Session Information
27 SES 06 A, Manners of Teaching in Science Education and Physical Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The context for this study is a five-year comparative project aiming at identifying selective traditions within school science in Sweden, Switzerland, and France. The ambition is to identify differences and similarities between the traditions concerning teaching and learning, and on the basis of that knowledge develop more effective and fruitful teaching approaches together with teachers. The project builds on comparative didactics (Mercier, Schubauer-Leoni & Sensevy 2002) and a pragmatist approach to teaching and learning (Wickman & Östman 2002).
Selective traditions are previously known from Östman’s (1996) analyses of textbooks and curricula in Sweden during 1960-2000 and have also been highlighted by Lidar et.al. (forthcoming) in an on-line survey with teachers and by Lundqvist & Sund (in press) drawing on interviews with Swedish science teachers. From these studies, three distinct traditions emerge, the academic, the applied and the moral. These traditions span from a focus on scientific discipline content (academic) to high-lighting that education also must include knowledge and skills that enable pupils to apply scientific knowledge in everyday situations (applied) or in existential, moral and political contexts (moral).
Moreover, selective traditions in science education are related to a number of curriculum emphases (Roberts 1982, Östman 1996) that answer the question why students should learn specific areas of knowledge. The concept of curriculum emphases was introduced by Roberts (1982) to identify and describe the regularity within the epistemological dimension in teaching. Analysing science syllabuses and science textbooks, Roberts (in North America) and Östman (1996) (in Sweden) found seven different curriculum emphases in science education. The academic tradition includes the following five curriculum emphases; Correct explanation, Solid foundation, Scientific skills development, The structure of science and Self as explainer The applied tradition involves, besides the emphases introduced above, Everyday coping. Finally, the moral tradition also includes the curriculum emphasis Science and decisions.
A more recent way of analysing choice of content in science education is through the concept of organizing purposes (Johansson & Wickman 2011). The concept distinguishes between two kinds of purposes which organize teachers’ and students’ actions in the classroom. Ultimate purposes encompass that which the students should be able to do (i.e., learn) after teacher has finished, and are closely tied to official curricula. Proximate purposes are those that the teacher gives the students as they work their way towards the ultimate purposes, that is, the concrete activities in the classroom. Even within the same subject area, learning will progress differently depending on how the teacher selects to combine different ultimate and proximate purposes. Moreover, the choice of ultimate and proximate purposes will differ between different selective traditions.
Teachers, as humans generally, are no “copies” of traditions, but as Munby & Russel (1992) put it, neither are they unaffected by historical traditions. Rather, teachers display regularities in the ways they teach, which Munby and Roberts (1998) called manners of teaching. There are of course strong connections between an individual teacher’s manner of teaching and the identified historical selective traditions. The purpose of this paper is to present an explorative case study in which we put the above mentioned theoretical concepts to didactic use, as tools for describing teachers’ manners of teaching. By doing so, we hope to develop ways for teachers to more specifically communicate their choices, and thereby also make more specific and informed changes to their manners of teaching.
Our research question is:
How can six Swedish middle-school science teachers’ manners of teaching be characterized through the concepts of organizing purposes, curriculum emphases and selective traditions?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Johansson, A.-M. & Wickman, P.-O. (2011). A pragmatist approach to learning progressions. In B. Hudson & M.A. Meyer (Eds.), Beyond Fragmantation. Didactics, Learning and teaching. (pp. 47-59). Leverkusen, Germany: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Lidar, M., Karlberg, M., Lundqvist, E., Almqvist, J. & Östman, L. (forthcoming). Teaching traditions and national tests: How do science teachers respond when standardized tests are introduced in their subject areas? Sent to Journal of curriculum studies. Lundqvist, E. & Sund, P. (in press). Selective traditions in group discussions – teachers’ views of what counts as good science. Sent to Cultural studies of science education. Mercier, A., Schubauer-Leoni, M. L., & Sensevy, Gérard. (2002). Vers une didactique comparée. Revue Française de Pédagogie, 141(Numéro thématique), 5-16. Munby, H. & Roberts D. A. (1998). Intellectual independence: A potential link between science teaching and responsible citizenship. In D.A. Roberts & L. Östman (Eds.), Problems of Meaning in Science Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Munby, H., & Russell,T. (1992). Frames of reflection: an introduction. In T. Russel & H. Munby (Eds.), Teachers and teaching: From classroom to reflection. London: The Falmer Press. Roberts, D. A. (1982): Developing the concept of “curriculum emphases”. Science Education, 62, 2, 243-260. Wickman, P.-O., & Östman, L. (2002). Learning as discourse change: A sociocultural mechanism. Science Education, 86; 601-623. Östman, L. (1996). Discourse, discursive meanings and socialization in chemistry education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28 (1); 37-55.
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