Teaching a dilemma story in my science classroom: enabling students to make ethically aware decisions

The purpose of this interpretive action research was to explore the experiences of students engaging with ethical dilemma story pedagogy in the context of education for sustainability. The study also investigated my experiences as a science teacher implementing ethical dilemma story pedagogy and the new understandings and insights that I discovered about my teaching. This thesis records my reflective journey as I used ethical dilemma story pedagogy with two of my Year 10 Science classes

Enhancing science literacy through implementation of writing-to-learn strategies: exploratory studies in high school biology

Some evidence of benefits from writing-to-learn techniques exists; however, more research is needed describing the instructional context used to support learning through writing and the quality of learning that results from particular tasks. This dissertation includes three papers, building on past research linking inquiry, social negotiation, and writing strategies to enhance scientific literacy skills of high school biology students. The interactive constructivist position informed the pedagogical approach for two empirical, classroom-based studies utilizing mixed methods to identify quantitative differences in learning outcomes and students\u27 perceptions of writing tasks. The first paper reports students with planned writing activities communicated biotechnology content better in textbook explanations to a younger audience, but did not score better on tests than students who had delayed planning experiences. Students with two writing experiences as opposed to one, completing a newspaper article, scored better on conceptual questions both after writing and on a test 8 weeks later. The difference in treatments initially impacted males compared to females, but this effect disappeared with subsequent writing. The second paper reports two parallel studies of students completing two different writing types, laboratory and summary reports. Three comparison groups were used, Control students wrote in a traditional format, while SWH group students used the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) during guided inquiry laboratories. Control students wrote summary reports to the teacher, while SWH students wrote either to the teacher or to peers (Peer Review group). On conceptual questions, findings indicated that after laboratory writing SWH females performed better compared to SWH males and Control females; and as a group SWH students performed better than Control students on a test following summary reports (Study 1). These results were not replicated in Study 2. An open-ended survey revealed findings that persisted in both studies; compared to Control students, SWH students were more likely to describe learning as they were writing and to report distinct thinking was required in completing the two writing types. Students\u27 comments across studies provide support for using non-traditional writing tasks as a means to assist learning. Various implications for writing to serve learning are reported, including identification of key support conditions

Epistemological access and authentic learning practice: a case study in hospitality financial management.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.The recent widespread Fallist student movement taking hold of South African Higher Education has raised debates and tensions relating to the economic and social transformation of academic institutions. Despite National Higher Education funding relief (NSFAS), relentless patterns of economic and social inequalities in South Africa perpetuate unequal access for many first year undergraduates that are working class, first generation and English second language students. Providing students with epistemological access is essentially the counterpart to physical and financial access. How students access these academic ways of knowing, is indeed a cause for concern. At the Durban University of Technology (DUT), compounding this precarious situation, most Hospitality Financial Management (HSFM101) students struggle to access a financial disciplinary identity. Students find engaging with complex assessment tasks, particularly challenging especially as it requires them to align abstract theory to practical contexts. In addition, many students often report that they struggle to understand the relevance of hospitality accounting and its potential contribution to their hospitality careers. Importantly, accessing the tenets of the discipline, its discourse and practice appears to remain elusive to many students. While Morrow (2009) argued that fostering epistemological access (EA) calls for carefully constructed pedagogical and curricula processes, he did not go on to identify the particular pedagogy that could be employed in higher education teaching. In this study, I recognise the different levels of preparedness of prospective university students, and their potential lack of efficacy in gaining access to the epistemologies of their chosen discipline (HSFM101). This study explores student experiences in an HSFM101 programme, carefully designed to integrate the principles of Authentic Assessment with the view to creating enabling conditions for student learning. In addition, this study is a response to a lacuna in South African Higher education scholarship on how students learn and are assessed in Hospitality programmes. The study was guided by the principles of social constructivism and subscribed to an interpretive paradigm. A qualitative, case study design served as the framework to underpin the research. A purposive sample of 20 participants was selected from a cohort of Hospitality Financial Management students at DUT. Due consideration was given to a balanced representation in relation to race and gender. The rigor offered by Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004) was particularly appealing as it provides a systematic protocol that makes explicit both data generation and analysis processes. Data was generated through individual in-depth interviews, student reflective online journals and IQA focus group interviews. The interpretive and qualitative lens adopted for this study enabled a rich contextual understanding of how students experienced learning and acquired epistemic access through an Authentic Assessment (AA) strategy. Following the IQA protocol, focus groups generated ten affinities or themes of their experiences of being assessed in an Authentic learning environment. The primary theme that drove students learning experiences was Life’s Contradictions, whilst the main outcome or primary outcome of the study was getting it right. Despite the tensions, struggles and contradictions that students experienced in authentic learning situations, it was recognised that a pedagogy of authentic learning (the AA strategy in this case) does have the propensity to afford many students EA. According to this study, an AA strategy further revealed that, by affording students scaffolding opportunities, they were able to seek solutions autonomously, share their ideas, or even take the lead in improving collaborative learning. In addition, students wanted to feel included and so by creating and nurturing learning spaces that value diversity in HEIs; does in fact promote cohesive learning which enables EA. The fact that AA allows for students to engage in different ways and challenge their prior beliefs and assumptions; implies that there is transformation in learning. The results of this study further suggest that learning tolerance and accepting diversity was able to advance epistemic growth and emotional intelligence. This fortifies the nexus between social participation and prosperity; hence enabling EA (Sen, 2001). Whilst this study explored the learning experiences of HSFM101 it certainly does have wider implications for curriculum planning and reform towards transformative assessment pedagogies in various Higher Education curricula

Engaging with controversial science issues - a professional learning programme for secondary science teachers in New Zealand

Internationally there is concern that many science teachers do not address controversial science issues in their science classrooms, and there is a perception amongst many science teachers that science is about the delivery of facts, and that it is value-free. However with the increasingly complex, science-based dilemmas being presented to society, there is a growing call for future citizens to be more scientifically literate and to be able to make informed decisions on issues related to these dilemmas. There have been shifts in science curricula internationally, and in New Zealand, towards a focus on scientific literacy, but changes in teachers’ pedagogical practice have not been widespread. The demands and challenges for teachers are high and to make such changes requires support and guidance.Because of the paucity of literature available about teaching controversial science issues in New Zealand science classrooms, the purpose of this project was to firstly establish the current status of the teaching and learning about issues and to identify the support that teachers felt they required to address this in science classrooms. This information then informed the development of a professional learning programme to provide support for teachers. The project took a mixed method approach and proceeded in three phases, with Phase One involving the development and administration of a survey to secondary teachers in the North Island of New Zealand, with follow-up interviews with some survey participants. The qualitative and quantitative data gathered enabled the current scene to be established. Phase Two involved the use of data from Phase One, together with information obtained mainly from the literature review, to design a professional learning programme, the focus of which was the development of a model for ethical inquiry. Phase Three involved two workshops, separated by eleven weeks, in which four teachers critiqued, trialled and evaluated the model in the classroom. A series of case studies was developed from each trial, with a cross-case analysis made to validate the usefulness of the model.The findings of the survey and interviews indicated that to address controversial issues, there was a need to move New Zealand teachers away from a focus on content, towards a pedagogy that focused on ethical inquiry and the appropriate use of strategies and approaches to support this. The findings from the professional learning programme confirmed that teachers had been supported in addressing controversial science issues by the use of the model for ethical inquiry and positive outcomes were reported for both teachers and students.The project provided current information about how controversial science issues are addressed in New Zealand secondary science classrooms and validated the model for ethical inquiry in supporting teachers to address controversial science in the light of impending and changing requirements of The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) towards informed citizenry and scientific literacy. The project also supplements the very small amount of research that has been carried out in a New Zealand context on addressing controversial science issues in secondary science classrooms

Teaching Ethics in the Primary Science Classroom: Planning Support for Teachers

The work presented in this thesis focuses on teaching ethics in primary science classrooms. Such teaching is important because it engages students not only in the human aspects of science, but also in science more generally, leading to enhanced scientific literacy and ultimately contributing to responsible citizenship. Teaching ethics in science also presents opportunities for developing students’ argumentation, critical thinking and decision-making skills, and helps students become more ethically aware, knowledgeable and discerning in science. Ethics in science has a prominent role in the New Zealand Curriculum within the ‘nature of science’ strand in the science learning area. However, there is a paucity of research demonstrating how this might be implemented with primary-age students. This work determines firstly whether primary students can engage in ethical discussions in science. Secondly, it focuses on the question of support needed for primary teachers and whether it is helpful for teachers to use a subject-specific planner for teaching ethics in science. The research adopted a sociocultural view of learning, in which learning is understood to be of a social and collaborative nature. The research involved two teacher development sessions, where three teachers were introduced to ethics concepts, examples on how they could be taught in a science context, and an ethics-in-science planner. Teachers subsequently developed and implemented an ethics in science programme using the ethics-in-science planner in their classrooms. The data for this research were collected from three teachers within the same school. Document analysis, interviews and classroom observation provided data triangulation. The findings suggest that young students can engage in ethical discussions in science – and do so, enthusiastically. They also confirm that primary teachers need support to teach ethics in science. For example, all three teachers reported the development sessions were necessary to help them understand ethics concepts and to give them ideas and strategies for teaching ethics in science. This is supported by research demonstrating that intervention in the form of teacher development and planning is vital for teachers to develop pedagogical content knowledge in a new area. In particular, teachers reported that the ethics-in-science planner helped them consider the classroom interactions on which they wanted to focus the outcomes, demonstrating that ethics in science can be meaningfully taught in the primary classroom. This raises the issue of teacher development and how this would be funded and implemented for the purpose of developing the pedagogical content knowledge of primary teachers for the teaching of ethics in science

The Nature of Science and Technology in Teacher Education

This chapter is about the Nature of Science (NOS) and the Nature of Technology (NOT) in education. Science includes the systematic study of the structure and actions of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment, and technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. NOS and NOT have been used to refer to the epistemology of science, science as a way of knowing, or the values and beliefs inherent to the development of scientific knowledge. These characterizations, nevertheless, remain general, and philosophers of science, historians of science, and the same goes for NOT. Subsequently, an individual’s understanding that observations are constrained by our perceptual apparatus and are characteristically theory-laden is part of that individuals understanding of the NOS and NOT. In general, NOS and NOT refers to principles and ideas which provide a description of science and technology as a way of knowing, as well as characteristics of scientific knowledge. Many of these intrinsic ideas are lost in the everyday aspects of a science classroom, resulting in students learning misaligned ideas about how science is conducted. Understanding how technology relates with science and society is critical for individuals to make informed personal and societal decisions. Nevertheless, in most STEM education contexts, learning about technology typically only means learning how to be an efficient user or, perhaps, an informed competent designer of. A meaningful technology education stresses that science education efforts also teach students about NOT. Essential questions like what technology is, how it is related to, yet distinct from, science, how it shapes and is shaped by society, and perhaps most importantly, how technologies impact the way individuals think and act

Developing, implementing and evaluating the use of ethical frameworks in teaching bioethics issues in a Year 10 biotechnology program

With the re-emergence of values education in the school curriculum in the last decade, science is viewed as one of the key teaching domains, and in particular, socio-scientific education is increasingly perceived as instrumental in helping students explore underlying beliefs and values, develop reasoning and critical thinking skills to make informed decision on socio-scientific issues. This thesis develops a conceptual basis for a model of teaching socio-scientific issues for secondary or high school students. The teaching of controversial issues needs a stronger theoretical base and a more viable pedagogical strategy to facilitate critical thinking, argumentation and decision-making skills. Previous research has shown that science classroom discourse was largely teacher dominated and tended not to foster adequate reflective discussion of scientific issues nor forge well-informed decisions on controversial issues. The use of ethical frameworks serves as a pedagogical tool as well as provides a process to help students make ethical judgements and rationally and relationally justify them.The five ethical frameworks explored in this model are categorised as rights and duties, beneficence/non-maleficence (utilitarian), autonomy, communicative virtues and Christian moral. The features of controversy that are made explicit to the students through the use of ethical frameworks are situated in the area of human genetics and transgenic plants in Australia. Such a study is undertaken in the realm of bioethics within the context of an ethically pluralist society. The present investigation focuses on the teaching of a Year 10 biotechnology class over a period of ten weeks in an evangelical Christian college in metropolitan Perth, Western Australia. Using an interpretative case study approach, a mixed method data collection and action research as the methodology, analyses of instructional strategies, teachers and students’ beliefs/values/attitudes and achievement outcomes were conducted and evaluated accordingly.This study is unique in that it presents one of the few studies that incorporates Christian/faith values in the ethical frameworks that enables the researcher to explore the connection, if any, between cognitive learning and moral reasoning and moral development, and in the wider sense, the link between cognitive learning (scientific literacy) and ethical reasoning.Research findings indicate that through the use of the simple framework in comparing the pros and cons, students in the comparison group developed a limited measure of competency in reasoning and developing arguments to express their viewpoints. However, students have also been noted to be more motivated and engaged with learning science because of its increased relevance to their personal lives and societal concerns. On the other hand, the experimental group students utilise the five ethical frameworks to orientate the thinking process to explore possible alternatives, to prioritize conflicting and competing ethical claims, to examine from different perspectives and to integrate their information by linking from knowledge content and/ or claims to well-grounded conclusions. Essentially, the use of ethical frameworks guides students’ understanding of the socio-scientific issue and helps them to formulate the crux of decision-making.Data analysis from both qualitative and quantitative aspects suggest that the use of ethical frameworks has brought about a marked improvement in the students’ ability to reflect critically, reason analytically and make rational decisions about their own ethical values in handling socio-scientific issues. Research finding also confirms the the important role of the teacher in implementing the ethical frameworks as a reasoning and argument-developing tool in socio-scientific education. On a modest level, research from the present study has shown that using the frameworks for both comparison and experimental groups has instilled in teachers some measure of confidence; with the five ethical frameworks proven more satisfying and effective as a pedagogical tool. This study suggests that, from a teacher’s perspective, the use of ethical frameworks could be a viable tool in socio-scientific education, and this needs to be supported by the teacher taking a procedural neutral stance, role-modelling the scientific reasoning process through carefully crafted questions, creating a collaborative and caring learning environment and a variety of student-centred teaching strategies.The incorporation of faith values in the ethical frameworks confirms previous research that there is the possibility that other concepts besides that of justice and fairness could be the key in determining how one judges what is morally right. The present research also suggests that there are different problem-solving strategies in making moral judgements beside stage schemes of justice described by cognitive developmental psychologists and educators. The present study also suggests that allegiance to belief systems and ideologies can sometimes override the influence of one’s own sense of fairness in making decisions of moral rightness. This is an important factor to consider in mapping out curriculum for moral education and socio-scientific education.Overall, the analysis suggests that socio-scientific education programs focusing on dialogical and reflective processes could help to facilitate socio-scientific reasoning. The study also argues for the importance of providing a sound epistemological and dialogical environment for socio-scientific education in a science classroom through the use of carefully constructed and evaluative metacognitive tools of learning in scaffolding and structuring reasoning and argumentation process, of which the use of ethical frameworks has proven to be modestly effective

Twenty-First Century Skill Building for Students With Special Needs Through Problem-Based Learning: An Examination Of Homeschool Teacher Blogs

Although problem-based learning (PBL) is not a new educational teaching method, little is known about the experiences of homeschool teachers who implement this teaching and learning approach with students with special needs. An increase in the number students with special needs being homeschooled made this study necessary and timely. The purpose of this study was to explore how publicly shared PBL experiences of homeschool teachers of students with special needs reflect 21st-century skills. The study was framed using 3 skill areas from a 21st-century skills framework including communication and collaboration, problem-solving and critical thinking, and cross-disciplinary knowledge. Data were collected from 20 blog sites that were each written by a homeschool teacher of at least 1 student with special needs. The sites had a minimum of 3 blog posts that referenced teaching and learning that aligned with the fundamentals of PBL. Deductive-dominant content analysis was completed on 87 blog posts through 2 levels of coding using both a priori and emergent coding. Key findings showed that the blog posts of homeschool teachers of students with special needs most often described (a) sharing, (b) creating inquiry environments and supports, and (c) cross-discipline content. Because the blog posts of homeschool teachers who use a PBL approach with their students with special needs reflect 21st-century skills, this study may encourage more teachers in the homeschool community to implement a PBL approach. The results from this study may contribute to positive social change by providing insights for homeschool teachers interested in purposefully implementing PBL experiences where students with special needs practice 21st-century skills

Enhancing students' aeronautical decision-making through scaffolding strategies for higher order thinking

Over the last few decades, classroom training in aviation education has continued mostly unchanged. It remains a highly structured presentation of information in a lecture format. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a method of teaching aeronautical decision making in aviation education based on integrated and scaffolded constructivist learning principles, compared to the typical structured lecture format. Although there are consistent findings in the available research literature regarding the process of integrated constructivist approaches in the classroom, few studies have focused on improving aviation student's higher order thinking by combining existing aviation concepts and tools in a cooperative learning classroom environment. Hence, this study introduced a curriculum design of explicit scaffolding of Bloom's taxonomy for higher order thinking and instructional scaffoldings for metacognition and psychological type to support learning from authentic accident cases while in cooperative groups.The research design and assessment protocols included four scaffolding phases during a six week curriculum. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident cases in general aviation served as the educational context for the focal curriculum. The study was conducted in a classroom environment with undergraduate junior and senior aviation pilots during the first six weeks of the required course called Crew Resource Management. Pretest-posttest case study outcomes were compared between the treatments. While quantitative results did not demonstrate that the experimental condition outperformed the control condition, this study provides preliminary qualitative evidence that participants can be encouraged to think at higher levels of cognition using the revised Bloom's Taxonomy as a probing questions guide through the use of the Case Study Questionnaire to evaluate their performance as they review accident cases. The use of the instructional scaffoldings of this study supports the development of student responsibility and a student-centered cooperative classroom.These results have implications for both practice and research. It takes time for an instructor to learn how to teach well in an authentic constructivist learning environment. Most aviation instructors today have not been provided adequate professional development training that equips them to provide instructional scaffoldings for humanizing the learning environment. The combination of tools used in this study warrant further research to heighten both the participants' and the aviation education instructors' self-awareness for improved self-management and higher order thinking skills in aeronautical decision making.The literature in aviation has not kept pace with the vast amount of empirical research on the value of constructivist learning principles for teaching higher-order thinking skills which involves emphasizing methods and strategies for developing cognitive skills during problem solving and decision making. The aim in delivering integrated and scaffolded constructivist learning principles would be development of practices and disposition of higher order thinking that better prepare students as pilots, particularly in the context of participating with other crew members in aeronautical decision making