Teacher Education: Addressing Misconceptions About Science and Science Teaching
Prospective teachers often harbor preconceptions about science teaching and these beliefs shape the way they engage children in science lessons in elementary classrooms (Abell, Bryan, & Andersen, 1998; Abell, & Bryan, 1997; Munby & Russell, 1992). As with children and their preconceptions about science (Driver, 1989; Osborne & Freyberg, 1985), it becomes essential when working with novice science teachers to confront naïve conceptions of science and assist them in recognizing children's ideas and re-examining their own personal beliefs. Research has shown that prospective teachers' personal histories with learning science (both positive and negative) have a great influence on how they teach science to children (Anning, 1988; VanZee and Roberts, 2001).
Traditional approaches in teacher education do little to elicit and address the misconceptions of students, whether at the elementary or university level, and may even encourage teachers to gloss over scientific conceptual development (Lave, 1990; Solomon, 1989). In contrast, a teacher education program that guides teachers to encourage elementary students to tell stories about their ideas accomplishes several things: It gives teachers insights into what their students actually know, frees teachers to address misconceptions directly, and encourages teachers to envision alternative pedagogical options (Roth, 1994). It also guides teachers toward inquiry-based science and away from lessons that simply disseminate scientific facts (Gallas, 1995; Shapiro, 1994; Bryan & Abell, 1999).
Teacher Education Standards for Science Teachers
Field experiences that engage prospective teachers in science teaching have yielded some positive results (Abell, Bryan, & Andersen,1998). However, not all field experiences have successfully modified prospective teachers' thinking or practice (Lortie, 1975; McDiarmid, 1990). Several efforts have been made to perturb prospective teachers' beliefs through structured reflection so that alternative, more constructive models of teaching are likely to be implemented in today's classroom. Like Posner, Strike, Hewson, and Gertzog (1986), who outlined preconditions necessary for promoting accommodation and conceptual change for children, Osborne and Freyberg (1985) outlined preconditions necessary for confronting teachers' beliefs. These included the need for preservice teachers to understand children's views, to engage in self-clarification of their own views at an early stage in their training, to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of their personal views, and to consolidate evidence related to their views. Without such preconditions, many teachers find it difficult to accept beliefs and practices contrary to their own. If they believe that science is mostly factual or if they believe children are unable to think in complex ways about the world, they are likely to teach in response to those beliefs. As a result teachers may develop ways of devaluing or avoiding evidence about their students' science learning altogether.
More recent efforts to design educative field experiences have demonstrated that, when given the chance to confront their beliefs, prospective teachers develop a deeper understanding of teaching (Cochran-Smith, 1991; Hollingsworth, 1989). Teachers who have engaged in reflection are more adept at thinking critically about their own teaching as well as the teaching of others. Bryan and Abell (1999) demonstrated that teachers are able to develop a disposition of inquiry about their teaching and more closely align their teaching practices with their professed beliefs, though the researchers agreed with Munby and Russell (1992) that doing so is an arduous process.
Each of these researchers was focusing upon a definition of scientific literacy that incorporates an understanding of the nature of science, an ability to investigate the natural world, and an ability to use more traditional forms of literacy to learn about science, interpret data, and communicate scientific findings. This vision is embraced by current national reform rhetoric (AAAS, 1989, 1993; NRC, 1996). However, as teacher educators we are aware that many school districts have taken a dominant approach to developing narrow strategies based on specific skills, paying little attention to the integration of science content or cultural literacy into the prescribed curricula. It is these narrow approaches that we wish to prepare future elementary science teachers to face, for if they are unprepared in their college education and training, their efforts to implement inquiry-based science learning are likely to be drastically impeded.
Instructional Approach
With these goals in mind, I teach an elementary science methods course in which university students can observe examples of children's thinking and of alternative science-teaching strategies and can reflect upon their own science experiences as well as their efforts to teach according to current National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996). The course in science-teaching methods is taught specifically for California elementary teachers working toward a multiple-subject credential. Prospective elementary teachers enroll in this course prior to the student teaching experience that is the culminating event for their graduation. It is a course offered in contrast to that for in-service teachers, who are actively teaching science, and it emphasizes the importance of providing preservice teachers opportunities to reflect on science teaching prior to their roles as full-time teachers. Using state-of-the-art desktop video editing software and hardware, I assist my preservice science teachers in identifying children's conceptions, I model exemplary practices for science teaching, and I facilitate their reflection on pedagogical choices. In the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University, the faculty are committed to connecting educational theory to actual teaching practices. Hence, I teach the science-methods course in a local progressive elementary school where the preservice teachers have access to mentors and children, and practice implementing technology for the purpose of enhancing science learning. The preservice teachers are each assigned to a school in the district and they meet once per week for six hours at the site of one selected elementary school to observe, plan, develop resources, teach science lessons, and reflect together as a group.
I hope to make an impact on preservice elementary science teachers in three areas: 1) their knowledge of children's prior experiences with and understanding of scientific concepts, 2) their knowledge of a variety of pedagogical strategies for teaching science, and 3) their understanding of their own past experiences as science learners and how these experiences influence their pedagogical choices. Below I describe actual strategies learned from research and experience that have assisted me in moving multiple-subject credential teachers' thinking forward in their considerations of children's thinking and appropriate strategies for teaching science in a manner consistent with National Science Standards (NRC, 1996).
Strategy One: Analyzing Children's Thinking
The first strategy involves the analysis of children's thinking through the use of digital videos that record clinical interviews documenting the preconceptions of individual children. Preservice teachers devise interview protocols that address core scientific ideas (e.g., seasons, moon phases, heat transfer, photosynthesis, current flow) so that they can hear first-hand a child's contrary notions as well as his or her reasons and explanations. Confronting commonly held misconceptions requires teachers to guide students to a sense of dissatisfaction with their understanding of what they think they know. These interviews help preservice teachers to identify access points into the children's beliefs, which stimulates ideas for ways to use contrary evidence to perturb children's non-scientific thinking.
Sharing these videos allows my students to see a wider variety of children's thinking. Prospective teachers use these iMovies to ground their reading assignments in real-life examples. In response to these examples they can design elementary lesson plans and respond in their journals. Once my students have identified children's thinking about such questions as "Why do leaves change color?" or "Where do stars go during the day?" our task is to identify which teaching strategies might be most appropriate for addressing misconceptions.
(Link to iMovie, example 1:
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/sciencetg/ie/stars.html)
Part of learning to teach well involves learning to listen carefully and weigh fully the beliefs of children as we plan, instruct, and evaluate. After analyzing the examples of children's thinking shown in the iMovies, more teachers choose open-ended questions as the basis for their planned lessons. Before I began to use the digital videos, preservice teachers rarely designed lessons focusing on central questions that require children to use scientific processes to gather evidence and construct their own interpretations. Instead, their lessons typically would focus upon transmitting factual knowledge about science topics like the five senses or the food pyramid or volcanoes. In contrast, during the most recent semester of the course, students developed lessons around such questions as, "How do we know there are just nine planets?" "Why is food different for plants and animals?" "How can we hear?" "Why do some things sink and some float?" "Is the life cycle for spiders the same as for butterflies?" "Where does water on the playground go on a hot day?" The lessons now reflect a greater respect for children's abilities and knowledge, and teachers further extend their own knowledge by sharing their iMovies with each other and comparing their interview results.
Strategy Two: Modeling Alternative Pedagogy
It is sometimes important to model teaching strategies that promote a deeper scientific understanding of everyday phenomena. Broadening the pedagogical repertoire of preservice elementary science teachers is a main objective of the course, and iMovies that document local progressive science classrooms can enable prospective elementary science teachers to engage vicariously in inquiry teaching.
One drawback of teacher education programs offering only one science methods course is that science is not a generic process. Learning to teach biology is different from the process of learning to teach physics but, because of the curricular constraints of the elementary schools with which we collaborate, we often must teach only one science topic. This severely limits the exposure of my preservice teachers to a variety of strategies for teaching biological, physical, and chemical sciences. This can present a challenge because inquiry-based teaching methods for biology are not equivalent to those used in physics or chemistry. For example, field experiences in which children examine organisms in their natural habitat are less applicable for the study of motion and general kinematics. However, the videos that document actual lessons and the artifacts from children (e.g.; student work, drawings, small group interactions) involved in past university and elementary collaborations allow my preservice teachers to explore a wider variety of strategies for addressing the children's conceptions they have explicated in their own videos.
(Link to iMovie, example 2:
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/sciencetg/ie/elementary/pond/pond.html)
Strategy Three: Reflection on Practice
The third strategy also relies on digital video to document prospective teachers' practices and reflections. In light of McDiarmid's (1990) claim that we cannot shape young teachers' practices until we have helped novice teachers understand the limits of their own learning, methods students are required to tell their own personal autobiographies of science learning. Most of my methods students have reported experiencing poor science instruction and have had few positive science-teaching models in their personal histories. In an attempt to help pre-service elementary teachers express their widespread frustration with science and their desire to learn alternative methods, I ask students to produce autobiographical iMovies in the first week of the science methods course as they read from such provocative authors as Kohl (1984), Jackson (1986), Ayers (1990), Ball (1988) and other teacher-scholars and reflect upon their own science experiences. Preservice teachers also tape each other teaching children and then reflect on their lessons as they edit their videos with two peers. After producing their own desktop videos, prospective teachers are better able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their own knowledge and experiences. In accord with narrative inquiry methods (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Cortazzi, 1993), they identify specific aspects of strong science teaching and create their own personal metaphors for science teaching that connect with assigned readings. For example, having students describe their learning about their teaching as similar to "riding a bike" or "grinding gears" helps preservice teachers to communicate their struggles and insights from literature more poignantly. They also share their personal histories with the class, which seems to establish camaraderie amongst collaborative small groups.
As a culminating task for the methods course, preservice teachers edit a final five-minute video that depicts their learning process as an emerging science teacher. In these videos prospective teachers illustrate their understanding of children's thinking (strategy one), defend their pedagogical choices (strategy two), and provide evidence of their success. This third strategy serves as a way they communicate to one another how well they have addressed children's thinking in the lessons they had spent the semester planning and teaching. Rich discussions follow when the students share videos depicting themselves employing a variety of strategies, exploring children's thinking through open-ended questions, providing evidence contrary to common-sense thinking, and soliciting commentary between children about competing ideas.
(Link to iMovie, example 3:
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/sciencetg/ie/gravity/)
As a result of these assignments, I have observed changes in actual teaching practices. Prospective teachers not only attend to the children's ideas they record in interviews, they also attempt to emulate in their lessons the teaching practices observed earlier in the semester. They incorporate in their lessons more mathematics and writing strategies than past students have done, and they report applying strategies learned in science methods to other lessons in their teaching placements (e.g.; facilitating a math or reading lesson). Students also author lessons that represent more authentic inquiry for children. In addition, students are better able to use alternative frameworks to place teaching issues within a larger context of value-laden educational settings. For example, students have always been asked in this methods course to critique available teaching resources with respect to topics of their choice. After interviewing students and conducting their analyses using iMovie, prospective science teachers are more astute at identifying weaknesses in available lesson plans.
Concluding Remarks
Engaging preservice teachers in digital video editing as described above enables us to discuss the teaching of science in much more substantive ways. Focusing on how children make sense of the world and how adults make sense of daily instruction, specifically with regard to misconceptions in science, helps me address preservice teachers' beliefs about science teaching and National Science Standards (National Research Council, 1996).
Prospective teachers learn to identify more clearly the characteristics of inquiry-based lessons in their lesson critiques, article reviews, and peer-lesson evaluations. They begin to write more articulate journal entries about teaching dilemmas and children's thinking. More teachers become able to identify the real struggles surrounding the question of how to teach less content for greater understanding, and they express these revelations in journals that address misconceptions and difficult decisions about cutting certain content.
Some of the obstacles I face in getting students hands-on experiences with iMovie include inconsistent access to laptops and digital video cameras at poorly supported schools. The teacher education program at San Diego State is committed to providing authentic teaching contexts for our students, but conducting science-methods courses in the field at sites with little technology severely hampers our abilities to teach them about science teaching or technology. In addition, some teachers at the schools affiliated with our site-based program are not open to alternative interpretations of science and want to teach only text-driven vocabulary. While the iMovies can model alternative strategies in order to offset this narrow-mindedness, the socialization of student teachers is strong and the impact of the course may be undone in subsequent weeks or months.
Like any educational technology, desktop video editing cannot respond to all of the challenges that teachers face in today's classroom. However, for my preservice teachers, the use of desktop video has encouraged individual expression, spawned creativity, revitalized content, promoted collective knowledge construction and individual reflection, and enabled them to engage in authentic learning. Digital video editing need not be confined to science teaching alone. Several practicing elementary teachers with whom we have been working have also found ways to enhance their children's writing, speaking, and research skills through such activities as coordinating school-site news teams, assigning book reports in video format, and capturing virtual field trips. Digital video editing provides a venue for children and teachers to gain a deeper and broader representation of what it means to understand content and to assess content instruction.
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Posted December 12, 2002
All material appearing in this journal is subject to applicable copyright laws. Publication in this journal in no way indicates the endorsement of the content by the California State University, the Institute for Teaching and Learning, or the Exchanges Editorial Board. ©2002 by Randy Yerrick.
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