3 research outputs found
Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis (Routledge) via the DOI in this record.Dialogic pedagogy is being promoted in science teacher education but the literature on dialogic pedagogy tends to focus on explicit voices, and so runs the risk of overlooking the important role that material objects often play in science education. In this paper we use the findings of a teacher survey and classroom case study to argue that there is a gap in the way that science teachers think about the role of materials and that this could be addressed by changes in the theory base of teacher training, augmenting the current constructivist and dialogic theory with the addition of new materialism in the form of Barad’s ‘Agential Realism’. Our findings suggests that science teachers do not regularly explicitly consider the relationship between the material resources they deploy and the dialogic learning taking place. We argue that science teacher training and professional development should pay more attention to the material-dialogic relationships in the learning that emerges in science classrooms.We are grateful for the support of the EU FP7 programme in funding the Science Education for Diversity (SED) Project, FP7-SCIENCE-IN-SOCIETY-2009-1 244717
International Educators’ Perspectives on the Purpose of Science Education and the Relationship between School Science and Creativity
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis (Routledge) via the DOI in this record.Background: Creativity across all disciplines is increasingly viewed as a fundamental
educational capability. Science can play a potentially important role in the nurturing of
creativity. Research also suggests that creative pedagogy, including interdisciplinary
teaching with Science and the Arts, can engage students with science. Previous studies
into teachers’ attitudes to the relationship between science and creativity have been
largely situated within national educational contexts.
Purpose: This study, part of the large EU funded CREATIONs project, explores
educators’ perspectives on the relationship between Science and Creativity across
national contexts drawn from Europe and beyond.
Sample and Methods: 270 educators, broadly defined to include primary (age 4-11) and
secondary (age 11-18) teachers and trainee teachers, informal educators and teacher
educators, responded to a survey designed to explore perceptions of the relationship
between science and creativity. Respondents were a convenience sample recruited by
project partners and through online media. The elements of the survey reported here
included Likert-scale questions, open response questions, and ranking questions in the
form of an electronic self-administered questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis was
used to develop a combined attitude scale labelled ‘science is creative’, with results
compared across nationalities and phases of education. Open question responses were
analysed thematically to allow more nuanced interpretation of the descriptive statistical
findings.
Results: The findings show broad agreement internationally and across phases that
science is a creative endeavour, with a small number of educators disagreeing about the
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relationship between science and creativity in the context of school science. Those who
disagreed were usually secondary science teachers, from England, Malta or outside
Europe (primarily from the United States). The role of scientific knowledge within
creativity in science education was found to be contentious.
Conclusions: That educators broadly see science as creative is unsurprising, but initial
exploration of educators’ perspectives internationally shows some areas of difference.
These were especially apparent for educators working in formal education, particularly
relating to the role of knowledge with respect to creativity in science. With current
interest in STEAM education, further investigation to understand potential mediating
factors of national educational contexts on teachers’ perspectives with respect to the
role of disciplinary knowledge(s) in creativity and their interaction in interdisciplinary
teaching and learning, is recommended.European Commissio