Approaches towards Quality in Practice-Oriented ...

Approaches towards Quality in Practice-Oriented Research in Science Education Ingo Eilks, Bernd Ralle, Albert Pilot, and Nicos Valanides The symposium on "Quality in Practice-Oriented Research in Science Education" attracted researchers and practitioners from eleven different European countries and Israel. The presentations and the discussions following them provided strong indications regarding the progress of science education and the professional development of teachers. In this book, the contributions to the Symposium are made available for further discussion and use by teachers and researchers, who need to work together for a higher quality of science education.

Participants of the symposium visiting the former colliery ‘Zeche Zollern’ in Dortmund

The presentations and discussions focused on new approaches and projects in practice-oriented research in science education, and investigated their potential contributions towards solving existing problems in science classrooms and improving the quality of science teaching based on research evidence. Starting from a diversity B. Ralle & I. Eilks (eds.): Quality in practice-oriented research in science education, 167-170 © 2004, Shaker, Aachen, Germany

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of points of view, experiences, and approaches, the participants unanimously agreed on some important issues. The Symposium addressed again some of the main issues that were identified during the previous Dortmund Symposium in 2002, that is, the need to invest in pre- and in-service teacher training and teachers’ professional development in general, because teachers were unanimously considered by the participants as the main factor and catalyst for change and quality improvement in science teaching and learning. The first point of focus in this Symposium was how to involve science teachers as designers of learning environments for specific groups of students. Consequently, the second point of focus was the teachers as learners: How to stimulate teachers in terms of their own professional development and how to involve them in the generation of new forms of pedagogical content knowledge. From this perspective, teachers should be guided to interpret, specify and translate their knowledge, ideas, beliefs and experiences into constructivistic learning environments taking into careful consideration students’ prior knowledge, stages of development, and capabilities that constitute the main components of the knowledge base for teaching. From the presentations and discussions, it was clear that this approach has high potential to really transform the existing science education, but also that it will only be successful with highly qualified teachers and their extended involvement in its implementation. From this perspective, teachers should become partners in the development of new, research-based science education, where evidence in terms of learning outcomes and data on the learning process is always fed back and used to analyse and enhance the learning and teaching processes that were initially designed and implemented. A number of contributions to this book report about work on this issue. They show that this cyclic process should be repeated several times and usually creates new forms of pedagogical content knowledge and supports extensive professional development of teachers. Within the symposium, results from a number of projects following a diversity of research orientations have been presented and discussed. These projects were based on different approaches, e. g., action research (teacher-centred, collaborative, or participatory), Developmental Research, Teachers’ Learning Communities, and the concept of Content Focussed Coaching. All these approaches have a principle in common: sharing experiences with colleagues and researchers, and examining these from different perspectives. This principle is considered to be a very effective way for disseminating more fruitful practices and getting new insights related to the process of teaching and learning. These informed insights and shared understandings shape the practices of individual teachers and researchers. The Symposium contributed significantly towards generating new interest and insights concerning the potential outcomes of these approaches. The classical topdown approaches of innovations in science education have limited potential and cannot instigate real and effective changes in science teaching and learning. Teachers’ involvement in the design and implementation of curriculum reform and research appears to give promise for really transforming science learning and teaching. The conditions for these approaches are that effective mechanisms for a sustained cooperation among teachers, curriculum developers, researchers, and other 168

Reflections from the symposium

stakeholders should be developed and successfully implemented. Within these complex interactions, the researchers should help teachers to contribute to this process by realising and registering their contributions to the research process. Another important issue in this framework is to reflect how to ensure quality. To achieve positive results from practice-oriented research approaches, there is need of high quality methods of evaluation. It appeared very worthwhile to discuss in the symposium several research tools for this purpose, e. g., video- and audio observations, group discussions, interviews, or portfolios. Needless to mention that any approach aiming at change has to start from current practices of teachers and has to pay considerable attention to their prevailing knowledge and their practical and professional needs. It also appears to be beneficial and interesting to take into consideration students and their subjective perspectives in terms of classroom practices and outcomes. Students are in most cases real experts in evaluating classroom activities and their potential influence on learning outcomes and attitudes towards science teaching is important. Science teachers and researchers have to take this perspective into account seriously. Different contributions from related research coming from this orientation were discussed and ways for integrating related research evidence into different approaches, such as, different forms of action research, Developmental Research or Content Focussed Coaching, were exemplified. It was also intensively discussed how to involve more fully teachers in this unified approaches in terms of their professional development and the expected effects of such approaches. These aspects had been discussed based on research evidence and curriculum development practices. There was unanimous conclusion that by involving teachers in their own professional development the stage is set for genuine collaboration among teachers, researchers, and curriculum developers. Thus, teachers are not considered any more as passive consumers of research outcomes and implementers of curriculum materials developed by specialists without their involvement. By involving teachers in the design and implementation of research and curriculum development, they become partners in development and research, and initiators of their own professional development. Teachers appeared to accept responsibility and ownership for a sustained interaction and cooperation with researchers and curriculum developers that points to a way out of the recent inappropriate paradigms of professional development. Sustained interaction and genuine collaboration among teachers, researchers, and other related stakeholders promises to provide new and rich information about effective ways to develop meaningful and effective pedagogical content knowledge through active involvement of the teachers themselves. The outcomes of several international studies, such as TIMSS and PISA, provide the justifications for renewed efforts to design and implement sustainable educational changes. These innovations should have the potential to transform the monotony and the boredom that seem to dominate classroom practices all over the world. We live in a society that will be progressively dominated by science and technology. The goal for an informed and scientifically literate citizenry justifies systematic and continuous efforts that will transform science teaching and learning in ways that will make 169

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science teaching and learning a relevant, interesting and challenging activity to design really powerful learning environments, where communities of learners among students, teachers, researchers, and others will become an educational norm and not an infrequent exception. Thus, looking back on the symposium there is hope that two promising trends mirrored in the presentations will become more influential in the future: The first trend is that in the new developments science teachers will become more and more the owners of the educational process and content. They are conceived to be a crucial factor in the design and development of new forms of learning, not merely as the ones who apply ‘instant’ curricula and deliver the content to the students. The influence of the state government as a decisive factor in the regulations of teaching through national examinations is diminishing. Also the position of the publishers who for many years through the school textbooks were in fact deciding what was taught and how it was taught in the classroom becomes from this perspective less influential. What will be the position of the researchers of science education and the teachers of science teachers? They will probably become consultants and partners of (the networks of) teachers in the schools. They will no longer instruct teachers how to teach; they will help them to learn about their own practice and how to improve it. This aims on getting ownership for their own practice and innovations. Thus, the process towards ownership on the new courses developed by the teachers and the schools will become a major issue. It is interesting and stimulating to recognize that some results are already visible in groups of teachers for some time are working on similar developments. There is hope that there will be more results in the future. But, the evaluations also show that the learning process of teachers and teams takes considerable time. The second trend is researchers again are focusing on a fundamental dilemma in the learning of chemistry: We need the context for motivating the children and relating science to the world they live in. But, the concepts and theories of chemistry are abstract and fundamental, these are scientific concepts that are built upon other concepts and grounded in a world children cannot see, feel or smell. The connection between the contexts and the concepts is a difficult one for educational designers, because most educational specialists are not acquainted with chemistry and do not recognise the problem. For those with a chemistry background, it appears difficult to see the problem, because they are so well acquainted with the abstract thinking in chemical concepts that they do not understand how strange that kind of thinking is. Teachers feel that dilemma or at least have to deal with its consequences. Focusing on this dilemma, new strategies for meaningful chemistry education, restructuring the relations between contexts and concepts were reported. The strategies are aiming at bringing concepts and contexts together in attractive, coherent and constructivist learning environments based on student-active teaching methods that connect both like the way a zip fastener connects its two parts into one and strong unit.

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