Session Information
27 SES 08 A, Gender and Didactics: From Curricula to Classroom Practices
Symposium
Contribution
Over the past couple of decades, school science and science education research has been characterised by a broadened interpretation of science, by inclusion of e.g. socio-scientific issues, partly in response to a declining science interest among young people (Kelly & Sezen 2010; Leach & Scott 2003). Whether such a transformation of what constitutes science also has had impact on science teacher education is an open question. The aim of this paper is to explore the borderline between the academic science disciplines and their school subject counterparts, as represented in teacher education, in terms of how science epistemology, content, and practice are reproduced and transformed when biologists, physicists, and chemists teach student teachers. The project´s primary means of data collection are observations and interviews. University science teachers have been observed/’shadowed’ during teaching and various other activities. Following the observations, individual and focus group interviews will be conducted. The analysis makes use of the method of cultural contrast, which allows for contrasting between the science disciplines (Hasse & Trentemøller 2009). In order to allow for a more nuanced exploration of, in particular, how the epistemologies of the sciences are transformed in the meeting with teacher education, but also how the science disciplines are represented in speech and practice, the method of culture contrast will be complemented with theoretical insights from philosophers of science with their disciplinary background in science, for example, the physicist Barad (2007), the biologists Haraway (1991), Keller (2002) and Longino (Keller & Longino 1996), and the chemist Stengers (Bensaude-Vincent & Stengers 1997). They have, from feminist perspectives in conjunction with their strong disciplinary belongings, problematized science practice and knowledge. For our proposed project, their focus on gender as an analytical category becomes particularly pertinent in the meeting between the strongly gendered practices of teacher education and science. In the symposium preliminary results from observations will be presented. By analysing how the sciences are transformed in the meeting between university science teachers and student teachers the projects seeks to contribute to new and deepened knowledge about how science content and culture are manifested in teacher education, thereby informing a more inclusive teaching in the disciplines. Authors : Kristina Andersson, Anna Danielsson, Anita Hussénius, Annica Gullberg, Maja Elmgren, Susanne Engström, Martha Blomqvist, Kathryn Scantlebury, & Cathrine Hasse
References
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press Books: Durham. Bensaude-Vincent, B., & Stengers, I. (1997). A History of Chemistry. Harvard University Press. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. Hasse, C., & Trentemøller, S. (2009). The method of culture contrast. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 6(1-2), 46-66. Kelly, G.J., & Sezen, A. (2010). Activity, discourse & meaning. Some directions for science education. In W.-M. Roth (ed.) Re/Structuring Science Education: ReUniting Sociological and Psychological Perspectives (pp. 39-52). Dortrecht: Springer Netherlands. Keller, E.F. & Longino, H.E. (1996). Feminism and science. Oxford University Press. Keller, E.F. (2002). Making sense of life: explaining biological development with models, metaphors, and machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leach, J. & Scott, P. (2003). Individual and sociocultural views of learning in science education. Science & Education, 12, 91-113.
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