necessidade de atenção ao processo de formação inicial e continuada de professores de ciências, e considerando a orientação didático-pedagógica em que a investigação é uma perspectiva que tem sido recomendada para a melhoria do ensino de ciências, este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar sob que discurso argumentativo se constrói o processo de formação de professores ao experimentarem práticas investigativas na ocasião de reuniões para sua discussão e planejamento, estas ocorridas em um grupo de professores-estagiários, pertencentes ao Clube de Ciências da Universidade do Pará com a participação da pesquisadora, e de suas aulas com uma turma de estudantes do sexto e sétimo anos, oriundos de escolas públicas de Belém, ocorridas com a presença da pesquisadora, no sentido de procurar indicar diferentes aspectos de seu desenvolvimento e condução em um contexto de ensino e de formação. Para isto, propusemos um modelo para análise de práticas investigativas, construído face às diferentes propostas de investigação existentes. Os resultados mostraram que as práticas investigativas não são somente uma atitude a ser desenvolvida no estudante. Essas trazem evidências de novos domínios para a formação do professor que articulam o contexto teórico, metodológico e epistemológico. Antes e simultaneamente a investigação é uma condição de formação e trabalho do professor, mediado por práticas cuja finalidade esteja imbuída do espírito de busca / In the context of lack of investigatve practices, the necessity of attention to the process of initial and continued formation of science teachers, and considering the didactic-pedagogical orientation in which the investigation is a perspective that has been recommended for the improvement of the teaching of sciences, this work aims at analyzing the argumentative discourse in which is based on the process of teachers formation, in particular, when they experience the investigate practices during meetings organized for discussion and planning. The meeting were constituted by the professor research, a group of teachers in conditions of trainees from the Federal University of Para Science Club. The trainees applied the procedures discussed during the meetings in classes of students in the sixth and seventh grade, from public schools in Belém city, which ocurred under the supervision of the professor researcher, in seeking to indicate different aspects of their development and conduct in a real context of education and formation. In this work was proposed a model for analysis of investigate practices built in face of various existing proposals. The results demonstrated that the investigative practices are not only an attitude to be developed in the students; they bring evidence of new areas for teacher education that articulates the theoretical, methodological and epistemological framework

A phenomenological inquiry of five place-aware biology teachers was conducted to determine how teachers’ lived experiences in place influence their pedagogy, if at all. High school biology teachers from one public and private school in Victoria, British Columbia were recruited through volunteer sampling. Through in-depth interviews, journal writings and artefacts representative of lived experiences of place, teachers were invited to share their lived experience narratives of places of meaning and teaching experiences of place. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment phenomenology, a case-by-case thematic analysis was first conducted per informant, followed by analyses of commonalities across informants as appropriate. It was found that teachers shared similar experiences in different places of meaning: a sense of mystery that there is always something to be revealed, an experience of the vastness and complexity of places, a sense of care for nature as the Other and a feeling of fondness for places as shared through close family and community members. However, the degree and manner in which such experiences transferred into teachers’ pedagogies differed, as some teachers demonstrated a stronger intentionality of place-consciousness than others. The study highlights the humanness of teachers and the unique styles that individual teachers bring into their practices. I suggest that the complex and multidimensional notion of places as revealed through the study opens possibilities for holistic approaches in science education, with a focus on embodied, caring consciousness for the places that we inhabit. / Graduate