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1.
This interpretative research portrays the turbulent conditions that are typical of my experiences as a science supervisor in the central office of a large urban school district in southeastern United States implementing science systemic reform. The research documents a dependence on an authoritarian view of policy-making that combined with procedures for making assignments allows stakeholders to undervalue the decisions that they make and increases the possibility for blaming others for their decisions. The impact of traditional and reform attitudes about curriculum and schools is described as well as efforts to resolve these conflicting views in the process of developing a middle school curriculum guide. The frustrating effect of the interactions of changing curriculum guides, changing instructional materials, and insufficient resources are described in a visit to a middle school science department meeting. The roles of time, understanding of systemic assumptions, and appropriate inquiry and communication skills are critical to the decision making process and little attention is given to address these issues. The result is that decisions end up being made without resolution of the differences among stakeholders leading to negative feelings and creating currents of frustration and distrust that undermine reform efforts.  相似文献   

2.
Curriculum materials are crucial tools with which teachers engage students in science as inquiry. In order to use curriculum materials effectively, however, teachers must develop a robust capacity for pedagogical design, or the ability to mobilize a variety of personal and curricular resources to promote student learning. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the ways in which preservice elementary teachers mobilize and adapt existing science curriculum materials to plan inquiry‐oriented science lessons. Using quantitative methods, we investigated preservice teachers' curriculum design decision‐making and how their decisions influenced the inquiry orientations of their planned science lessons. Findings indicate that preservice elementary teachers were able to accurately assess how inquiry‐based existing curriculum materials are and to adapt them to make them more inquiry‐based. However, the inquiry orientations of their planned lessons were in large part determined by how inquiry‐oriented curriculum materials they used to plan their lessons were to begin with. These findings have important implications for the design of teacher education experiences that foster preservice elementary teachers' pedagogical design capacities for inquiry, as well as the development of inquiry‐based science curriculum materials that support preservice and beginning elementary teachers to engage in effective science teaching practice. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:820–839, 2010  相似文献   

3.
This paper reports on the reality of classroom‐based inquiry learning in science, from the perspectives of high school students and their teachers, under a national curriculum attempting to encourage authentic scientific inquiry (as practiced by scientists). A multiple case study approach was taken, utilising qualitative research methods of unobtrusive observation, semi‐structured interviews and document analysis. The findings showed purposeful and focused learning occurring, but students were acquiring a narrow view of scientific inquiry where the thinking was characteristically rote and low‐level. The nature of this learning was strongly influenced by curriculum decisions made by classroom teachers and science departments in response to the assessment requirements of a high stakes national qualification. As a consequence of these decisions, students experienced structured teaching programmes in which they were exposed to programme content that limited the range of methods that scientists use to fair testing and to pedagogies that were substantially didactic in nature. In addition, the use of planning templates and exemplar assessment schedules tended to reduce student learning about experimental design to an exercise in “following the rules” as they engaged in closed rather than open investigations. Thus, the resulting student learning was mechanistic and superficial rather than creative and critical, counter to the aims of the national curriculum policy that is intent on promoting students’ knowledge and capabilities in authentic scientific inquiry.  相似文献   

4.

Proponents of science, technology and society (STS) education advocate a literacy grounded in the context of ethical, individual and social responsibility. Accordingly, STS programs and themes have been designed and developed in an effort to interpret science and technology as complex socially embedded enterprises, and to promote the development of a critical, scientifically and technologically literate citizenry capable of understanding STS issues, empowered to make informed and responsible decisions, and able to act upon those decisions. This paper posits that STS is a desirable and commendable goal. However, many dilemmas arise when educators begin to seriously address issues of power, knowledge, decision‐making, and responsible action in the science curriculum. In particular, this paper is a case study of an elementary teacher involved in STS education, with her grade three‐four class. The real‐life event or issue that triggers the STS curriculum unit is the school's septic tank overload. In describing this case, the author examines the potential power and problems of STS education.  相似文献   

5.
This article explores science TEACHERS' perceptions of and consequent decisions about the development and implementation of a nontraditional science curriculum. It is a case-study analysis that examines the perceptions of 14 secondary teachers of a model science/technology/society (STS) curriculum designed to promote scientific literacy. Although the TEACHERS' decisions varied on whether to accept, alter, or reject the STS curriculum, they shared similar concerns about the development and implementation of this multidisciplinary curriculum. There existed a common set of five factors that the teachers believed to be critical, and that strongly affected their daily teaching decisions. This study offers insights into how science teachers perceive an STS curriculum, and the influence those perceptions have on their teaching decisions. It explores curricular issues from the frame of reference of teachers, the key factor in successfully implementing innovations.  相似文献   

6.
The new South African curriculum known as Curriculum 2005 (to depict the year of its full implementation) requires that teachers integrate school science with Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). Curriculum 2005 has generated heated debates at various levels since its inception in 1997. This study focuses on the effectiveness or otherwise of a Practical Argumentation Course (PAC) as an instructional tool for enhancing teachers’ understanding of, and ability to implement, a Science‐IKS curriculum. Data collected by questionnaires, video‐taped and audio‐taped interviews, and reflective essays were analysed in terms of a Practical Argumentation Framework developed for the purpose. The findings show that the PAC did enhance the teachers’ understanding as well as increase their awareness of the need to implement a Science‐IKS curriculum in their classrooms. Also, the PAC seemed to have made the teachers more sceptical of the notion that science is the only way of knowing or interpreting experience, or that IKS were based on superstitious beliefs. All the teachers recommended the need to include the PAC or similar courses in science teacher education programmes.  相似文献   

7.
This article explores the decisions that science teachers make when they plan for instruction. It is a case study analysis of five teachers in a high school and probes into the personal reasons, beliefs, and dilemmas underlying their decisions. These decisions, while serving many purposes, had a common structure which involved tradeoffs and compromises. The decision represented the end result of the conflict between a cluster of teacher intentions and a melange of ideas about student characteristics. Teachers appeared to make decisions within a framework that holistically integrated science content and practical classroom knowledge-a knowledge system that includes the basic beliefs of a teacher and the socialization of students. By understanding how and why teachers tend to make their decisions, one gains practical insights into the act of teaching science. These insights are of particular interest to science curriculum specialists who wish to understand how teachers use science curriculum materials for the purpose of socializing students.  相似文献   

8.
This study examines the effectiveness of a new constructivist curriculum model (Powerful Ideas in Physical Science) in improving prospective teachers’ understanding of science concepts, in fostering a learning environment supporting conceptual understanding, and in promoting positive attitudes toward learning and teaching science and chemistry in particular. A non‐equivalent pretest–post‐test control‐group design was employed. Analysis of covariance and repeated‐measures analyses of variance were performed to analyze the scores on concept tests and attitude surveys. Data from videotaped observations of laboratory sessions and interviews of prospective teachers were analyzed by employing a naturalistic inquiry method to provide insights into the process of science learning and teaching for the teacher trainees. The interpretations were made based on the findings that could be corroborated by both methodologies. Conclusions and limitations of the present study as well as recommendations for future implementation of constructivist science curriculum in general are also included.  相似文献   

9.
The past 20 years or so have seen ongoing concern for the nature of science education in the Anglophone developed world. A particular focus of this concern has been the need to find new ways to frame science curricula that will engage students, yet it is proving difficult to achieve this goal. In this article I argue that the impact on science curriculum of a societal shift to neo‐liberalism and an attendant policy shift to outcomes‐based education should be explicitly acknowledged; further, that the forms of curriculum that emerge from neo‐liberalism are unlikely to provide the engaging and inclusive science education needed today. To illustrate the impact of the neo‐liberal societal shift on science curriculum I compare an exemplary, inclusive and innovative science curriculum document from the 1980s with its outcomes‐based successor from the 1990s. I show that in this case the shift to the outcomes‐based form significantly restricted the possibilities for framing science education to respond to the local community, restricting a vision of science as a social institution; further, it framed each learner as an individual to the exclusion of community while reducing options for framing learning to meet individual needs. I argue that it is important for the future disciplinary well‐being of science, and for the well‐being of society on the whole, that both science and its scientists be seen as socially located. Science curriculum documents must initiate and support this perspective.  相似文献   

10.
Studies across fields such as science education, health education, health behavior, and curriculum studies identify a persistent gap between the aims of the school curriculum and its impact on students’ thinking and acting about the real-life decisions that affect their lives. The present study presents a different story from this predominant pattern in the literature. Through a year-long ethnographic investigation of a health-focused New York City public high school’s HIV/AIDS and sex education program, this study illustrates a case in which 20 12th grade students respond positively to their education on these topics and largely assert that school significantly influences their perspectives and actions related to sexual health decision-making. This paper presents the following interpretation of this positive influence: school culture influences these students’ perspectives and decisions around sexual health by contributing to the formation of students’ identities. This paper further shows how science learning in particular becomes important for students in relation to decision-making when it is linked to issues of identity. These findings suggest that, in addition to attending to the design of classroom curriculum, HIV/AIDS and sex education researchers and curriculum developers (as well as those in science education focusing on other controversial science topics) might also explore the kinds of relational and school-wide factors that potentially influence students’ identities, decisions, and responses to school learning.  相似文献   

11.
Curriculum materials serve as a key conceptual tool for science teachers, and better understanding how science teachers use these tools could help to improve both curriculum design and theory related to teacher learning and decision-making. The authors review the literature on teachers and science curriculum materials. The review is organised around three main questions: What do teachers do when using science curriculum materials?, What happens when teachers use science curriculum materials? and Why do teachers make the decisions they do? For each question, the authors first summarise the findings of two key reviews from the mathematics education literature, then situate the findings from science education in juxtaposition with those findings. The review uncovers that relatively little is understood about the mechanism underlying how teachers interact with curriculum materials. To try to address this gap, complementing and extending the field’s existing understandings of the teacher–curriculum relationship, the authors make four propositions, grounded in the literature on self-regulation. The propositions reflect a mechanism for teacher curricular decision-making. The self-regulation perspective also helps to develop more targeted support for science teachers aimed at the uptake, adaptation and enactment of curriculum materials in ways that are intended, and that teachers themselves experience as an improvement in their teaching. The authors conclude with a call for research that further explores the ways in which individual science teachers’ decision-making is situated within the wider sociocultural context.  相似文献   

12.
The purpose of the present study is to examine the effectiveness of a metacognitive prompts intervention‐science (MPI‐S), which is based on the nature of science with 162 eighth‐grade science students. It was hypothesised that students exposed to the intervention will show higher levels of content knowledge and knowledge about the nature of science than students in a comparison group. Attempts were also made to determine what cognitive processes are triggered during the use of metacognitive prompts. Findings showed significant improvements in students’ content knowledge and nature of science. In addition, qualitative findings revealed that the experimental group made choices based on evidence in the inquiry unit whereas the comparison group made decisions based on authority. Educational implications for practice into the classroom are discussed.  相似文献   

13.
This article explores a significant shift in the science curriculum in Victoria, Australia, in the mid‐1990s by using the idea of essentialism to compare two science curriculum documents that span the shift. The accounts given in these documents of desirable approaches to teaching science, science itself and the proper scope of curriculum, are compared to show that the document written in the mid‐1990s is open to a more essentialist reading than its predecessor. I argue that the market‐driven approach to education frames each learner as a neo‐liberal individual separated from society; consequently, it leaves ideas of community largely unexamined and unsupported. As a result, important curriculum and policy debates are short‐circuited and essentialist explanations for commonality become easier to accept. I describe this as new de facto essentialism, in that it arises from an insistence on individuality that denies the agency of society, rather than a consideration of positive evidence. Finally, I briefly examine the shaping paper for science in the first Australian National Curriculum for potential to avoid essentialist readings.  相似文献   

14.
This study explored the impact of using a socioscientific issue (SSI) based curriculum on developing science content knowledge. Using a multi‐level assessment design, student content knowledge gains were measured before and after implementation of a three‐week unit on global warming (a prominent SSI) that explored both the relevant science content and the controversy surrounding global warming. Measures of student content knowledge were made using a standards‐aligned content knowledge exam (distal assessment) and a curriculum‐aligned exam (proximal assessment). Data were collected from 108 students enrolled from two schools. Quantitative analysis of the distal assessment indicated that student post‐test scores were statistically significantly different than their pre‐test scores (F = 15.31, p<0.001). Qualitative analyses of student responses from the proximal assessment indicated that students, on average, expressed more accurate, more detailed, and more sophisticated understandings of global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the controversy and challenges associated with these issues following the three‐week unit. Combined results from the proximal and distal assessments explored in this study offer important evidence in supporting the efficacy of using SSI as contexts for science education. In addition to a discussion of the components of an SSI‐based curriculum, this study provides support for the use of SSI as a context for learning science content.  相似文献   

15.
In this paper the failure of equal opportunities initiatives in computing is discussed. Reasons for the increasing exclusion of women from the higher levels of computing are considered, together with the implications of this problem for the profession as a whole. The paper identifies aspects of computing which have resulted in the definitions of good and bad, desirable and undesirable, real and unreal computing. From this perspective it considers areas of business computing and research findings which indicate that both the present business needs and future trends show that these unlegislated decisions are not appropriate. The solution reached is that the emerging canon in the computer science curriculum places an inappropriate emphasis on ‘hard’ areas such as mathematical formalism. More incorporation of arts‐based skills and skills traditionally associated with women would actually result in a curriculum more likely to meet the needs of the computing and information technology industries. If the emphasis in the curriculum and the rewards system should change to allow for this positive action in terms of curriculum, promotion and advertising will be required, together with a more widespread acknowledgement of what attributes actually contribute to successful computing at a professional level.  相似文献   

16.
In response to the needs of a newly democratic South Africa, a new education policy required science teachers to integrate Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) with school science: Curriculum 2005 (C2005) was developed. The first phase of that curriculum was implemented in 1997 with the hope that by 2005 it would have been implemented in the entire school system (i.e., R–12 grades). Since then science educators have been making a concerted effort to develop science teacher education programmes compatible with the postulates of the new curriculum policy. As part of that effort, this study used a Practical Argumentation Course to equip a group of science teachers with knowledge and instructional skills needed to implement an integrated Science‐IKS curriculum in their classrooms. The findings showed that, as a result of the course, the teachers’ understanding of, and awareness about, the Nature of Science and IKS improved considerably. Similarly, the teachers made noticeable perceptual shifts from construing science and IKS as polar opposites to considering the two thought systems as compatible and complementary. The implications of the findings for instructional practices are highlighted in the paper.  相似文献   

17.
This study has two purposes: (a) methodological—to design and test a new instrument able to reflect changes in attitudes toward science over time, and (b) investigative—to find out the effect of two similar curricular treatments on the attitudes of two classes. Items about the relevance of science to students' lives were developed, pilot‐tested, and analyzed using Rasch modeling. We then divided reliable items into three equivalent questionnaire forms. The final three forms of the questionnaire were used to assess high school students' attitudes. Over 18 weeks, one class used a core curriculum (Science and Sustainability) to learn science in the context of making decisions about societal issues. A second class used the same core curriculum, but with parts replaced by computer‐based activities (Convince Me) designed to enhance the coherence of students' arguments. Using traditional and Rasch modeling techniques, we assessed the degrees to which such instructional activities promoted students' beliefs that science is relevant to them. Both classes tended to agree more, over time, that science is relevant to their lives, and the increases were statistically equivalent between classes. This study suggests that, by using innovative, issue‐based activities, it is possible to enhance students' attitudes about the relevance of science. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 757–775, 2003  相似文献   

18.
This study is a part of a larger study that examined using socioscientific issues (SSI) as a form of effective science teaching. The purpose was to investigate how teaching a year‐long curriculum using SSI affects science learning outcomes. In this report, we examine the effects of a SSI‐driven curriculum on the development of students’ moral sensitivity. Our results indicate that development of moral sensitivity can be promoted through science learning experiences embedded in SSI. Results also suggest that moral sensitivity is contextually dependent. Implications for teaching are discussed.  相似文献   

19.
Sexual health is a controversial science topic that has received little attention in the field of science education, despite its direct relevance to students' lives and communities. Moreover, research from other fields indicates that a great deal remains to be learned about how to make school learning about sexual health influence the real‐life choices of students. In order to provide a more nuanced understanding of young people's decision‐making, this study examines students' talk about sexual health decision‐making through the lens of identities. Qualitative, ethnographic research methods with twenty 12th grade students attending a New York City public school are used to illustrate how students take on multiple identities in relation to sexual health decision‐making. Further, the study illustrates how these identities are formed by various aspects of students' lives, such as school, family, relationships, and religion, and by societal discourses on topics such as gender, individual responsibility, and morality. The study argues that looking at sexual health decision‐making—and at decision‐making about other controversial science topics—as tied to students' identities provides a useful way for teachers and researchers to grasp the complexity of these decisions, as a step toward creating curriculum that influences them. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:742–762, 2010  相似文献   

20.
Summaries

English

Science teachers’ perceptions of affective‐domainobjectives were gathered through interview procedures. A sample of teachers in Western Australian high schools were the subjects of the study.

For the purpose of analysis, a distinction is drawn between attitudes to science (such as ‘enjoyment of science lessons’ and ‘interest in science') and scientific attitudes (such as ‘honesty in reporting data’and ‘tolerance of the views of others').

Analysis of teachers’ views revealed confusion and lack of clarity regarding these science‐related attitudes. However, it is argued that curriculum writers are no clearer in their views.

It is suggested that a much clearer, more explicit justification for attitude objectives (of both kinds) needs to be made by curriculum writers. Science teachers need to be provided with greater assistance in clarifying the role of these attitude objectives, as well as assistance with techniques for their assessment.  相似文献   

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