Problematizing the Practicum to Integrate Practical

Res Sci Educ DOI 10.1007/s11165-014-9404-3

Problematizing the Practicum to Integrate Practical Knowledge Wayne Melville & Todd Campbell & Xavier Fazio & Antonio Stefanile & Nicholas Tkaczyk

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract This article examines the influence of a practicum teaching experience on two preservice science teachers. The research is focused on examining a practicum in a secondary science department that actively promotes the teaching and learning of science as inquiry. We investigated the process through which the pre-service science teachers integrated their practical knowledge, and examined this in the context of the quantified reformed instruction they enacted. Using a mixed methods design, we have quantified these pre-service science teachers’ practice using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (Piburn et al. 2000), in concert with a narrative methodology drawn from in-depth interviews. Our analysis of the data indicates two important conclusions. The first is the importance of a consistently reformed image of science education being presented and practiced by both science teacher educators and cooperating teachers. The second is the recognition that a consistently reformed image may not be sufficient, of itself, to challenge pre-service teachers’ views of science education. Pre-service teachers appear to be heavily influenced by their biographies and own science education. Consequently, it appears the extent to which a pre-service teacher identifies problems of teaching and learning, and then works toward possible resolution, influences their progress in shaping reformed views of science education. Keywords Practical knowledge . Practicum . Pre-service teaching

Introduction Pre-service teachers on practicum inhabit an awkward place, dwelling ‘in two uncertain worlds: they are being educated as a student while educating others as a teacher’ (Britzman 2003, p. 228). For pre-service science teachers, being educated as a student brings with it an W. Melville : A. Stefanile : N. Tkaczyk Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada T. Campbell (*) University of Connecticut, 249 Glenbrook Rd, Unit 3033, Storrs, CT 06269-3033, USA e-mail: [email protected] X. Fazio Brock University, Catharines, Canada

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added complication. The continuing press for teaching science as inquiry stressed in earlier standards documents (National Research Council [NRC] 1996) and more recently evolving into the science practices (NRC 2012) has yet to substantively transform school and undergraduate science education, leaving many pre-service teachers with a traditional view of science and science education (Tytler 2007). This view tends to be reinforced by pre-service teachers’ experiences with science in everyday life (van Driel et al. 2001). Traditional views of science and science education stand in contrast to inquiry or science practices, which we define as both content, in terms of the understandings and abilities that students should develop, and the processes of learning that accompany teaching and assessment strategies oriented towards inquiry. This definition is grounded in the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996, p. 23): Inquiry is a multifaceted activity that involves making observations; posing questions; examining books and other sources of information to see what is already known; planning investigations; reviewing what is already known in light of experimental evidence; using tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data; proposing answers, explanations, and predictions; and communicating the results. Inquiry requires identification of assumptions, use of critical and logical thinking, and consideration of alternative explanations. The concern with pre-service teachers’ biography—their ‘cumulative social experience’ (Britzman 1986, p. 446)—is critical. Biography shapes pre-service teachers’ understanding of their students’ learning, school organization, and the curriculum. In short, their biography is their ‘frame of reference’ for becoming a teacher (Britzman 1986, p. 443). This explains why beginning teachers’ default position is to teach as they were taught, but learning to teach is more than dealing with the immediacy of the classroom. There is a constraining tension here, often unacknowledged, between past biography and the demands of learning to teach. As Britzman (1986, p. 443) states, the pre-service teacher ‘must try to understand his or her own institutional biography, as it is evoked by the return to classroom life, while at the same time educating others and learning the teacher's world’. If this tension remains unacknowledged, and hence unchallenged, the result for teacher learning is to ‘propel the cultural reproduction of authoritarian teaching practices and naturalize the contexts which generate such a cycle’ (Britzman 1986, p. 443). Turning specifically to science education, pre-service teachers who accept the challenge of teaching inquiry on practicum potentially face a range of tensions: an inadequate understanding of inquiry; a limited conception of the nature of science and a consequent constraint on their potential teaching repertoire; insufficient substantive and syntactic content knowledge; limited experience with the range of inquiry-based approaches; and limited experience with the pursuit of inquiry (Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman 2000; Harris et al. 2005; Campbell and Bohn 2008; Windschitl 2002; Zacharia 2003). Additionally, the context through which pre-service science teachers draw on to learn about and develop as teachers of science as inquiry also brings with it a range of tensions. This is seen as traditional school settings that afford sparse opportunities for apprenticeships in inquiry-based science teaching (Sykes and Bird 1992), have offered pre-service teachers very few to no experiences in scientific investigations as learners in their own schooling (c.f., Crawford 1999), and provide a model of practice that is out of step with reform-minded educational theory from teacher education programs that pre-service teachers are working to reconcile in their preparation to become teachers (Leuhman, 2007). This concern for pre-service teachers’ biography and formal education is important, as the early development of teachers’ practical knowledge is a dynamic integration of their education, their biography, and the context in which they are teaching (van Driel et al. 2001). Further, the

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process of integration is not well understood, as researchers ‘only minimally understand how teachers integrate knowledge from different sources into the conceptual frameworks that guide their actions in practice’ (van Driel et al. 2001, p. 142). One key aspect to the development of practical knowledge around inquiry is that it is necessary that it be developed through engagement with inquiry practice (Eick and Dias 2005). This engagement includes preservice teachers learning a range of strategies that support the teaching of inquiry. These strategies include, among others, the capacity to effectively lead students to construct conceptual understandings through data-gathering activities, demonstrations, discussions, and questioning (Eick and Dias 2005). Pre-service teachers also require practice in recognizing, and managing, the difficulties associated with operationalizing inquiry within the classroom (Baker et al. 2002). Experiences supportive of inquiry are crucial in developing ‘these teaching skills and the practical knowledge to effectively implement them’ (Eick and Dias 2005, p. 471). Given the importance of both pre-service teachers’ personal biography and experiences with inquiry, for the purpose of this research, like Beijaard et al. (2000), we have defined and used biography as the past personal life experiences of teachers, which include critical incidences that have shaped their lives and that, consequently, shape their work as a teacher. Examples of biographical influences include experiences in education, family life, or any dramatic event that is uniquely personal and local to the teacher. Hence, while we have included education as part of biography, we have taken special care to tease out specific educational experiences of inquiry. In addition to biography and inquiry, the context of the practicum is critical to the development of inquiry-centered practical knowledge. In our previous work (Melville and Wallace 2007) we asserted that a science department that functions as a community, engaging its members in the teaching and learning of inquiry, has a primary role in assisting pre-service teachers’ development as teachers of inquiry. In asserting this primacy of the department, we do not infer that all members of the community will share identical images of science or science education (c.f. Wildy and Wallace 2004). The particular strength of departments as communities is their identification with the subject (Siskin 1994). This identification is crucial, as continual improvement that ‘stimulates real and lasting gains in student achievement depends on teachers being able to work together in strong professional communities’ (Hargreaves 2002, p. 404). A department operating as a community, therefore, can effectively realize an organizational consensus as to the meanings that attach to science and inquiry. Developing a consensus is important for ongoing professional learning, as it allows for the establishment of clear goals for student learning (Talbert 2002). This is an important consideration for pre-service teachers, as evidence of the development of practical knowledge is to be found when pre-service teachers’ concerns begin to shift from themselves and the technical aspects of teaching to concerns for their students’ learning (Eick and Dias 2005). Unless a department has established those goals, then pre-service teachers ‘who have not personally experienced reform-based science education are likely to lack buy-in and confidence in the new approach … and images of what good science teaching will conflict with some of the tenets of inquiry-based science teaching’ (Luehmann 2007, p. 826). In this article, we focus on the practicum experiences of two pre-service teachers who are working in a science department that has developed inquiry as an overarching teaching philosophy. We do this at a time when science practices, evolving from earlier research on inquiry, are becoming a focus in science education standards documents (NRC, 2012). This shift is occurring as a way to more clearly articulate what is meant by inquiry in science, as well as the range of cognitive, social, and physical practices that it requires (NRC, 2012). Therefore, we acknowledge the shifting landscape here, but because this research occurred prior to these recent shifts, especially with respect to the extent the science department and pre-

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service science teachers were introduced to the evolved focus on science practices, we have maintained a focus on inquiry for this research, both in using research on inquiry as a platform for the current investigation and as foundational to the evolving shifts toward a science practices focus. Consequently, our purpose was to consider the process of integration of preservice science teachers’ biography, education, and context into the practical knowledge they develop and enact (mis)aligned to reform-minded instruction during their practicum. These are significant purposes, as the recognition of the importance of community support for the development of practical knowledge may encourage further work into the role of context in shaping reform-minded teachers at a crucial early point in their careers.

Teachers’ Practical Knowledge Teachers’ practical knowledge is more than just knowing: it also incorporates aspects of the human experience such as ‘feeling, judging, willing, and action’ (Duffee and Aikenhead 1992, p. 494). As such, it is integrated from a variety of sources, from life experiences and beliefs to formal education and the contemporary context of teaching, and is in a dynamic state of flux. For the purposes of this article, we are interested in pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge; how it is integrated in situ in the classroom, as well as how it is influenced by their education, biographies, and the context in which they are found teaching within their practicum experiences. Especially, in the context of this research (i.e., a science department that functions as a community, engaging its members in the teaching and learning of inquiry) we are interested in how community support, appropriated by the members of a science department committed to teaching science as inquiry, influences the development of practical knowledge, especially the extent to which it may be able to support the shaping of inquiry-minded pre-service teachers at a crucial early point in their careers. By establishing a supportive context through co-teaching and co-generative dialogue, Scantlebury et al. (2008), demonstrated that pre-service teachers could develop both cultural capital (learning to teach science) and social capital (the social networks that underpin teacher learning). Similarly, Luft et al. (2003) reported that sciencefocused support for beginning teachers increased their use of, and disposition towards, inquirybased teaching. Research such as this makes it clear that supportive contexts, with their emphasis on action, are important in the development of teachers’ practical knowledge. Consequently, we accept the characteristics of the salient features of practical knowledge expounded by van Driel et al (2001, p. 142). These characteristics include: 1 It is action-oriented, accumulated on the basis of experience and available for immediate use in practice. 2 It is context- and person-bound, allowing teachers to achieve personally valuable goals. The context of the teaching experience is broadly inclusive, incorporating both physical and cultural components. The teacher’s disciplinary background is significant in shaping their response to the context. 3 It is largely tacit knowledge: Sockett (1993, p. 47) describes this tacit form of knowledge as being demonstrated when ‘someone knows how to do when—not merely spontaneously’. This characteristic also makes the sharing of such knowledge difficult. 4 It is a form of integrated knowledge, combining aspects of biography and education through the context of the educational experience. 5 Beliefs are important, acting as a filter on what new knowledge is integrated into the individual teacher’s practical knowledge. These beliefs are heavily influenced by their biography.

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An important consideration for pre-service teachers is the extent to which the elements of their practical knowledge are not integrated: ‘the novice is someone who perceives the unfamiliar teaching situation in terms of discrete elements and, in making use of new skills and knowledge, relies on rules rather than an integrated vision of practice’ (Timperley et al. 2007, p. 11). A potent source of this conflict is pre-service teachers’ (often deeply held) beliefs around science and science education colliding with the press for practices that support inquiry. Given this, it is simply not realistic to expect pre-service teachers to integrate the elements of practical knowledge during their practicum. In this article, therefore, we are considering the process by which this nascent integration proceeds, and how it is enacted in the classroom during the practicum context. For this, the following research question is used to guide our investigation: In what ways do pre-service science teachers integrate inquiry-based reform-minded instruction during the practicum experience and how are those pedagogies supported by these teachers’ biographies, education and context (i.e., specifically the practicum teaching experience and being mentored in an inquiry-centered department)?

The Practicum Context The importance of the context to the integration of teachers’ practical knowledge cannot be understated. To be supportive of integration, the context must be simultaneously cognitively oriented and attend to the sociocultural needs of teachers: The physical and social contexts in which an activity takes place are an integral part of the activity, and the activity is an integral part of the learning that takes place within it. How a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills and the situation in which a person learns become a fundamental part of what is learned (Putnam & Borko 2000, p. 4). For pre-service teachers engaged in the practicum experience, a number of factors are in operation that may help, or hinder, the integration of their practical knowledge. The first is time, which in practica is limited. The two pre-service teachers that are the focus of this article were on the second of two 5-week practica during their teacher education course. van Driel et al. (2001, p. 149) argue that substantive change requires ‘at least a semester to several academic years’, while Lotter et al. (2009, p. 554) note that: ‘beginning teachers especially need time to develop situated knowledge … through field experiences that help them move from concerns with self and classroom procedures to concerns with student learning and reform-based pedagogies’. The development of the inquiry philosophy by the department in this article is still a work in progress after more than a decade (c.f. Melville and Bartley 2010). If pre-service teachers are to begin integrating the elements of their practical knowledge around inquiry while they continue to learn about them, then there is a need for ‘practicum experiences that provide for true practice with reform-based pedagogies in supportive nonevaluative environments’ (Lotter et al. 2009, p. 558). It stands to reason that if cooperating teachers do not utilize innovative practices, then their pre-service teachers will also be limited in learning about and practicing these pedagogies. As Sykes and Bird (1992, p. 501) state: ‘If the aim of teacher education is a reformed practice that is not readily available, and if there is no reinforcing culture to support such practice, then the basic imagery of apprenticeship seems to break down’. Closely related to this, is a need for the practicum to model, support, and scaffold a range of inquiry strategies (Eick and Dias 2005). This is particularly important when

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the major concern of pre-service teachers tend to be the technical aspects of teaching. Abd-ElKhalick et al. (1998) have reported that concerns around classroom management and content coverage, among other things, hinder pre-service teachers’ incorporation of inquiry-based strategies into their teaching repertoires.

Methodology Context and Participants The Methods Courses and Practicum The majority of the pre-service secondary teachers in our science methods courses enter a consecutive 1-year Bachelor of Education with an undergraduate science degree, usually in the biological sciences, and a minimum course average of 73 %. There are also a number of concurrent education students who have completed the requirements for a science degree and maintained a course average of at least 70 %. Based on their undergraduate degree, secondary pre-service teachers must select two teachable areas that are approved by the Ontario College of Teachers. The elective science methods courses correspond to these areas. The available methods courses over the last 7 years have been biology, general science, chemistry, and physics. The entry requirement to the first methods course is five full-course-equivalent science courses in the undergraduate degree, and the second methods course requires three full-course-equivalent science courses. Pre-service teachers can choose two science methods courses if they meet the entry requirements. Both the participants in this study came into the course having completed science undergraduate degrees and took biology and chemistry as their two methods courses. All the full-year secondary science methods courses are taught from an inquiry perspective. This means that pre-service teachers engage with a range of structured, guided, and open inquiries (c.f. Colburn 2004), and reflect on the nature of science, scientific inquiry, and the challenges of science teaching. These reflections are operationalized in a number of ways: classroom discourse, writing on their beliefs and experiences, the integration of theory and practice, and seminars with teachers from local secondary schools. The open inquiry engages the pre-service teachers in developing, and conducting, their own research project, and then reflecting on the pedagogical issues associated with the research process. (c.f. Melville et al. 2012, 2013) Starting in September, pre-service teachers initially attend 9 weeks of classes, which cover both their methods courses and a number of foundational education courses. In early November, the pre-service teachers enter their first practicum, under the guidance of a university-approved cooperating teacher. To become eligible for consideration by the university, these teachers must be selected by their department chair and then approved by the school principal. The base criteria for acceptance are a minimum of 2 years teaching and certification by the provincial teachers’ organization. There is an orientation meeting that covers the role and responsibilities of the position, and these are detailed in a university-supplied guidebook. The broad requirement for a cooperating teacher is to encourage, guide, and provide a model of reflective professional practice. Each cooperating teacher conducts a formative assessment by the end of the third week and a summative evaluation at the end of the practicum. The preservice teacher signs off on both assessments. The second semester commences in January, with the second practicum (our focus in this article) commencing in March and running for 5 weeks. The second practicum is always at a different school.

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The structure for both practica is the same: the difference is in the progress that is expected with increasing classroom experience. When on practicum, pre-service teachers are expected to observe their cooperating teachers’ classes for the first week, and from there gradually assume more responsibility for teaching for the remaining 4 weeks. How that assumption of responsibility occurs is open to negotiation between the Cooperating and pre-service teacher. Pre-service teachers are also expected to participate in the life of the department. This structure is the same for both the first and second practica. Both of the participants taught a range of science classes on their first practicum. The criteria for assessing the pre-service teachers’ practicum experience are the extent to which the individual exhibits professionalism, independence, and competence. The standards that cooperating teachers use for assessing professionalism are drawn from the Ontario College of Teachers’ (2000) Ethical Standards for the Teaching Profession and Standards of Practice. Independence is assessed on the extent to which a pre-service teacher can plan lessons and units that reflect curriculum expectations; deliver lessons using a variety of strategies; collect assessment data in a variety of ways; evaluate and report on student achievement of the Ministry of Education’s learning expectations; and learning skills with respect to their strengths, areas for growth, and next steps for professional learning. Competence is demonstrated in both classroom teaching and the extent to which the preservice teacher can draw pertinent information from curriculum documents, understand the ways in which curriculum documents are to be addressed in teaching, work with students, develop and organize lesson plans (with guidance and/or assistance in the first practicum, and independently in the second practicum), and develop and deliver a unit plan (again with guidance and/or assistance in the first practicum and independently in the second practicum). Part of the assessment process is for pre-service teachers to regularly write reflections on their experiences and then invite, and document ideas, for improvement suggested by the cooperating teacher. Given this requirement, the criteria for independence and competence become an important vehicle for engaging preservice teachers in to this departments’ focus on inquiry. The Department Situated in a middle class residential area of the city, the school has approximately 1100 students from grades 9 to 12, and serves a wide range of socio-economic groups. Within the student body, 7 % are in the essential/workplace stream, 67 % are in the applied/college level stream, and 26 % are in the academic/university level stream (all figures 2010). What makes this particular department of interest is the well-developed departmental philosophy of inquiry teaching. The development of this philosophy, which aligns with documents such as the Ontario science curriculum (Ontario Ministry of Education 2008) and the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) has been reported elsewhere (Melville et al. 2012), but can be summarized as: [Our] approach to science education is a program and not an approach. It is not one teacher, it is all of them. It is not one course or grade, it is all of them … It can’t be just knowledge. We must model the ways and understandings of scientific inquiry; we must teach those ways and understandings; we must practice those ways and understandings; we must provide an opportunity to experience those ways and understandings in novel and authentic contexts; and finally we must provide quality assessments in order to improve performance of those ways and understandings (Jones and Kaplanis 2006, p. ii–ix). Operationalizing this philosophy, and engaging pre-service teachers with it, is an ongoing task that has two major components. The first is the importance the department attaches to

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ongoing conversations around the teaching and learning of science as inquiry. The second component is the ongoing negotiation of commonly held meanings to terms such as scientific literacy and ‘the scientific method.’ The negotiation of common understandings is important, for the meanings that are applied to these terms influence how they are used, as Hurd et al. (1980, p. 158) argued that the implementation of inquiry in the classroom required, among other things, that ‘teachers must understand precisely what scientific inquiry is.’ The work of Bybee (1997) has influenced the course of departmental conversations around the meanings of scientific literacy, and the need for pre-service teachers to be intimately involved in, and develop their understanding of, these conversations (Jones and Kaplanis 2006). Examples of the teachers’ inquiry-based practices can be found in the work that they have shared through a series of publications (c.f. Jones et al. 2009; Pilot et al. 2010). A final important consideration in the context of this article is the close relationship that exists between the science methods instructors and the teachers of this science department. Early in September, all secondary science pre-service teachers spend a morning in the department to meet the teachers and observe classroom teaching. There are three reasons for this short visit: to explicitly introduce them to the teaching of science as inquiry, to reintroduce them to the secondary science classroom, and to meet and talk to the teachers. In addition, the department chair is a guest instructor in the methods classes in February in order to talk about inquiry and assessment strategies that align with inquiry. Through these activities, the preservice teachers who go to the department on placement are not going into an unknown environment. The Participants The selection of the participants was based on critical case sampling (Patton 1990). Under this strategy, a critical case is one that is ‘particularly important in the scheme of things … [with] the focus of the data gathering … on what is happening in that critical case’ (Patton 1990, p. 174). We justify this as a critical case as it is almost unique in the literature to observe a preservice teacher work within an entire science department that is committed to the teaching from a reformed perspective. For the second practicum, six pre-service teachers were designated to work in the department. Only three were approached, as the other three would be on a science teaching practicum for the first time, as they had taught their other subject specializations on the first practicum, and hence were anxious about teaching science for the first time. Of the three who were formally approached, one felt uncomfortable about recording her lessons, and declined the invitation. This left the two participants, Robert and James, both of whom were in their mid 20s and had majored in biology at the undergraduate level. They both also reported that their experience of school science was ‘traditional’. Being accepted into the 1-year Bachelor of Education course required that they had an average mark of 73% across their entire undergraduate degree. Once enrolled in the Bachelor of Education, both completed two science methods courses in biology and general sciences. The general science course included chemistry and physics topics, which were useful for their second practicum, and neither expressed serious concerns about the content material to be covered in their classes. In their first practicum experience, both Robert and James were at different schools and were assessed by their cooperating teachers as being either ‘outstanding’ or ‘proficient’ in their levels of professionalism, independence, and competence. Before their second practicum, both Robert and James had observed science classes at their second practicum school, had the opportunity to talk to teachers and participated in a discussion with the department chair about the role of assessment in reform-minded instruction. Both regarded the first practicum as an important step in their development as teachers; coming to grips with some of the realities of

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secondary science classes. With this initial experience successfully behind them, the second practicum was seen as an opportunity to initiate reform-minded instruction. As James stated: The challenge as I began my second teaching practicum was to adopt inquiry practices that seemed possible and manageable. Design This study used a single-subject sequential mixed-methods design relying on both quantitative methods coupled with qualitative approaches (Kromrey and Foster-Johnson 1996; Lincoln and Denzin 2005), with the findings for each participant presented and considered separately before findings from each case were used to answer the research question. The mixed methods design relies on the use of multiple approaches in answering research questions, rather than restricting, or constraining, researchers’ choices to the benefits of quantitative or qualitative designs alone. Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004) argue that mixed methods research strength lies in its methodological pluralism. Specifically for this research, the deductive quantitative methods are combined with the inductive qualitative method to reveal the levels of reformminded instruction, as well as the underlying explanations for these levels. In the interests of clarity, the following sequence is offered to set out the data collection process, and demonstrate the interplay of the quantitative and qualitative data: 1. The first qualitative data was collected in the weeks leading up to the second practicum after Robert and James had completed the first practicum and the majority of the methods courses. The purpose of the semi-structured interviews was to understand their secondary and undergraduate science education, their experiences in the methods courses and first practicum, and their concerns going into their second practicum in an inquiry-centered department. The guiding interview questions are replicated in Appendix 1. 2. For the final 3 weeks of their second practicum, Robert and James were video recorded teaching across 13–14 consecutive instructional days. The selection of these classes for videoing was based on the need to give Robert and James time to gain confidence in teaching their classes before submitting them to the additional stress of being recorded. 3. The second set of qualitative data was collected after the second practicum and involved the quantitative Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) scores being provided to, and discussed with, both Robert and James. Semi-structured interviews were employed to describe and understand their responses to the data. Additional questions were asked to provide further details of their work within the department. These questions are included in Appendix 2. With this outline in place, we now move onto the details of our data collection and analysis strategies. Research and Analyses Strategies Reform-Minded/Inquiry-Based Instruction The RTOP (Piburn et al. 2000) was used with the aim of evaluating daily instruction with respect to reform-minded/inquiry-based instruction. As alluded to earlier, this research sought to consider the process of integration of pre-service science teachers’ biography, education, and context into the practical knowledge they develop and enact

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(mis)aligned to reform-minded instruction during their practicum. Therefore, the RTOP was seen not as a proxy for revealing practical knowledge, but instead as a proxy for identifying the level of enactment of reform-minded instruction that could be used to understand more about tensions in developing practical knowledge (un)supportive of this vision in science classrooms. Consequently, the two participants in this research were observed across 13–14 consecutive instructional days for 70-min class periods of the second practicum. Robert was observed teaching a grade 11 chemistry class for 13 days. James was observed teaching current and static electricity in a grade 9 academic class for 14 days. As mentioned previously, the selection of these classes for videoing in the second practicum were based on the need to give Robert and James time to gain confidence in teaching their classes before submitting them to the additional stress of being recorded. Additionally, Robert and James selected the class period during the day that they felt most comfortable being recorded. Therefore, these classes were considered convenience samples (Creswell 1998), which may represent a limitation of the research. However, given our concern for ensuring that Robert and James felt comfortable with participating in the research during their practicum, a time that we already know to be filled with tensions, we felt a need to minimize any additional tensions that may have come from directives on our part. The RTOP instrument consists of 25 items divided into three subsets: Lesson Design and Implementation, Content, and Classroom Culture. Content and Classroom Culture are each divided into two smaller subcategories. Content is divided into Propositional Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge, while Classroom Culture is divided into Communicative Interactions and Student/Teacher Relationships. The Design and Implementation subset was designed to capture the “model for reformed teaching. It assesses the extent to which a lesson begins with recognition of students prior knowledge and preconceptions, that attempts to engage students as members of a learning community, that values a variety of solutions to problems, and that often takes its direction from ideas generated by students (Piburn et al. 2000, p. 8)”. The Content subset “assessed the quality of the content of the lesson, and . . . the process of inquiry” (Piburn et al. 2000, p. 8). Finally, the Classroom Culture subset, focuses on “the climate of the classroom” (Piburn et al. 2000, p. 9). Additional information about the theoretical constructs guiding the design of the instrument, reliability, and validity information, as well as the results of an exploratory factor analysis of the RTOP, can be found in Piburn et al. (2000). Because the RTOP was created using the national standards documents in science which call for teaching science as inquiry as a central pedagogical strategy and because it includes indicators seen as central practices within inquiry (e.g., Students made predictions, estimations, and/or hypotheses and devised means for testing them (Piburn et al. 2000)), it was judged to be a sufficient measure of reform-minded/inquiry-based instruction. To become familiar with the RTOP instrument, two researchers participated in a training session with a competent trainer/researcher experienced in using the instrument. The researchers established initial inter-rater agreement with the RTOP at or above .80 through trial ratings of video recordings from classrooms instructed by teachers not participating in the project. Subsequently, one researcher rated each of the 27 classroom videos collected from both participants (13 consecutive instructional days for Robert and 14 days for James). Then, a second researcher rated 6 of these classroom videos (22 % or three classes each) so that additional rater reliability could be established. The inter-rater agreement for this subsequent comparison was 0.80 and above as well. In this research, quantitative data from the RTOP observations was used in concert with qualitative data and methods to reveal the inquiry-based reform-minded instruction integrated by each participant during the practicum experience.

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Narrative as Strategy In working to understand the integration of biography, education, and context into pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge, we used a narrative methodology. This choice is justified as preservice teachers’ narratives are ‘a way of characterizing the phenomena of human experience and its study is appropriate’ (Connelly and Clandinin 1990, p. 2). More specifically, narrative descriptions ‘exhibit human activity as purposeful engagement with the world. Narrative is the type of discourse composition that draws together diverse events, happenings, and actions of human lives into thematically unified goal-directed purposes’ (Polkinghorne 1995, p. 5). As noted above, we have relied on semi-structured interviews for our qualitative data. The use of semi-structured interviews provided us with a strategy for understanding the processes of integration, both ‘personal—reflecting a person’s life history [and] social—reflecting the milieu, the contexts in which teachers live’ (Connelly and Clandinin 1999, p. 2). In collecting both sets of interview data, both the interview questions and RTOP items were discussed with Robert and James before the interviews, in order to give them an opportunity to consider and clarify their responses. The first author, who was the instructor for the biology methods course conducted all the interviews. All interviews were conducted at places and times of Robert and James’ choosing, and each of the four interviews lasted approximately 90 min. In order to further clarify any issues that were raised, both Robert and James were provided with the interview transcripts, and opportunities were made available for further discussion. Both Robert and James had opportunity to critique the drafts of this article. All research activity was conducted in accordance with the requirements of the Research Ethics Board of the authors’ universities. In terms of analysis, the data was developed into two chronological narratives that seek to understand how Robert and James developed their practical knowledge through the practicum. Working from their experiences before commencing the second practicum, and hence through that practicum, these narratives seek to organize and understand the practicum experience in terms of their responses to the department and the teaching of science as inquiry. The interview data were analyzed to identify codes that could inform themes for how biography, education, and context shape individual participants enactment of reform-minded instruction during the practicum. The importance of biography, education, and context in this initial analysis is that they allow us to organize Robert and James’ experiences ‘with the help of a scheme assuming the intentionality of human action’ (Czarniawska 2004, p. 7). Once codes across all data sets were completed, themes that could be found across all data sets were identified. These themes, which counted as answers to the research questions, were then melded together in the findings section with salient narrative, RTOP, and interview data. This melding allows us to develop a richer understanding of the RTOP data, understand the trajectories that Robert and James have taken in the development of their practical knowledge, and how they have come to problematize the practicum in very different ways. Such an approach to Robert and James’ processes of integrating their biographies, education, and the context allows us to move beyond ‘questions of who one is to new questions of when, where, and how one is’ (Zembylas 2003, p. 215).

Enacting Reform-Based Pedagogies The findings for each participant are presented and considered separately. And, it should be noted, that while we are examining the practices of each participant in depth, no attempt was

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made to compare the two. Instead, each participant is seen as a unique case and findings emerging from each are expected to inform deeper understanding of how the confluence of pre-service science teachers’ biography, education, and context shape the practical knowledge developed during practicum. To accomplish this, first the quantitative evidences are shared in the form of descriptive statistics to reveal the inquiry-based reform-minded instruction integrated in the practicum experience before this is considered along with interview data in the development of the three chronologically developed narratives (i.e., biography, education, and context). Throughout, the findings and narratives are considered in the context of relevant science education literature. We begin first with a focus on Robert followed by a parallel focus on James. Robert Robert came into the second practicum well aware of the impact of his own science education on his teaching: ‘… much of my own teaching and learning had been through lab reports and equation worksheets and I found I could not avoid reflecting this in my own teaching’. For this practicum, Robert was assigned to Grade 11 biology and chemistry classes and Grade 12 chemistry class. His cooperating teacher was an experienced teacher who has worked in the department since 2003. This teacher has developed his capacity for inquiry-based teaching to the point where he regularly assists in Board approved professional activity days for elementary science teachers who are seeking to incorporate inquiry into their teaching. Robert was teaching the Grade 11 chemistry class by the end of the first week, and all three classes by the end of the second week. Robert commented that he only observed the classes and discussed those observations later with his cooperating teacher. Table 1 reveals the RTOP findings from Robert’s teaching during 13 consecutive days of practicum and gives an initial sense of the consistency and/or differences between the unique features of inquiry-based reform-minded instruction identified. Robert’s RTOP data shows a mean score of 36.08/100.00, which is considered low by MacIsaac and Falconer (2002) and more in alignment with traditional high school lectures. In attempting to understand this quantitative description, the analysis of Robert’s qualitative data is interesting in that it appears to indicate the need for pre-service teachers to engage fully with the difficult work of integrating aspects of their practical knowledge. The qualitative data suggest that integration must be an active process in which the pre-service teacher must work with their biography and education in order to learn from, and then move beyond, their context. It is possible to speculate that Robert’s relatively low RTOP score for propositional knowledge (7.46/20.00) is a reflection on his traditional science education and a manifestation of his practical knowledge, since teachers practical knowledge is more than just knowing: it

Table 1 Average RTOP ratings for Robert

M mean, SD standard deviation, T total possible

RTOP construct

M[SD]/T [N=13]

Overall

36.08[13.17]/100.00

Lesson design

5.31[3.05]/20.00

Propositional knowledge

7.46[3.86]/20.00

Procedural knowledge

5.69[1.90]/20.00

Communicative interactions

5.69[1.20]/20.00

Student/teacher relationships

11.92[4.90]/20.00

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also incorporates aspects of the human experience such as ‘feeling, judging, willing, and action’ (Duffee and Aikenhead 1992, p. 494). As he said: ‘Based on my own background, I had a tendency to want to teach and explain many of the concepts to the students and give them the answers …’. This seemed to demonstrate the impact of biography on Robert’s instructional decisions, while at the same time reflecting the interplay between biography and his practical knowledge that guided his instruction. This is seen as he spoke of the “tendency to want to teach and explain . . . and give them the answers”, as this revealed some of what Robert was feeling, what he was willing to do, and the actions that he was taking. Additionally, Robert believed that the methods courses had impacted his understanding of the nature of science, recognizing that ‘the scientific process is not linear … it is more a toolset that helps us develop our own questions, draw from a store of previous knowledge, critically analyze and test our findings and make inferences and develop further questions’. Being equipped with this nascent understanding of science as a form of inquiry, however, was not sufficient to shape Robert’s practical knowledge to enact reform-based pedagogies: … developing the confidence and skills to investigate and ask questions about the concepts they were learning, in both lectures and labs, was difficult in the face of pressure to simply teach and solidify content. This was because knowledge and confidence of this sort takes time to develop. He did report some successes with his enactment of reform-based pedagogies: ‘students took ownership of the experiment by asking process questions and they seemed excited …’ but overall, the RTOP measurement of procedural knowledge, understood in RTOP as a measure of assessing the “the process of inquiry” inherent in lessons (Piburn et al. 2000, p. 8), remained low (5.69/20.00). Robert remained clear as to what he wanted to achieve through his practicum: ‘I want to evoke curiosity, question asking and invite them into a scientific dialogue’. The invitation into a dialogue was tinged, however, by a belief, or judgment as part of practical knowledge, that students would be more aligned to his own experiences with science in school: ‘I was initially afraid that the students would demand straightforward content and answers …’. This fear, and his response to it, was compounded by realities of the classroom: I found that my lesson planning would vary in the level of creativity, discussion, exploration, student-input and inquiry that I allowed. There were always a number of forces (i.e. classroom behavioural management, student focus, curriculum and exam learning objectives), each with their own expectations and trade-offs, that influenced the planning and delivery of lessons … the curriculum needed to be addressed efficiently. Robert’s response to these forces, which is seen as a manifestation of his practical knowledge, and his own fears as to how to ‘simply teach’ in a manner that addressed the curriculum ‘efficiently’, was heavily influenced by his biography. In his mind, inquiry was something that could be ‘injected into an established lesson plan’. Consequently, he sought to adapt inquiry to his perspective on teaching: ‘My understanding [of inquiry] was most directly influenced by observing my colleagues in their delivery of lessons, and either mimicking or adapting their particular style of teaching to my own delivery’. In retrospect, Robert believes that his observations and discussions were insufficient to transform his teaching practice; he would have ‘preferred to begin my placement co-teaching alongside my Cooperating teacher’. Co-teaching would have given him the opportunity to: … draw on their teaching styles, or participated in more discussion on how to incorporate inquiry into the context of a particular lesson … rather than struggle to be creative on my own.

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That Robert chose to mimic and adapt the teaching strategies of the colleagues that he observed is interesting for two reasons. The first is that mimicry and adaption are, by their nature, limited in scope to specific teaching examples. Thus, Robert was able to observe two Grade 11 chemistry lessons taught by his cooperating teacher that included: … lab investigations, writing reports, completing a number of stoichiometry problems that were required for understanding future laboratory investigations and a chemistry ‘magic-show’, a particular lesson that my Cooperating Teacher explained to me was one of the highlights of his chemistry classes. I greatly appreciated how a simple ‘magicshow’ can conjure up exciting questions from simple experiments. As he demonstrated this particular activity to the class, I asked several inquiry questions of my own throughout, which solidified my propositional knowledge and ability to communicate these ideas. I believe this … was essential to developing my confidence as a teacher of inquiry. Robert replicated this ‘magic-show’ lesson for his Grade 12 chemistry class in order to gain confidence in his delivery of the content: … I chose to move away from worksheets and group-experiments towards demonstrating the experiments. I was able to mimic the procedure and, more importantly, gain confidence in my abilities to deliver it with a logical flow in front of another class. This lesson, however, was the only example that Robert offered of one that built his confidence: the RTOP data suggests that Robert was not confident in his abilities as a teacher of science as inquiry. Developing confidence and experience with both subject knowledge and procedural knowledge is obviously important to a pre-service teacher. Although recognizing this benefit, the second reason concerns itself with the limitations of mimicry and adaptation in the integration of practical knowledge. This is the separation of teaching and learning into isolated vignettes of practice, rather than integrating knowledge into a coherent whole that could manifest as consistent reform-minded aligned practical knowledge. As Robert came to realize: I would have preferred to sit down and co-develop a long-term plan, or at least see their process for developing a plan, from scratch … because one-day lesson plans are not sufficient time to develop continuity in inquiry. The low RTOP measurements for lesson design (5.31/20) and communicative interactions (5.69/20) reflected these concerns, especially given that lesson and design is understood in the context of RTOP as “recognition of students’ prior knowledge and preconceptions, that attempts to engage students as members of a learning community, that values a variety of solutions to problems, and that often takes its direction from ideas generated by students” (Piburn et al. 2000, p. 8). Robert unknowingly hinted at this isolation in one of his comments: ‘By observing and commenting on “what worked” or “what didn’t work” with them immediately after each lesson, I began to construct ideas on effective methods of inquiry instruction’. The concern here is that a focus on ‘what worked’ is inimical to the development of the critical stance and range of teaching strategies necessary for teachers to become reflective practitioners (c.f. Biesta 2007). The capacity to mimic and/or adapt is not a skill that Robert developed during the second practicum. It was in fact, a long-standing strategy for making sense of reform-based strategies that were observed in individual lessons, and as such had become a component of Robert’s experience with pre-service science education:

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I learned best about the effectiveness of the delivery of lesson plans when I was able to deconstruct “what happened” with my peers/mentors immediately after … this was the case both during my practicum and in my pre-service science courses. Following this line of argument, it would be reasonable to suggest that Robert’s low RTOP scores are a reflection of the physical impossibility to observe, mimic, and/or adapt every lesson that he taught. Consequently, Robert’s biography appears to have had the pre-eminent role in shaping his enactment of reform-based pedagogies, with the context only being significant as individual vignettes of practice. Almost incidentally, Robert expressed a concern that a teacher could only become a reformminded teacher through the investment of significant amount of effort in a long-term mentoring relationship: ‘It takes a great deal of teacher investment to develop what is appropriate for the specific needs and interests of our students … something that I believe that only long-term mentoring can truly bring out’. Given what we know of mentoring, this is an insightful comment on how Robert may move beyond mimicry towards a more integrated view of reform-based pedagogy, especially if he is given the opportunity for co-teaching and coplanning that he noted was not available to him during the second practicum. But, mentoring relies on a particular level of personal relationship not generally found in the practicum (Awaya et al. 2003). Therefore, it may be that the deeper personal relationships found in mentoring relationships are pre-requisite to moving towards an integrated view of practical knowledge. James James entered the second practicum aware of the traditional nature of his own science education: ‘science as a linear progression—a concept driven and based discipline’. One important consideration flowing from this was that he ‘understood the theory of inquiry, but I would fall back on the more traditional style I had experienced in the past’. For this practicum, James was assigned to a Grade 12 biology class, a Grade 10 class, and Grade 9 science class studying electricity. His cooperating teacher was the head of the department, who has taught since 1983 and been the chair since 2000. The work of the chair in promoting inquiry is documented in several publications (c.f. Jones et al. 2009; Pilot et al. 2010). James was teaching the Grade 9 class by the end of the first week he was co-teaching with his cooperating teacher, an activity that continued into the second week. By the end of the second week he was teaching all the classes. As with Robert, descriptive statistics from the RTOP findings from James’ teaching during 14 consecutive days of practicum is shared to give an initial sense of the consistency and/or differences between the unique features of inquiry-based reform-minded instruction identified (Table 2). Our analysis of James’ data indicates an open conflict between biography, education, and context, a conflict in which a fragile confidence as a teacher of inquiry is constantly threatened Table 2 Average RTOP ratings for James

M mean, SD standard deviation, T total possible

RTOP construct

M[SD]/T [N=13]

Overall

45.71[7.05]/100.00

Lesson design Propositional knowledge

7.07[3.20]/20.00 14.50[2.03]/20.00

Procedural knowledge

2.99[2.93]/20.00

Communicative interactions

8.36[2.27]/20.00

Student/teacher relationships

10.86[2.25]/20.00

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by the pressures of biography. James has a mean RTOP rating of 45.71/100.00, which could be described as ‘partial … reform (some group work; most discourse still with teacher)’ by MacIsaac and Falconer (2002, p. 19) indicating that his practical knowledge was, in some ways, being mobilized in reform-minded ways. For a pre-service teacher, this would seem an enviable position. A close analysis of the data, however, indicates that James’ biography is a tenacious factor in shaping his practical knowledge for enacting reform-minded pedagogies and is capable of suppressing the influence of both education and context. James came into his second practicum confident in his propositional knowledge as reflected in the high quality of content observed in lessons he taught (14.5/20.00), and reflective of his strong undergraduate degree in science: ‘I felt confident in my subject knowledge’. In terms of the other RTOP constructs, however, he appears stranded between a nascent understanding of inquiry-based science education and his own biography with science education, both as a student and as a pre-service teacher. As he said, ‘I found it challenging to leave students with unanswered questions as a way to promote investigative skills’. The context of his second practicum, a supportive department, appears to have had little effect on his enactment of reform-minded pedagogies. It is this capacity of biography to overwhelm both education and context that is of particular interest in James’ case: ‘I often found myself comparing my teaching style with other experienced successful teachers. This resulted in a lack of confidence to implement a different approach to teaching, even if I had an understanding of its theory’. Through his engagement with the science methods courses, James came to appreciate a more complete sense of the nature of science: ‘I now understand that my knowledge and beliefs around the processes of science need to be much broader and comprehensive’. Understanding this more complete sense of the nature of science does not automatically translate, however, into practical knowledge for teaching from a inquiry perspective. James was fully aware of this, identifying a conflict between his new knowledge and his own biography: The challenge … is to deviate from a teacher, or concept-centered approach, to a learnercentered approach. I realize that challenging students with inquiry also means that I need to give them a chance to make their own observations, connections, and experimental designs. I need to feel comfortable with these if I want to promote science as a process where new discoveries, or ideas, could rise from error analysis and collaborative efforts within, and beyond, the classroom. This appreciation of a conflict between his biography and his aspirations to be an inquiryminded teacher became focused on how he would communicate his new knowledge about the processes of science to his students. Consequently, his RTOP scores for both procedural knowledge and the process of inquiry inherent in lessons (2.99/20.00) and communicative interactions or the classroom culture (8.36/20.00) were respectively very low and low. James realized that to integrate this new knowledge required a ‘feeling of uncertainty … for me this is a crucial thought provoking stage which forces a new level of communication, which will enhance the entire learning experience by making science more holistic’. Conscious of this uncertainty, James was aware of the need to remain confident: ‘the underlying issue … was to feel confident enough in an inquiry-centered department’. Interestingly, he consciously avoided trying to mimic his cooperating teacher, realizing that ‘it would be a hindrance to focus on mimicking a style that I was not used to’. Phrased in this way, the context of the inquiry-centered department could be seen as the sword of Damocles, offering the prospect of both comfort and risk: I am very thankful to have had a very supportive associate teacher who encouraged me to experiment with different teaching strategies and to take full control of the classroom. This forced me to step out of my more comfortable, linear, approach to science teaching.

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Accepting the challenge that he had already identified for himself, James committed himself to incorporating inquiry-based pedagogies into his teaching practice. The support of his cooperating teacher and other members of the department was reassuring in this regard: ‘the adoption of inquiry practices within a classroom seemed more possible and manageable’. James’ reflections on the early stages of the practicum appear to suggest that the context was of primary importance in supporting his enactment of reform-minded pedagogies: When I did experiment with inquiry it felt unnatural, though interesting and exciting at the same time. I realized that students became much more involved in the classroom, appearing to be have fun as they collaborated in groups and sharing thoughts, ideas and reflections of their observations and findings. This revealed how James’ practical knowledge was shaped as he “did experiment with inquiry” and demonstrated a willingness to experiment with teaching science as inquiry, as well as a judgment of how it should be approached. But, biography was never far from the surface however, and maintaining an inquiry focus created a tension with James’ desire to develop his abilities as a reform minded teacher and his strongly perceived need to ‘deliver the curriculum’ and ‘manage classroom behaviour’. This tension eroded James’ confidence in his abilities, even as he acknowledged the value of operating within the department: I was very thankful to be in a school that encouraged an inquiry approach to science, I felt that my lack of experience in this type of teaching environment affected my confidence in my ability to manage the classroom behaviour. I was aware of various strategies I could have implemented to encourage a more learner centered approach where students could have experienced learning by doing, but felt hesitant when attempting to use them in the classroom. I became increasingly concerned with managing classroom behaviour and keeping students’ attention. James’ discussion of his hesitancy when attempting to use more learner-centered approaches with students provided a window into his practical knowledge at this particular point in time (i.e., during the second practicum) and the role confidence played in shaping this practical knowledge. James acknowledged that his reversion to a more teacher-centered approach, while satisfying the need to maintain control, also caused him to lose focus on the inquiry-based pedagogies that he planned to work with. In what became a self-fulfilling prophecy, this loss of focus precipitated a loss of confidence in implementing inquiry-based pedagogies. As a consequence, lesson design, as measured by RTOP was also low at 7.07/20.00. The loss of confidence, in turn, cascaded into concerns about his ability to communicate with students, and the procedural knowledge that is so integral to inquiry-based teaching. Hence, in pondering how he went about integrating the building of circuits and the theory of series and parallel circuits: I often opted for a more teacher-centered learning environment so I felt [feeling from practical knowledge used to shape instruction] more in control of the progression of the lesson … this often caused me to lose focus on the learning expectations planned for each lesson. In turn, this affected my comfort level with the procedures of the lesson, my perceived level of classroom control during the lesson, and my working level of confidence while I was teaching. These stresses were brought on by a lack of experience … although I may have encouraged classroom involvement and discussion, I was resistant [resistant as an action taken by the teacher as a manifestation of practical

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knowledge] to promote a more learner-centered environment where students could make their own predictions and design their own experiments. I believe that this was also partly caused by my perceived loss of control of classroom direction as I would have stepped out of the picture and had the students learn by doing [perception as judgment as part of practical knowledge]. As we have said, our purposes in this article are twofold: to consider the process of integration of pre-service science teachers’ biography, education, and context into the practical knowledge they develop during their practicum, and quantify how that practical knowledge is enacted within their classes. In summation, the experiences of Robert and James offer glimpses of how similar biographies and education can produce different responses to the practical knowledge that guides the enactment of reform-based pedagogies, even as they act in the same context. Robert responded to the context by mimicking the observed strategies of his colleagues, and consequently was quantified through RTOP as having a low level of enactment. James appears to have been progressively overwhelmed by his biography, but still managed to enact partially reformminded instruction. In considering these different responses, a major theme emerges. That theme is how differently the context of the practicum can be problematized by a pre-service teacher, and the consequent implications for practical knowledge that guides enactment of reform-minded pedagogies. We use ‘problematized’ in the sense suggested by Hiebert et al. (1996, p. 12), where a learner ‘should be allowed and encouraged to problematize what they study, to define problems that elicit their curiosities and sense-making skills’.

Analysis and Discussion Engagement with inquiry practices is seen as crucial for pre-service teachers’ development of practical knowledge (Eick and Dias 2005). In this article, we have followed two pre-service teachers on their second practicum in a department that has worked for over a decade to establish science as inquiry as the unifying theme of their work. Our expectation was that they would be influenced by the context of the department, and consequently would show quantifiably high enactments of reform-minded pedagogies as indicators of developing reform-minded instruction aligned practical knowledge. The data that we have considered indicates that this expectation has not been fulfilled. Rather, the RTOP and qualitative data suggest that the same context can be problematized very differently by pre-service teachers, with consequences for their practical knowledge as it pertains to their enactment of reformminded instruction. In taking this line of thought, there are clear links to Dewey’s (1933) notion of ‘reflective inquiry’ and its importance to pre-service teachers ‘moving beyond the distinction between knowing and doing’ (Hiebert et al. 1996, p. 14). In addition, the theme that we have identified appears to resonate with Hiebert et al.’s (1996) exploration of structural and functional understanding. In this section of the article, we will analyze how education and biography may coalesce in the problematizing of the context and a pre-service teacher’s capacity to integrate their practical knowledge around the enactment of reform-minded instruction. In this task, we will make use of Dewey’s method of reflective inquiry: identifying a problem, engaging with the problem, and drawing a conclusion(s) to the problem. Identifying the Problem Both Robert and James went into the practicum understanding that their conceptualizations of the nature of science were changing, and that this would necessarily impact on their teaching: ‘I want to

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… invite them into a scientific dialogue’ (Robert) and ‘I realize that challenging students with inquiry also means that I need to give them a chance to make their own observations, connections, and experimental designs’ (James). Further, their experiences indicated that they had, to an extent, verified for themselves the value of reform-based pedagogies for student learning: ‘students took ownership of the experiment’ (Robert) and ‘I realized that students became much more involved’ (James). Comments such as these suggest that Robert and James’s education in the science methods courses and their practicum experiences had presented an apparent ‘internally consistent rationale for and expectations of inquiry science teaching’ (Yore 2001). If they had begun to value reform-based pedagogies, it would seem reasonable to postulate that biography would play a role in how they problematized the ongoing enactment of reform-minded instruction in their practicum as a manifestation of their practical knowledge. As Dewey (1929, p. 103) stated: ‘The subject-matter which had been taken as satisfying the demands of knowledge, as the material with which to frame solutions [becomes] something which sets problems’. Robert was aware of the impact of his biography on his teaching and saw it reflected in his own teaching, but curiously his statements indicated a primary concern with those constraints that impinged on ‘simply teaching’ or addressing the curriculum ‘efficiently’. What is of interest here is that the concerns were never personalized, yet it was acknowledged that they could be dealt with through experience and the passage of time: ‘It takes a great deal of teacher investment … knowledge and confidence of this sort takes time to develop’. Such a stance appears to be diametrically opposite to a reflective inquirers’ recognition of a problem as described by Hiebert et al. (1996, p. 15–16) in which ‘the participant sees a quandary or feels a difficulty or doubt that needs to be resolved.’ James was very clear in understanding the central problem to resolve: the need to overcome a biography that stressed the primacy of teacher control and classroom management. As he said, ‘the underlying issue … was to feel confident enough in an inquiry-centered department [and] The challenge … is to deviate from a teacher, or concept-centered approach, to a learner-centered approach. I realized that it would take time for me to be effective at implementing inquiry’. For James, the problem was personal, keenly felt and perplexing: by making it so he had problematized his experiences ‘in order to understand them more fully’ (Hiebert et al. 1996, p. 15). The identification of problems is important, as that act allows the individual to actively pursue ‘a solution by calling up and searching out related information, formulating hypotheses, interacting with the problem, and observing the results’ (Hiebert et al. 1996, p. 15). In this way, the act of identifying problems can be seen as an act questioning existing practical knowledge, especially as the problems emanate from their own teaching. Searching for Resolutions If experiences such as the practicum are crucial in supporting pre-service teachers as they move to incorporate reform-minded instruction (Eick and Dias 2005), then, following Dewey, ‘knowing is something we literally do, since we only ever acquire knowledge as a result of our actions’ (Biesta 2007, p. 15). Once a problem is delimited, action is important and action is filtered by practical knowledge. Identifying a problem, however, also brings with it uncertainties where teachers ‘will have to unlearn much of what they believe, know, and know how to do while also forming new beliefs, developing new knowledge, and mastering new skills’ (Thompson and Zeuli 1999, p. 341) or put more succinctly, attend to aspects of their practical knowledge. While uncertainties can act as a catalyst for reflective inquiry, they can also produce a desire for certainty by which teachers:

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will be drawn toward factual content that can be taught by rote memorization and tested by requests for recall. Since the present is more certain than the future, a desire for certainty pulls towards a focus on immediate, obvious, specific difficulties, away from global, long-term plans and goals (Floden and Clark 1988, p. 513). One result of this desire for certainty of knowledge is to perpetuate a traditional classroom view of science. As Tytler (2007, p. 19) describes: ‘Part of the reason for the persistence of status quo in science relates to the strong discursive traditions subscribed to by teachers of science resulting from their enculturation during their own schooling and undergraduate studies’. One consequence of this is that teachers will revert to teaching as they were taught, and effectively close opportunities to learn from the problem. In their search for resolution, we see Robert and James adopting different strategies. Relying on how he ‘learned best’ Robert adopted a strategy of mimicking and adapting the teaching of his colleagues and cooperating teacher, and then deconstructing the lesson in terms of ‘what worked’. The aim of this was to ‘inject’ inquiry into his practice, a biographical practice that wanted to ‘teach and explain many of the concepts to the students and give them the answers’. Through this strategy, Robert believed that he was constructing ‘ideas on effective methods of inquiry instruction’. The RTOP data suggests that such a strategy is flawed on two grounds. The first is that the translation of another teacher’s instructional practices does not take account of the teaching and learning needs of the students in Robert’s class. A direct translation of practice appears to be finding a solution to a problem before the pedagogical issues specific to the students has been identified, and also closes the necessity to deliberate about alternative teaching strategies. In essence, this approach may leave practical knowledge unchallenged if the nature of specific pedagogies enacted are under-examined. Second, the inability to observe, mimic, and/or adapt every lesson that he was to teach reduces the enactment of reform-minded instruction to a series of discrete teaching events or events that may be less influenced by the teacher’s practical knowledge, which is reflected in the low overall RTOP scores for lesson design (5.31/20:00) procedural knowledge (5.69/20.00) and communicative interaction (5.69/20.00). The mimicry and adaption strategy, we contend, truncates the development of reformed beliefs central to practical knowledge by curtailing a coherent understanding of the rationale and strategies needed to sustain the teaching and learning of reform-minded instruction. This contention supports the notion of Yore (2001) that teaching from a reform-minded perspective requires more than ‘just mimicry, mechanical use, and classroom management of inquiry science teaching’. James had problematized the need to enact reform-based pedagogies with his biographically perceived need to maintain class control. Even though he was eventually overwhelmed by this dilemma, his overall RTOP score (45.71/100) indicates that he had moved to partial enactment of reform-based pedagogies. In making this movement, he showed a greater willingness, or propensity for action as a facet of practical knowledge, to experiment with reform-minded pedagogies within the supportive departmental context, but struggled to confidently juxtapose the desire to enact those pedagogies with concerns around classroom control: ‘… this often caused me to lose focus on the learning expectations planned for each lesson.’ This tension is highlighted in the very low RTOP score for procedural knowledge (2.99/20.00). An interesting point to note is that James was ‘encouraged … to experiment with different teaching strategies’, but often felt unable to spend the time to pursue those strategies. The influence of biography in shaping beginning teachers enactment of reform-minded instruction has been alluded to by Toh et al. (2003), p. 201), with beginning teachers being ‘keen to explore other knowledge domains … [and] more conscious of the way they are

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teaching’. In James’ case, being conscious of the way he was teaching was a source of stress that ultimately undermined his confidence. Both Robert and James were heavily influenced by their biographies in searching for resolutions to the problems that they had identified. In turn, these resolutions provide insights into the relationship between the pre-service teachers and the context, and how that relationship can shape their practical knowledge. Reaching Conclusions To reach a conclusion through reflective inquiry is to understand ‘a new situation … a new problem [or] showing new relationships’ (Hiebert et al. 1996, p. 15) or in the case of James and Robert in this research, might be resolution of some aspect of practical knowledge. Of course, the conclusions that an individual reaches will be unique depending on how they have problematized the context, the prior knowledge that they bring to the context and the process of inquiry that they have followed. Both Robert and James had biographies that stressed the delivery of the curriculum. Both were developing a much deeper understanding of the nature of science, and both recognized the benefits to student learning from the enactment of reformminded instruction. The conclusions they have reached, and the differences in their RTOP scores, as explicated by the qualitative descriptors and indicators of their practical knowledge, appear to come down to how they problematized the learning opportunities offered during the practicum. The conclusions that Robert and James have developed provide us with insights as to the potential of the practicum as a site for integrating practical knowledge, and also point to important implications of this research for both pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers. Robert appears to have concluded that the learning opportunities were a way of understanding how to enact reform-based pedagogies in a manner consistent with the efficient delivery of the curriculum: ‘I learned best about the effectiveness of the delivery of lesson plans when I was able to deconstruct “what happened” with my peers/mentors’. As such, his conclusion was largely directed by his biography. This is not to say that his education and context are irrelevant. Robert expressed an understanding of the value of reform-based pedagogies to his students’ learning, and this understanding allowed him to participate in the work of the reform-minded department. While that work may have been limited during the practicum to mimicking and adapting the work of his cooperating teacher and peers, he was developing a ‘functional understanding’ (Hiebert et al. 1996, p. 16) of reform-based teaching, which while capable of informing practical knowledge may not have attended to it in ways that ‘structural understanding’ might have. Such an understanding is based on participation with the activity of the context. A functional understanding is important in that it recognizes the importance of the context to the continued learning of the participant. As Robert said: ‘It takes a great deal of teacher investment to develop what is appropriate for the specific needs and interests of our students … something that I believe that only long-term mentoring can truly bring out’. The clear downside is that such long-term learning can only occur in a context that supports reformbased pedagogies. Such contexts continue to be the exception rather than the rule. James made considerable progress in enacting reform-minded instruction into his teaching, and came to understand that continued experience in a supportive context was crucial to his future progress: ‘I was very thankful to be in a school which encouraged inquiry … my lack of experience in this type of teaching environment affected my confidence … I was aware of various strategies I could have implemented’. This understanding of how to learn to further enact reform-minded instruction, rather than just mimic successful teachers, indicates that James was developing a ‘structural understanding’ (Hiebert et al. 1996, p. 17) of reform-based teaching, which likely has a greater impact on his practical knowledge as it is seen to be

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capable of informing a range of situations. Such an understanding focuses on how knowledge of the context can be coherently organized and integrated by the individual. James’ RTOP scores indicate that he was integrating the various components of reform-minded instruction together, but needed more support in developing a sense of confidence in his teaching. As with Robert, however, the question would be what would happen if such a context were unavailable.

Summary and Further Questions There continues to be a misalignment in the vision of science education promoted in Faculties of Education and the reality of science education experienced by pre-service science teachers on practicum. Pre-service teachers who have the opportunity to complete their practicum in a department that supports reform-minded instruction are in a rare context. In this article we have considered how two pre-service teachers have integrated aspects of their biographies, education, and this context in the enactment of their practical knowledge. Our analysis indicates that biography is a powerful factor in influencing the extent to which pre-service teachers can enact practical knowledge aligned with reform-minded instruction. Alignment between the preservice methods courses and the practicum context allows participation in the work of the reform-minded department, but it is biography that problematizes that participation. It is the process of problematizing the context that leads us to two further questions. The first of these is: ‘what is the responsibility of the cooperating teacher in assisting the pre-service teacher in problematizing practice in the classroom to support practical knowledge development?’ The reason for asking this question is twofold: it may help pre-service teachers personalize the problem and hence engender a deeper search for a resolution, and it may also provide pre-service teachers strategies with which to inquire into the problem. As Hiebert et al. (1996, p. 16) state, the sharing of the results of inquiries and the processes of inquiry creates ‘the openness that is essential for examining and improving the methods [or practical knowledge from which these methods emerge] and for becoming full participants in the community’. The second question is closely allied to this issue, and was brought to our attention by Robert’s comment on mentoring. The question is this: ‘should cooperating teachers work more as mentors?’ Mentoring, as a personal and professional relationship (see Awaya et al. 2003) may offer greater opportunities for issues of biography, such as James’s lack of confidence, to be addressed. As jurisdictions in some Western countries move (or have moved) to extend the length of the practicum, the opportunity arises to consider how to make effective use of the extra time to allow pre-service teachers more opportunity to integrate their practical knowledge.

Appendices Appendix 1: Interview guiding questions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What was your experience with science as inquiry before you undertook these Curriculum and Instruction courses? How would you describe the nature of science? How would you describe the ‘scientific method’? How would you describe the aims (purposes) of science education? What challenges do you believe you will encounter in implementing an inquiry based science classroom?

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6. Do you believe that these Curriculum and Instruction courses have equipped to deal with these challenges? 7. Based on your first placement experience, what is your impression of the current use of inquiry as a teaching strategy in secondary schools? 8. Did your cooperating teacher(s) encourage the use of inquiry as a teaching strategy during your placement? 9. How important will the support of your teacher colleagues be to you in implementing inquiry? 10. Would you be prepared to pursue inquiry if your colleagues/school were negative/ unsupportive of the strategy? 11. If you were in an unsupportive environment, what supports do you believe that you would need to pursue inquiry as a teaching strategy? 12. How do you understand students as learners? 13. Tell me about your understanding of instruction and the appropriate use of instructional strategies? 14. What challenges are there to your classroom management if you pursue inquiry? 15. What will help you develop as a teacher of science as inquiry?

Appendix 2: RTOP and the Practicum 1. After discussion about the RTOP results, the participants were asked to describe their responses to those results in the areas of Lesson Design and Implementation, Content, and Classroom Culture. 2. How did the practicum evolve? For example, did you observe and then just take over the teaching, or was there some team or co-teaching before you accepted full responsibility? 3. What was the substance of the feedback on your lesson plans and after each lesson? What did you learn from this feedback? 4. How did the structure of the practicum (from question 1) help in the development of your capacity to teach from an inquiry perspective? How did it hinder it? 5. What conversations about teaching and learning inquiry did you have with Doug Jones, your associate, other teachers, and other pre-service teachers? 6. Did you observe other teachers and/or other pre-service teachers, and what did you learn from those observations? 7. Were there areas of inquiry that you struggled with, and how did the practicum address those? If the practicum didn't address them, what would have helped address them?

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