Chemistry Teacher-Students' Concerns About the Implementation of Inquiry-Based Science Education and Their Development in the Frame of a PROFILES CPD-Program

Author(s):

Claus Bolte(presenting / submitting)Vincent Schneider

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Poster

Session Information

10 SES 05.5 PS, General Poster Session

General Poster Session

Time:

2014-09-03

12:30-14:00

Room:

Poster Area E (in front of B001-B003)

Chair:

Rasa Nedzinskaitė

Contribution

Results of the Relevance of Science Education Study (Schreiner & Sjøberg, 2004) illustrate that students in many countries have only little interest in science and in learning science. To cause a change, different reports (AAAS, 2000; NRC, 2000; Rocard et al., 2007) suggest that Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) might be an innovative approach to enhance learning outcomes in a positive manner. In Europe, different educational projects, for example the PROFILES project, want to support this change by disseminating the IBSE approach in Europe (Bolte et al., 2012).

For implementing IBSE in schools, teachers play an important role (Bolte et al., 2012). Therefore, one goal of the PROFILES working group at the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) is the development and realization of IBSE-related Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programs for pre-service science teacher students, as an early start of CPD will prepare the next generation of science teachers in a positive way (Aebli, 2001). Loucks-Horsley et al. (1996) and Loucks-Horsley et al. (2003) show how CPD programs should be designed to achieve positive results. Considering these design principles (for example: ‘develop awareness’, ‘put the IBSE approach into practice’, ‘determine impacts on personality and promote collaboration with others’ (Loucks-Horsley et al., 2003)), pre-service teacher students plan and perform IBSE-oriented lessons about environmental pollution in the context of a science education treatment course at the FUB. During the treatment course, the pre-service students are supported by a science educator, who introduces a specific IBSE model (according to NRC, 2000; AAAS 2000) on a theoretical and practical basis to the participants. Overall, the treatment course focuses on the following topics and objectives:

Science teacher students…

studying the IBSE model on a theoretical and practical basis,
discussing advantages and disadvantages of IBSE in school practice,

designing and trying out inquiry-based learning environments to topics of pollution in a preparation unit independently,
reflecting and discussing pros and cons of inquiry-based science learning environments based on their preparation experiences with IBSE,
using inquiry-based teaching in the classroom for lessons about environmental pollution,
reflecting own IBSE-oriented lessons and the lessons of peers,
are active involved in the course to ensure the development of teacher ownership.

For an evaluation of the impact of this CPD course, we want to analyse the participants’ attitudes and concerns about the implementation of IBSE with a pre-post-test design.

Following the theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991), positive attitudes affect the intention to implement IBSE in school practice, because the stronger the intention, the more likely it becomes to be performed in practice.

To gain insights into pre-service teacher students’ attitudes and concerns about the implementation of IBSE, we refer also to the Concern-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) by Hall and Hord (2011), and especially to their Stages of Concern (SoC) theory and questionnaire (Hall & Hord, 2011). The SoC model is based on seven stages (SoC scales): A - Unconcerned, B - Informational, C - Personal, D - Management, E - Consequence, F - Collaboration and G - Refocusing.

Applying the SoC questionnaire provides information about the testees’ attitudes and concerns towards IBSE by creating SoC profiles (Hall & Hord, 2011; Bitan-Friedlander et al., 2004).

In order to use a SoC questionnaire for pre-service science teachers, we first have to test our adapted SoC questionnaire (Schneider & Bolte 2011; according to Pant, Vock, Pöhlmann, & Köller, 2008 and Hall & Hord, 2011) and investigate the scientific quality of our modified questionnaire version.

Therefore we ask: (1) Does our adapted SoC questionnaire meet the criteria of scientific quality?

Method

If our SoC adaption provides similar psychometric features as other studies (see above), we will investigate the following research questions: (2) What SoC profile the implementation of IBSE do pre-service science teacher students show at the beginning of the FUB CPD course? (3) How do pre-service science teacher students’ attitudes and con¬cerns about the implementation of IBSE develop during the FUB CPD course? Methods and Design For our analysis we have adapted a German questionnaire version of SoC (Pant et al., 2008; Hall & Hord, 2011; Schneider & Bolte, 2011). An adaption was necessary because the SoC questionnaires of Pant et al. (2008) and Hall & Hord (2011) did not focussed neither on pre-service teacher students nor on IBSE. To ensure the scientific quality of our adaption, we have developed additional items for some SoC stages. In the questionnaire version of Schneider and Bolte (2011), stages A, D, E, F are represented by five items and stages B, C and G by 6 items. According to Hall & Hord (2011) each item has a rating scale from 1 “Not true of me now” to 7 “Very true of me now”. Furthermore, if the content of an item is currently not relevant to a person at all, there is also the possibility to choose “0”. Before we gain more detailed insights into the pre-service teacher students’ attitudes and concerns about the implementation of IBSE in detail, we test reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for each SoC scale by collecting data of approximately 100 pre-service teacher students (see research question 1). The treatment sample should contain approximately 75 pre-service science teacher students participating in the FUB CPD program (mentioned above). Their data will be collected at two times: at the beginning of the treatment course (pre) and after the treatment course (post). On the basis of this data, we calculate SoC profiles by using mean scores of the seven SoC scales (see research question 2). By following this strategy, we will analyse the potential developments regarding the participants’ attitudes and concerns caused by our pre-service CPD treatment program (see research question 3). For a more detailed and statistically based insight, we will test statistical significance of differences in SoC profiles by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), followed by paired t-test and effect sizes (Cohen´s d) to test statistical significance of differences regarding the SoC scales.

Expected Outcomes

First of all, we could show that the adapted SoC questionnaire for analyzing pre-service teacher students’ attitudes and concerns regarding the implementation of IBSE provides almost better psychometric features compared to other studies. Therefore this questionnaire version offers good possibilities to gain insights into the pre-service teacher students´ attitudes and concerns about the implementaion of IBSE in general. Beside this, the adapted SoC questionnaire provides the opportunity to analyse changes in attitudes and concerns which are caused by CPD treatment courses like we did and present in this propasel. Regarding our treatment study, we can observe a ‘positive’ development of the pre-service teacher students’ attitudes and concerns about the implementation of IBSE into practice. Furthermore, we are able to identify the typical SoC profile of a “cooperator” (according to Bitan-Friedlander et al., 2004) at the end of our treatment course. However, Hall and Hord (2011) mention that the development of attitudes and concerns can take years and depends on the attractiveness of the edu¬cational program. In contrast to the time scale, the results of our study show that it is possible to affect the participants’ atti¬tudes and concerns about the implementation of IBSE in one term. Beside this, with respect to the theory of planned behavior, there is only a high probability that the participants will implement IBSE in their future school practice, because sometimes attitudes and implementation do not coincide. Therefore, we have to analyse in further studies, in how far our pre-service teacher students really implement IBSE in their future science lessons. All in all, our results show that by means of the FUB CPD pro¬gram for pre-service science teachers it has be¬come possible to affect the participants’ atti¬tudes and concerns about the implementation of IBSE in a positive manner.

References

AAAS (2000). Inquiring into Inquiry Learning and Teaching in Science. Washington, DC. Aebli, H. (2001). Zwölf Grundformen des Lehrens. (11. Aufl.). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50(2), 179–211. Bailey, D.B., Palsha, S.A. (1992): Qualities of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire and implications for educational innovations. In: Journal of Educational Research 85, 226–232 Bitan-Friedlander, N., Dreyfus, A., & Milgrom, Z. (2004). Types of “teachers in training”: the reactions of primary school science teachers when confronted with the task of implementing an innovation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(6), 607–619. Bolte, C., Streller, S., Rannikmae, M., Holbrook, J., Hofstein, A., Mamlok Naaman, R., Rauch, F. (2012): PROFILES: Professional Reflection-Oriented Focus on Inquiry based Learning and Education through Science. Proceedings of the European Science Educational Research Association (ESERA), Lyon, France, September 2011. Hall, G. E., & Hord, S. M. (2011). Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes (3. ed.). Pearson Education. Loucks-Horsley, S., Stiles, K., & Hewson, P. (1996). Principles of effective professional development for mathematics and science education: A synthesis of standards. NISE Brief, 1(1), 1–6. Loucks-Horsley, Susan. (2003). Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. National Research Council. (2000). Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards. A Guide for Teaching and Learning. (8. Aufl.). Washington DC: National Academy Press. Pant, H. A., Vock, M., Pöhlmann, C., & Köller, O. (2008). Offenheit für Innovationen. Befunde aus einer Studie zur Rezeption der Bildungsstandards bei Lehrkräften und Zusammenhänge mit Schülerleistungen. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 54 (6), S. 827-845. Rocard, M., Csermely, P., Jorde, D., Lenzen, D., Walberg-Henriksson, H., & Hemmo, V. (2007). Science Education Now: a renewed pedagogy for the future of Europe, European Commission. Schneider, V., Bolte, C. (2011): Stages of Concern Fragebogen "Forschendes Lernen" (Stage of Concerns Questionnaire on IBSE"). FU Berlin. (Unveunpublishe Polyskript). Schneider, V., C. Bolte (2012). Professional Development regarding Stages of Concern towards Inquiry-Based Science Education. Bolte, C., Holbrook, J., & Rauch, F. (2012; eds.). Inquiry-based Science Education in Europe: Reflections from the PROFILES Project. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin. Print: University of Klagenfurt (Austria), pp. 71-74. Schreiner, C., & Sjøberg, S. (2004). ROSE: The relevance of science education. Sowing the seeds of ROSE. Acta didactica, 4.

Author Information

Claus Bolte (presenting / submitting)

Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany

Vincent Schneider