Science teacher group discussions – the forming of consensus and the exclusion of ESE related issues

Author(s):

Per Sund(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 13, ESE Implementation and Schools

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-11

11:00-12:30

Room:

X. Előadó [C]

Chair:

Leif Östman

Contribution

In environmental and sustainability education, ESE there are different interpretations about which content should be taught in school. This leads to teachers having to make decisions about how to select, structure and contextualise the content (Wickman, 2012). However, teachers are not isolated individuals making their own interpretations, but are part of different institutionalised systems. Earlier research shows that teachers teach according to different selective traditions, which can be understood as well-developed teaching habits. Individual teachers seem to develop their personal habits on the basis of the contextual situations created by earlier generations of teachers.

In order to find out which content teachers find representative for socio-scientific issues in science education which are ESE related, I asked nine teachers, representing three selective traditions, to take part in group interviews to talk about what they value as “good” content. The starting point for the discussion is national tests in science. One aim of these national tests is to include knowledge about socio-scientific issues (SSI).

The aim of this study is to determine which content teachers find representative for science education in national tests. This content issue is approached from two perspectives. The first concerns the teachers’ selection of questions from the national tests and their discussions about what constitutes good science content. The second relates to the teachers’ more open discussions about the knowledge to be learned in science education and the relation between science and social science. This relation is important to study when science teachers teaching environmental issues also are supposed to include more ESE issues according to the new Swedish curriculum. These perspectives form the starting point for discussions about what counts as good science related content. This quest is formulated in two research questions:

What is significant in the individual teacher’s selection of content?

What are the significant differences in the group discussions representative scientific content?

As such, the research intends to contribute to a discussion about teachers’ selective traditions in terms of content selection can that this can be understood as situated. It also contributes to the debate about policy intentions in relation to how teachers do policy.

In this study, teaching traditions are theoretically approached as teachers’ habitual ways of arguing or acting. According to John Dewey (1922), an analysis of such habits does not mean comparing simple repetitive actions, but rather looking at more complex actions that are fruitful in everyday hectic teaching situations. These habits are acquired and continuously developed as a result of encounters between earlier and current experiences. Individuals develop their personal habits on the basis of the contextual situations created by earlier generations of teachers, in school and in teacher education as students, or by following one of the disciplinary traditions in their university studies. Dewey’s (1922) discussion of individual habits, and their interplay with a collective level (for example institutionalised disciplinary traditions), seems to be an accurate description of how selective traditions in teaching evolve and are consolidated in the school system.

The theoretical framework is developed from earlier research (Sund, forthcoming; Sund & Wickman, 2011) and Östman’s study (1995) of dominating discourses in science education.

Method

The study reported in this article is part of a three-year project designed to examine teachers’ teaching traditions. Examples of earlier sub-projects include an online enquiry with some 400 secondary science teachers (Lidar et al., Forthcoming) and an interview study of the selective traditions of twenty-nine teachers (Sund, Forthcoming). In this study, nine teachers working mainly within three different selective traditions were asked to discuss questions selected from the national tests. The tests are compulsory and the teachers regard them as very important, which makes them eager to participate. At the same time, the occurrence of questions relating to societal issues and value-laden applications sometimes challenges their views of what ‘good’ science content is. This research design encourages teachers to discuss which knowledge should be included in the tests. The main data was collected by means of three group interviews, each lasting approximately 75 minutes. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed. The empirical material consists of three group interviews with nine secondary school teachers from different schools with teaching experiences varying from 5-18 years (average ten years). The formation of A, B and C groups align with the results in Sund (forthcoming), but also with findings in the initial online enquiry conducted in the same project (Lidar et al., Forthcoming). After interviews with twenty-nine teachers in an earlier study, three from each of the categories A, B and C were asked to take part in a focus-group interview. Consequently, teachers in group A work mainly within same selective tradition and are given names starting with the letter A. The same type of logic is applied to groups B and C. The initial idea behind this selection is that it could strengthen the teachers’ prime/original views of which science content should be prioritised in science education, and enhance the discernment of selective traditions in more detail. The study is carried out in two parts: firstly through an individual task to select questions from the tests and argue for this selection in the group discussion, and secondly to analyse the teachers’ general discussions about the questions and assessment guidelines pertaining to the curriculum. The analysis is carried out as follows. Four analytical questions are used inspired by analytical questions used in earlier studies of selective traditions in environmental and sustainability education research (Sund, 2008). The questions are slightly modified to better adapt to the current discussions about science content.

Expected Outcomes

In the first part of this study, the individual science teachers choose the science content according to the earlier categorisation illustrated in a selective traditions sub-study (Sund, Forthcoming). The analysis shows a diversity between the interview groups, but that the teachers’ selection questions seems to be consistent in one and the same group. This result shows that when selecting questions individually, teachers’ choices are aligned to their prior focus on content selection. In the second part all the teachers regard the inclusion of societal issues in the tests as problematic, in that they do not really characterise science but instead focus on values. The result in this step clearly points towards an anthropocentric worldview, a positivistic culture and utilism within science. There are minor differences between the three interview groups’ discussions about the relation between science and the social sciences. To summarise, individually the teachers choose content according to their earlier preferences and their work within a specific selective teaching tradition. The teachers’ group discussions also tend to lean towards one particular tradition, namely the science disciplinary tradition. Teachers working in this tradition continue to promote the scientific rational discourse, which has dominated science education in Sweden at least since the early 1960s (Östman, 1996). In group discussions the institutionalised traditions appear to become stronger. Traditionally, in-service training is often claimed to be most effectively done in reflective teacher groups (Cordingley, Bell, Rundell, Evans, & Curtis, 2003). However, the result of this study indicates that the teacher group context can be an environment that keeps teachers within the collective disciplinary traditions. The ‘loss of content diversity’ in the teachers’ group discussions risks excluding SSI rather than including them. This is a serious consideration, given that SSI are stressed in Swedish policy and incorporated into the new curriculum and national tests.

References

Cordingley, P., Bell, M., Rundell, B., Evans, D., & Curtis, A. (2003). The impact of collaborative continuing professional development (CPD) on classroom teaching and learning. How does collaborative Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers of the 5-16 age range affect teaching and learning? http://wsassets.s3.amazonaws.com/ws/nso/pdf/09598003e49523abff794962e2752c81.pdf Dewey, J. (1922). Human Nature and Conduct: an Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: Holt. Lidar, M., Karlberg, M., Almqvist, J., Lundqvist, E., & Östman, L. (Forthcoming). Manner of teaching and teaching traditions in Science Education: What do teachers emphasize? Sund, P. (2008). Discerning the extras in ESD teaching: A democratic issue. In J. Öhman (Ed.), Values and Democracy in Education for Sustainable Development - Contributions from Swedish Research (pp. 57-74). Stockholm: Liber. Sund, P. (Forthcoming). Selective traditions science teaching: An issue in national testing? . Sund, P., & Wickman, P.-O. (2011). Socialization Content in Schools and Education for Sustainable Development - I. A study of Teachers’ Selective Traditions. Environmental Education Research, 17(5), 599-624. Wickman, P.-O. (2012). How can conceptual schemes change teaching? Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7, 127-136. Östman, L. (1995). Socialisation och mening: no-utbildning som politiskt och miljömoraliskt problem [Meaning and socialisation. Science education as a political and environmental-ethical problem]. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Östman, L. (1996). Discourses, discursive meanings and socialization in chemistry education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28(1)

Author Information

Per Sund (presenting / submitting)

Mälardalen university

The academy of education, culture and communication

Eskilstuna

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