An exploratory study of the questions asked by student teachers in a junior science lesson

Master of EducationThe science curricula of the severities stress the importance of teaching science as scientists might practise it. This has been well illustrated in the enquiry oriented curricula marketed in the last decade in Australia. A significant attempt has been made to apply learning theories in their development. The Australian Science Education Project has attempted to integrate Piaget's theory of cognitive development into the. units. However, for all the emphasis in the units placed upon the active, initiating role of the learner and the careful sequencing of direct experience with objects of knowledge, they need their agent of understanding, the committed teacher, who is able to encourage her pupils to talk and write about their own transactions and discoveries. It is more than possible that many teachers who use the materials will fail. to use to the full the methods implicit in the underlying theories. There is a need to prepare young teachers for effective work in these contexts appropriate to the new materials. In this study, the nature, distribution and patterning of student teacher questions were investigated in two of these contexts. Both contexts, the demonstration-discussion and the small group activity and discussion, have in coryey'1n the purpose of generating primary data and the provision of experience in observation, inference and validation. An attempt was made to develop a study which combined appropriate elements of the approaches of the "naturalistic" and "experimental" schools of research into classroom processes. The design was broadly of the post-test only control group form with repeated measures on teaching context. Randomization was handled in large part by the distribution of mixed ordered teaching plans. A total of twelve student teachers were observed near the end of their training year, teaching the sane lesson based on two pages of the Stage 1 A.S.E.P. Unit, "Forces", to grade eight classes. Both direct . coding and transcript coding procedures were employed in the analysis of the student teacher questioning, using high and low inference categorizing systems. In the main study, the Smith and Meux (The Logic of the Classroom) and the Withall (The Social-Emotional Climate Index) systems were applied to the student teachers' questions to describe the levels of "enquiry" and "learner supportiveness" promoted in the lesson. Considering the small sample size, the results must be cautiously interpreted. However, a fairly consistent picture emerged suggesting that young teachers maintain a higher level of enquiry through asking a greater proportion of logically complex and hypothetical questions in the demonstration-discussion context than in the small group and discussion context. In the former, the students appeared to be involved in fewer administrative interactions. No differences were found between the social-emotional elements of the two environments in terms of "learner supportiveness" and "teacher centmedriess". Some limited comparisons were possible with Tisher's Brisbane data collected in traditional science classrooms using the saine instruments. An analysis of the pupil responses to questions intended to elicit logical explanations indicated that considerable discrepancy existed between the student's intent and the nature and logic of the responses. Implications for research into teacher questioning, teacher education and curriculum.development are discussed

The maintenance and transformation of school science

Science, like other established school subjects, is a social institution. Its realisation in particular contexts is varied, but it is valued and it is understood in the sense of being linked with current and future roles and activities. Changes in school science are, from this view, either attempts from the inside to modify the social institution as popularly comprehended, or are attempts by outside parties, for whom the subject has significance, to have it moved closer to their conception of the discipline. It is the Writer's view that the debate on the social function of education which has been conducted with considerable vigour in Australia in the past twenty years would have been more fruitful if the problems of curriculum reform were seen in the perspective of their development. It is important that the architects of educational policy should be enabled to understand, more fully, the debates that underlie the problems they face, and the quality of the resources currently at hand. Educational theories can be seen as belonging tono age, independent of the motives of those who formulate them and answerable to logical analysis. In this thesis, such considerations were of relevance but they were not the primary concern in a study of the practical and cultural reasoning of Australian curriculum developers.But neither has the study treated the curricular schemes as historical solutions put forward at a particular time to ameliorate problems of a particular period. This study has not sought primarily to assess the logical cogency of the schemes and their rationale, nor primarily to obtain historical understanding of the educational purposes of a particular society. Rather, an attempt has been made to explore the arguments and commitments of university scientists and science teachers charged with the responsibility to maintain school science and also to accomplish the ideological and functional adaption of courses to changing economic and social conditions. The professional dilemma of the scientist committed to public education is a central issue, as is the dilemma of the university's role in the renewal of courses taught in Secondary schools. The schemes for reform, such as "General Science," "The Web of Life" and the "A.S.E.P. Unit" have been developed from English and, later, American models tomaintain and expand public interest in scientific knowledge. General Science, like later schemes, was more than a simple reaction against outmoded pedantry and dogmatism. We advance some way towards understanding General Science if we study this reaction; we advance still further by studying the arguments of its own theorists. An adequate explanation of the rise of Biology as a school subject in Victoria must embrace, not only the politics of the sciences and the wider politics of liberal education, but must alsoilluminate the restructuring of Australian culture under the impact of the growth of technical knowledge. In Australia, for the most part, too little serious attention seems to have been given to the writing of curriculum reformers. A wider reading of their work can tell us something of effective educational networks, as well as of the persistent hopes and vision they supported. At any rate, this thesis is written in the conviction that the study of the ideological and material resources available to curriculum reforms can tell us something about what it will take to maintain and transform Australia's cultural development.<br