Science, Mathematics, and Technology Learning

VOLUME 19 ISSUE 2

The International Journal of

Science, Mathematics, and Technology Learning

thelearner.com

The International Journal of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Learning ………………………………… The Learner Collection VOLUME 19 ISSUE 2 2012

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND TECHNOLOGY LEARNING www.thelearner.com First published in 2013 in Champaign, Illinois, USA by Common Ground Publishing LLC www.commongroundpublishing.com ISSN: 2327-7971 © 2012-2013 (individual papers), the author(s) © 2012-2013 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the applicable copyright legislation, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact [email protected]. The International Journal of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Learning is peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterionreferenced article ranking and qualitative commentary, ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance and highest significance is published.

EDITOR(S) ………………………………… Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD ………………………………… Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA David Barton, Lancaster University, Milton Keynes, UK Mario Bello, University of Science, Cuba Manuela du Bois-Reymond, Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Robert Devillar, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, USA Daniel Madrid Fernandez, University of Granada, Spain Ruth Finnegan, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK James Paul Gee, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Juana M. Sancho Gil, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Kris Gutierrez, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Anne Hickling-Hudson, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Australia Roz Ivanic, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK Paul James, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Carey Jewitt, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Andeas Kazamias, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Peter Kell, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Michele Knobel, Montclair State University, Montclair, USA Gunther Kress, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK Colin Lankshear, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia Kimberly Lawless, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA Sarah Michaels, Clark University, Worcester, USA Jeffrey Mok, Miyazaki International College, Miyazaki, Japan Denise Newfield, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Ernest O’Neil, Ministry of Education, Sana’a, Yemen José-Luis Ortega, University of Granada, Granada, Spain Francisco Fernandez Palomares, University of Granada, Granada, Spain Ambigapathy Pandian, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia Miguel A. Pereyra, University of Granada, Granada, Spain Scott Poynting, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK Angela Samuels, Montego Bay Community College, Montego Bay, Jamaica Michel Singh, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia Helen Smith, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Richard Sohmer, Clark University, Worcester, USA Brian Street, University of London, London, UK Giorgos Tsiakalos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece Salim Vally, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Gella Varnava-Skoura, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece Cecile Walden, Sam Sharpe Teachers College, Montego Bay, Jamaica Nicola Yelland, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia Wang Yingjie, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Zhou Zuoyu, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

ASSOCIATE EDITORS ………………………………… Tamader Jassim Al Thani M. Begoña Alfageme-González Marina Christopoulou Wajeeh Daher Anne Drabble Cynthia Kaye S. Ellis Melina Furman Tuula Keinonen Jari Kukkonen Fhatuwani J. Mundalamo Samuel Ouma Oyoo Dharam Persaud-Sharma Mohd Firdaus Bin Shah Chetankumar G. Shetty Michael Skoumios Ryan Sweeder Hassan H. Tairab Chineze Uche Tak Wah Wong

Scope and Concerns LEARNING AND EDUCATION: THEIR BREADTH AND DEPTH ………………………………… ‘Learning’ is bigger than education. Humans are born with an innate capacity to learn, and over the span of a lifetime learning never stops. Learning simply happens as people engage with each other, interact with the natural world and move about in the world they have constructed. Indeed, one of the things that makes us distinctively human is our enormous capacity to learn. Other species learn, too, from the tiniest of insects to the smartest of chimpanzees. But none has practices of pedagogy or institutions of education. As a consequence, the main way in which other species develop over time is through the incremental, biological adaptations of evolution. Change is natural. It is slow. Education makes human learning unlike the learning of any other creature. Learning allows humans to escape the strict determinations of nature. It gives humans the resources with which to understand themselves and their world, and to transform their conditions of living, for better or for worse. Education is a peculiarly human capacity to nurture learning in a conscious way, and to create social contexts that have been specially designed for that purpose: the institutions of education. Everyday learning happens naturally, everywhere and all the time. Education – encompassing institutions, its curricula and its pedagogies – is learning by design.

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF TEACHING ………………………………… Teaching happens everywhere. Many people are naturally quite good at teaching. They explain things clearly. They are patient. And they have the knack of explaining just enough, but not too much, so the learner gains a sense that they are gradually mastering something, albeit with a more knowledgeable person’s support. You can find the practice of teaching in action everywhere in everyday life. In fact, it is impossible to imagine everyday life without it. Teaching and learning are integral to our nature as humans. Teaching is also a vocation, a profession. People in the business of teaching are good at their job when they have developed and apply the dispositions and sensibilities of the person who is a good teacher in everyday life. But there is much more to the teaching profession than having a natural knack, however well practised. There is also a science to education, which adds method and reflexivity to the art of teaching, and is backed up by a body of specialist knowledge. This science asks and attempts to answer fundamental and searching questions. How does learning happen? How do we organize teaching so it is most effective? What works for learners? And when it works, how do we know it has worked? The science of education attempts to answer these questions in a well thoughtthrough and soundly analyzed way.

LEARNING PRACTICES ………………………………… Learning is how a person or a group comes to know, and knowing consists of a variety of types of action. In learning, a knower positions themselves in relation to the knowable, and engages. Knowing entails doing—experiencing, conceptualizing, analysing or applying, for instance.

A learner brings their own person to the act of knowing, their subjectivity. When engagement occurs, they become a more or less transformed person. Their horizons of knowing and acting have been expanded. Learning can be analyzed at three levels: ‘pedagogy’, or the microdynamics of moments of teaching and learning; ‘curriculum ’, or the learning designs for particular areas of knowledge; and ‘education’ or the overall institutional setting in which pedagogy and curriculum are located. Pedagogy is a planned and deliberate process whereby one person helps another to learn. This is what First Peoples did through various formalized rites of passage, from child to adult to elder – learning law, spirituality and nature. It is also how teachers in the era of modern, mass, institutionalized education have organized the learners in their classrooms and their learning. Pedagogy is the science and practice of the dynamics of knowing. Assessment is the measure of pedagogy: interpreting the shape and extent of the knower’s transformation. Curriculum is the substantive content of learning and its organization into subjects and topics – mathematics, history, physical education and the like. In places of formal and systematic teaching and learning, pedagogy occurs within these larger frameworks in which the processes of engagement are given structure and order. These often defined by specific contents and methodologies, hence the distinctive ‘disciplines’. Well might we ask, what is the nature and future of ‘literacy’, ‘numeracy’, ‘science’, ‘history’, ‘social studies’, ‘economics’, ‘physical education’ and the like? How are they connected, with each other, and a world in a state of dynamic transformation? And how do we evaluate their effectiveness as curriculum? Education has traditionally been used with reference formal learning communities, the institutions of school, college and university that first appeared along with the emergence of writing as a tool for public administration (to train, for instance, ‘mandarins’ or public officials in imperial China, or the writers of cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia/Iraq); to support religions founded on sacred texts (the Islamic madrasa , or the Christian monastery); and to transmit formally developed knowledge and wisdom (the Academy of ancient Athens, or Confucian teaching in China). Learning happens everywhere and all the time. It is an intrinsic part of our human natures. Education, however is learning by design, in community settings specially designed as such—the institutions of early childhood, school, technical/vocational, university and adult education. Education also sometimes takes informal or semiformal forms within settings whose primary rationale is commercial or communal, including workplaces, community groups, households or public places.

TOWARDS A SCIENCE OF EDUCATION ………………………………… What is this overarching institution, ‘education’? In its most visible manifestation it consists of its institutional forms: schools, colleges and universities. But, more broadly conceived, education is a social process, a relationship of teaching and learning. As a professional practice, it is a discipline. The science of education analyzes pedagogy, curriculum and educational institutions. It is a discipline or body of knowledge about learning and teaching – about how these practices are conceived and realized ‘Science’ or ‘discipline’ refers to a privileged kind of knowledge, created by people with special skills who mostly work in research, academic or teaching jobs. It involves careful experimentation and focused observation. Scientists systematically explore phenomena, discover facts and patterns and gradually build these into theories that describe the world. Over time, we come to trust these and ascribe to them the authority of science. In this spirit, we might create a science of education that focuses on the brain as a biological entity and the mind as a source of behaviors (cognitive science). Or we might set up experiments

in which we carefully explore the facts of learning in order to prove what works or doesn’t work. Like the medical scientist, we might give some learners a dosage of a certain kind of educational medicine and others a placebo, to see whether a particular intervention produces better test results—such are the formal experimental methods of randomized, controlled trials. Often, however, we need to know more. It is indeed helpful to know something of how the mind works, but what of the cultural conditions that also form the thinking person? We need good proofs of which kinds of educational interventions work, but what if the research questions we are asking or the tests we are using to evaluate results can only measure a narrow range of capacities and knowledge? What if the tests can prove that the intervention works – scores are going up – but some learners are not engaged by a curriculum that has been retrofitted to the tests? What if the tests only succeed in measuring recall of the facts that the tests expect the learners to have acquired – simple, multiple-choice or yes/no answers? A critic of such ‘standardized testing’ may ask, what’s the use of this in a world in which facts can always be looked up, but problem solving and creativity are now more sought-after capacities, and there can be more than one valid and useful answer to most of the more important questions? For these reasons, we also need to work with a broader understanding of the discipline of education, based on a broader definition of science than experimental methods.

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE ………………………………… The discipline of education is grounded in the science of learning, or how people come to know. It is a science that explores what knowing is. It focuses on how babies, then young people, then adults, learn. Education-as-science is a specially focused form of knowing: knowing how knowing happens and how capacities to know develop. It is, in a sense, the science of all sciences. It is also concerned with the organization of teaching that supports systematic, formal learning and the institutions in which that learning occurs. Too often, education is regarded as a poor cousin of other disciplines in the university – the natural sciences, the humanities and the other professions, for instance. It is regarded as something that enables other disciplines, rather than being a discipline in its own right. This is often reflected in reduced levels of research funding, lower student entry requirements and the destination salaries of graduates. Education seems to be less rigorous and derivative. Its disciplinary base borrowed from other, apparently more foundational disciplines – sociology, history, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy – and the substantive knowledge of various subject areas, such as literature, science and mathematics. For sure, education is broader-ranging and more eclectic than other disciplines. Education draws on a number of disciplinary strands – the philosophy of knowledge (epistemology), the cognitive science of perception and learning, developmental psychology, the history of modern institutions, the sociology of diverse communities, the linguistics and semiotics of meaning – to name just a few of education’s disciplinary perspectives. These and other strands come together to make the discipline of education. In this sense, education is more than a discipline – it is an extraordinarily interdisciplinary endeavor.

EDUCATION AS THE SCIENCE OF SCIENCES ………………………………… Education is also the soil in which all the other disciplines grow. You can’t do any of the other disciplines in a university or college except through the medium of education. No other discipline exists except through its learning. A novice can only enter a discipline – physics, or law, or history, or literature – through education, learning the accumulated knowledge that has become that discipline. In this sense, education is more than just interdisciplinary. It does more than just

stitch together other disciplines. It is a metadiscipline, essential as the practical grounding of all disciplines. Education is the discipline of disciplines. Education is the systematic investigation of how humans come to know. It focuses on formal, institutionalized learning at all its levels from preschool to school, college and university. Education is also concerned with the processes of informal learning – how babies learn to speak at home, or how children and adults learn to use an interface or play a game. It is concerned with how organizations and groups learn, collecting and acquiring knowledge that is applied in their communities, professions and workplaces. In fact, as knowledge is needed and used everywhere, learning happens everywhere. There is no part of our lives to where the discipline of education cannot provide a useful perspective. Maybe, then, education is more than just an interdisciplinary place that ties together shreds and patches from other disciplines – a bit of psychology here, a bit of sociology there, a bit of management there. Education should be regarded as the metadisciplinary foundation of all disciplines. Its focus is the science of knowing, no less. The metadiscipline of education inquires into learning, or how we come to know and be. Education-as-metadiscipline explores knowing and being. It analyzes how people and groups learn and come to be what they are. As such, it is a specially expansive exploration of knowing. It is interested to know how knowing happens and how capacities to know develop.

EDUCATION IS THE NEW PHILOSOPHY ………………………………… What if we were to think of education in these more expansive and more ambitious ways? If we are to think in these terms, then the intellectual and practical agenda of education is no less than to explore the bases and pragmatics of human knowledge, becoming and identity. Education asks this ur -disciplinary question: How is it that we come to know and be, as individuals and collectively? If this is education’s central question, surely, then, we can argue that it is the source of all other disciplines? It is the means by which all other disciplines come into being. Philosophy used to claim a metadisciplinary position like this. It was the discipline where students not only thought, but thought about thinking. However, for decades, philosophy has been making itself less relevant. It has become too word-bound, too obscure, too formal and too disconnected from practical, lived experience. But philosophy’s metaquestions still need to be asked. Education should perhaps take the former position of philosophy as the discipline of disciplines, and do it more engagingly and relevantly than philosophy ever did. Education is the new philosophy.

INVESTING IN EDUCATION FOR A ‘KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY’ ………………………………… Add to these expanded intellectual ambitions, widened ambitions for education in public discourse and everyday social reality—and these should be good times to be an educator. Politicians and captains of industry alike tell us that knowledge is now a key factor of production, a fundamental basis of competitiveness – at the personal, enterprise and national levels. And as knowledge is a product of learning, education is more important than ever. This is why education has become such a prominent topic in the public discourse of social promise. The expectations of education have been ratcheted up. More than ever before, people are saying that education is pivotal to social and economic progress. This does not necessarily translate immediately into greater public investment in education (a businesslike approach, one would think). But today’s rhetoric about the importance of education does give educators greater leverage in the public discourse than we had until recently.

Stated simply, in a knowledge economy in which more and more jobs require greater depths of knowledge, schools must do what they can to bridge the knowledge gaps. If they can achieve this, they are at least doing something to ameliorate the worst systemic material inequalities. Schools, in other words, have a new opportunity, a new responsibility and a new challenge to build societies that are more inclusive of social classes whose access to material resources was historically limited. Despite this, educators struggle to find the resources to meet increasing expectations, despite all talk of a ‘knowledge society’ and ‘new economy’. We may have listened to this rhetoric with a great deal of skepticism given the struggles we educators face. Nevertheless, we need to grasp what is rhetorically or genuinely new in our times. We must seize the drift of contemporary public discourse, and position ourselves centrally. Here is our chance: the stuff of knowledge is no more and no less than the stuff of learning. Surely too, this new kind of society requires a new kind of learning and that a new social status is ascribed to education. It is our role as educators to advocate for education, to make a claim for the allocation of the social resources required in order to meet expanding expectations.

DESIGNS FOR SOCIAL FUTURES: TOWARDS ‘NEW LEARNING’ ………………………………… How might we imagine a better society which locates education at the heart of things? This heart may well be economic in the sense that it is bound to material self-improvement or personal ambition. Equally, however, education is a space to re-imagine and try out a new and better world which delivers improved material, environmental and cultural outcomes for all. Education must surely be a place of open possibilities, for personal growth, for social transformation and for the deepening of democracy. Such is the agenda of ‘New Learning’, explicitly or implicitly. This agenda holds whether our work and thinking is expansive and philosophical or local and finely grained. If we were to choose a single word to characterize the agenda of the New Learning, it is to be ‘transformative’. New Learning is thus not simply based on a reading of change. It is also grounded in an optimistic agenda in which we educators can constructively contribute to change. If knowledge is indeed as pivotal in contemporary society as the ‘new economy’ commentators and politicians claim, then educators should seize the agenda and position themselves as forces of change. We have a professional responsibility to be change agents who design the education for the future and who, in so doing, also help design the future. You might see this as a sensible conservatism, sensible for being realistic about the contemporary forces of technology, globalization and cultural change. Or you could see it to be an emancipatory agenda that aspires to make a future that is different from the present by addressing its many crises – of poverty, environment, cultural difference and existential meaning, for instance. In other words, the transformation may be pragmatic (enabling learners to do their best in the given social conditions) or it may be emancipatory (making the world a better place) or it may be both. At its best, transformative New Learning embodies a realistic view of contemporary society, or the kinds of knowledge and capacities for knowing that children need to develop in order to be good workers in a ‘knowledge economy’; participating citizens in a globalized, cosmopolitan society; and balanced personalities in a society that affords a range of life choices that at times feels overwhelming. It nurtures the social sensibilities of a kind of person who understands that they determine the world by their actions as much as they are determined by that world. It creates a person who understands how their individual needs are inextricably linked with their responsibility to work for the common good as we become more and more closely connected into ever-expanding and overlapping social networks. The issue is not merely one of quantity. It is not simply a matter of providing more education for more people. While many nations persevere with educational structures founded in the 19th century or earlier, the knowledge economy demands different and creative approaches to

learning. Schools, at least in their traditional form, may not dominate the educational landscape of the 21st century. Neat segregations of the past may crumble. Givens may give.

LEARNER DIVERSITY ………………………………… No learning exists without learners, in all their diversity. It is a distinctive feature of the New Learning to recognize the enormous variability of lifeworld circumstances that learners bring to learning. The demographics are insistent: material (class, locale, family circumstances), corporeal (age, race, sex and sexuality, and physical and mental characteristics) and symbolic (culture, language, gender, affinity and persona). This conceptual starting point helps explain the telling patterns of educational and social outcomes. Behind these demographics are real people, who have always already learned and whose range of learning possibilities are both boundless and circumscribed by what they have learned already and what they have become through that learning. Here we encounter the raw material diversity – of human experiences, dispositions, sensibilities, epistemologies and world views. These are always far more varied and complex than the raw demographics would at first glance suggest. Learning succeeds or fails to the extent that it engages the varied identities and subjectivities of learners. Engagement produces opportunity, equity and participation. Failure to engage produces failure, disadvantage and inequality. The questions we face as educators today are big, the challenges sometimes daunting. How do we, for instance, ensure that education fulfills its democratic mission, through quality teaching, a transformative curriculum and dedicated programs that address inequality? Targeting groups who are disadvantaged and ‘at risk’ is an essential responsibility of educators, not on the basis of moral arguments alone but also because of the economic and social dangers of allowing individuals and groups to be excluded.

EDUCATION’S AGENDAS ………………………………… In this time of extraordinary social transformation and uncertainty, educators need to consider themselves to be designers of social futures, to search out new ways to address the learning needs of our society, and in so doing to position education at an inarguably central place in society. Professional educators of tomorrow will not be people who simply enact received systems, standards, organizational structures and professional ethics. Indeed, powerful educational ideas – about how people act and build knowledge in context and in collaboration with others, for instance – could well become leading social ideas in currently more privileged areas of endeavor, such as business and technology. Perhaps, if we can succeed at putting education at the heart of the designs for society’s future, we might even be able to succeed in our various campaigns to ensure that education is innovative, empowering, just and adequately resourced. Education in all its aspects is in a moment of transition today. The idea of ‘New Learning’ contrasts what education has been like in the past, with the changes we are experiencing today, with an imaginative view of the possible features of learning environments in the near future. What will learning be like, and what will teachers’ jobs be like? Are we educators well enough equipped to answer the questions we encounter and address the challenges we face? Does our discipline provide us with the intellectual wherewithal to face changes of these proportions? It could, but only if we conceive education to be a science as rigorous in its methods and as ambitious in its scope as any other.

Education’s agenda is intellectually expansive and practically ambitious. It is learnertransformative, enabling productive workers, participating citizens and fulfilled persons. And it is world-transformative as we interrogate the human nature of learning and its role in imagining and enacting new ways of being human and living socially: shaping our identities, framing our ways of belonging, using technologies, representing meanings in new ways and through new media, building participatory spaces and collaborating to build and rebuild the world. These are enormous intellectual and practical challenges. Transformative education is an act of imagination for the future of learning and an attempt to find practical ways to develop aspects of this future in the educational practices of the present. It is an open-ended struggle rather than a clear destination, a process rather than a formula for action. It is a work-in-progress. The science of education is a domain of social imagination, experimentation, invention and action. It’s big. It’s ambitious. And it’s determinedly practical. The Learning Conference, journals, book imprint and online community provide a forum for dialogue about the nature and future of learning. They are places for presenting research and reflections on education both in general terms and through the minutiae of practice. They attempt to build an agenda for a new learning, and more ambitiously an agenda for a knowledge society which is as good as the promise of its name.

Table of Contents Good Practices in Science Teacher Education for Schools in Disadvantaged Contexts: A Case Study from a School Improvement Program in Argentina ...........1 Melina Furman and María Eugenia Podesta Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Curriculum in Thailand ......................................15 Choojit Sarapak and Tussatrin Wannagatesiri The Use of Content Representation as a Tool: Exploring the Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Two Lesotho Physics Teachers in the Process of Teaching Radioactivity ..................................................................................................................29 Nthoesele Hlaela Mohlouoa, Marissa Rollnick, and Samuel Ouma Oyoo Loss of Interest in Reasoning and Thinking ...............................................................39 Albert Mallart University and High School Students' Perceptions of the Nature of Science: The Effect of Gender, Class, Specialty and Reported Ability in Science .........................51 Wajeeh Daher, Abd-el Ghani Saifi, and Ali Habayeb Using PowerPoint Presentations as a Tool for Effective Teaching and Learning of Water Science for Upper Primary Pupils in Mauritius .............................................65 G. K. Bahadur and Soorendra Sharma Boodun A Case of Teaching Energy through Context-based Learning: Developing Lower Secondary Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Science ...........................79 Tussatrin Wannagatesiri An Analysis of a School Physics Textbook According to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory ......................................................................................................99 Marina Christopoulou and Michael Skoumios A Microscopic Diagnosis of the Teaching Difficulties in Projectile Motion of a South African Physical Science Teacher: A Focus on Instructional Strategies .....111 Awelani Victor Mudau, Fhatuwani J. Mundalamo, and Thomas Sedumedi Thirteen Elements of Effective Mathematics Instruction ........................................121 Nancy Drickey

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Surveying Relations between First-Year Science Students’ Understanding of Electrostatics and Students’ Fields of Interest in Thailand .................................... 129 Thanida Sujarittham, Narumon Emarat, Kwan Arayathanitkul, and Jintawat Tanamatayarat Investigating Thai Freshmen Students’ Understanding in Five Basic Essential Properties of Laser Beam........................................................................................... 143 Jintawat Tanamatayarat, Kwan Arayathanitkul, Narumon Emarat, Ratchapak Chitaree

Good Practices in Science Teacher Education for Schools in Disadvantaged Contexts: A Case Study from a School Improvement Program in Argentina Melina Furman, Universidad de San Andres, Argentina María Eugenia Podesta, Universidad de San Andres, Argentina Abstract: In many parts of the world, schools serving students from disadvantaged backgrounds are the norm rather than the exception. In science education, research has shown that within these schools, science is taught as a body of simple facts and that inquiry-based teaching methods are practically absent, despite being endorsed by national and local curricula. We analyzed the case of “Escuelas del Bicentenario” (Bicentennial Schools), a School Improvement Program that has been held since 2007 in 151 primary schools in unprivileged areas of 6 provinces of Argentina. This professional development program is composed of a team of 30 science facilitators who work with about 1800 class teachers every fortnight in their own schools with the goal of improving their science instruction. We conducted an open survey to examine facilitators’ perceptions of the efficacy of different professional development practices in having teachers incorporate inquiry-based science teaching methods in their classrooms. An overwhelming majority of science facilitators identified the same strategy as the most effective, namely modeling inquiry-based lessons in the actual classroom, with teachers very own students. We found the value of this practice, chosen by over 90% survey responders, to be related to the possibility of building teachers trust and understanding. First, when teachers see successful inquirybased lessons developed with their very own students, they begin to have trust not only in facilitators as skilled professionals, but also in the value of this teaching method as a way to develop student understanding and class participation. It also helps teachers trust their students learning capabilities. Second, it helps teachers to understand the nuances of implementing inquiry-based curriculum by themselves in the future, including how to handle student questions, a challenge that most facilitators reported as one of the biggest fear for teachers in adopting inquiry-based methods. Keywords: Science Education, Teacher Education, Inquiry Based Programs, Disadvantaged Contexts

Introduction

T

he large, and by now well-established opportunity inequalities within the educational system is currently considered a major problem both in Latin America as well as in other regions of the world. In the teaching of science, this inequality becomes strikingly evident from international examination results, such as those of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) (OECD 2010) or SERCE (Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study) (Leymonié Sáenz 2009), which show significant gaps in science achievement between children from affluent schools and students attending disadvantaged-sector establishments (Duarte and Moreno 2009). The number of children affected is considerable, given the fact that in 2007, 28.9% of the population in Latin America was estimated to be living below the poverty line (Rivas et al. 2010). Because scientific literacy has been globally established as a key factor for successful economic and social development in modern societies (Osborne 2007), the existing scenario reveals just how imperative the need to improve science education in disadvantagedsector schools has become. In response to this concern, several school improvement programs and professional teacher development efforts have recently been introduced in areas of social and economic vulnerability throughout Latin America which aim to reduce the achievement gap between children in poverty

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND TECHNOLOGY LEARNING

and students from more privileged backgrounds (Gvirtz and Oria 2010; Gvirtz et al. 2007; Valverde et al. 2007). However, very few of these programs have been properly evaluated or accompanied by research efforts. These research efforts are necessary for policy makers and program developers to understand which practices work best, or improve teacher classroom practices and student learning, least of all for science education. In this study we analyze the case of Escuelas del Bicentenario (Bicentennial Schools), a multi-site school improvement program started in 2007, and currently in practice at 151 elementary schools in disadvantaged areas in 6 Argentine provinces. Over the last 5 years, 1800 teachers have worked with a team of 30 science facilitators, meeting twice a month to work on science instruction practices (see Program Description for further details). Particular interest was focused on understanding the kinds of professional development practices best helping teachers understand and put into practice inquiry-based science teaching methods in the classroom. These methods involve engaging students in guided investigations relating to natural phenomena in order to develop, both an understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge as well as a specific set of scientific skills (Harlen 2000; Minner et al 2010). Examples of science learning modules developed by the program team can be found at: http://ebicentenario.org.ar/ebooks.php. This objective was selected because, although the importance of inquiry-based science teaching has been well established and incorporated to national and local curricula, as well as confirmed in different investigations (CFCE 2004; NRC 1996), our field studies and those of other authors have shown that in most underprivileged-sector elementary schools, science is taught by merely imparting a body of facts, to students participating in very undemanding activities that do not help advance science related thinking-skills (Furman and Podestá 2009; Oakes 2000). Supovitz and Turner (2000) found that the largest school-level influence affecting teacher practices and classroom culture was poverty. Teachers from schools with high numbers of students receiving free or almost-free lunches had, on average, significantly lower levels of classroom investigative culture and inquiry-based practices. Along these lines, a recent review of science teaching practices in Latin America and the Caribbean by Valverde and Näslund-Hadley (2010) has shown that in the region, science lessons are mostly based on rote data memorization and rudimentary problem solving, and that teachers explain student failure as the result of a lack of effort, or lack of interest in science, or in learning in general. As Angela Calabrese Barton (2003) already pointed out, teachers working in disadvantaged-sector schools often hold preconceived notions of students as deficient, further contributing to lower teacher expectations on potentially attainable skills. This presents a major challenge to teacher educators. Regional findings are not surprising, given the fact that despite high national and local science education standards, inquiry-based methods had yet to be extensively adopted by preservice teacher education programs (Bitar 2011). A study of Argentine teacher-training programs revealed that teacher educators often taught science as encyclopedic knowledge (Adúriz-Bravo 2009). These programs often promote an unrealistic view of science, presenting it as a rigid set of steps, as opposed to a set of practices and discourses (ACITSM 2007). Inquiry-based science instruction is extremely challenging for teachers who have had no prior experience with research projects themselves, or have not participated in inquiry-based lessons as students, since it requires considerable conceptual changes regarding scientific knowledge and how it is constructed, and forces teachers to set up new student participation paradigms in the classroom (Gellon et al. 2005). Closing the wide achievement gap in science for children living in underprivileged areas requires teachers to meet this challenge and offer all students a rich set of classroom experiences, engaging them in deep thinking as well as in a conceptual understanding of science. Therefore, adopting professional development strategies effectively introducing science teachers to inquiry-based teaching methods becomes extremely

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FURMAN AND PODESTA: GOOD PRACTICES IN SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION

important, in order to both design and rethink teacher-training programs, and assist science teachers working at disadvantaged schools to improve their teaching skills. In an attempt to contribute to this understanding, we looked at science facilitator perceptions in relation to professional development practice effectiveness. Effectiveness was defined as how well each practice worked in order to have teachers adopt inquiry-based teaching methods in the classroom. We also looked at facilitator perceptions in relation to the challenges faced by teachers attempting to make use of these practices. To this end, we conducted a survey of the 30 science facilitators conforming the Science team of the Bicentennial Schools Program (namely, the science teaching specialists working inside schools helping teachers improve science education skills). We were interested in analyzing their experience after 5 years implementing professional development practices for 1800 teachers, in direct contact with both teachers and students.

Research Questions What professional development practices do science facilitators believe best help elementary school teachers incorporate inquiry-based teaching methods to their science classes, and why? What are the main obstacles that teachers face when adopting an inquiry-based approach to teaching science, in the opinion of the science facilitators?

Research Methods Both quantitative and qualitative methods were selected to interpret science facilitator views, on professional development practice success at introducing inquiry-based science teaching in schools in disadvantaged areas. We focused our research on a case study of the Bicentennial Schools Program. The unit of analysis corresponded to the group of 30 science facilitators working within the program since 2007, with teachers from 151 underprivileged schools.

Program Description Bicentennial Schools (http://www.ebicentenario.org.ar) is a program jointly developed by IIEPUNESCO and San Andres University in Argentina to improve quality and equity of education in public elementary schools that attend underprivileged student populations. It also seeks to construct a body of evidence on good practices for school improvement and teacher education, that may ultimately contribute to further the development of educational policies at the state level (Gvirtz and Oría 2010). The program receives funding from both public and private sectors, including local provincial School Boards, local non-profit organizations and private companies. Launched in 2007, it is currently working with 6 Argentine provinces at 151 elementary schools, involving 1800 teachers and 60,000 children, attending 1st through 6th grade. Participating schools are selected by local education authorities based on poor national examination test results and high education vulnerability indices. The latter are established taking into account local variables, including percentage of population unable to graduate elementary school, unemployment levels and inadequate housing conditions, among others. Program interventions at each school last on average 4 and a half years and focus on three different academic areas: Literacy, Mathematics and Science, as well as on School Management. In this study, we present the Science program, specially designed and implemented by us since its inception. The goal of this particular part of the program is to introduce teachers to inquiry-based teaching methods and help them become reflective practitioners. In doing so, we seek to generate a ripple effect spreading from the central science coordinator team under the direction of the

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Program, all the way to the classroom. Science coordinators meet on a monthly basis with local science facilitator teams (30 in total) who, in turn, work with teachers at the individual school level. Most facilitators are former secondary school science teachers, or science graduates with experience in elementary school teacher training. Facilitators meet with teachers every fortnight for at least two hours, engaging in a variety of professional development practices, such as analyzing student course work, planning lessons, discussing science content and pedagogy, reviewing reading material or designing assessment instruments, among many others. Facilitators may arrange classroom visits with teachers, or coteach to model teaching strategies for lessons on particularly challenging topics. Other times, facilitators may demonstrate science experiments similar to the ones teachers will conduct with students in the classroom. Although all facilitator teams share a single goal, namely to orient teaching practices towards inquiry-based methods applying the same professional development resources and practices, each facilitator is responsible for deciding which practice to apply and when, based on their personal judgment and expertise.

Data Collection and Analysis An online survey with both open and multiple choice questions was conducted (see Appendix) asking teacher facilitators to identify the 2 most effective professional development practices from the set of options offered by the program. Responders were required to support their choice, providing reasons and examples from their work. We also inquired about obstacles encountered by teachers incorporating inquiry-based teaching methods in the classroom. All facilitators (N=30) completed the survey. Facilitator responses to each question were subsequently analyzed, looking for patterns identifying professional development practices deemed effective for inquiry-based science teaching, as well as common obstacles. We also examined qualitative data provided by facilitators on reasons for considering particular practices effective, and successful examples of work, selecting the most representative reasons behind these choices. Survey results were further triangulated with both individual facilitator informal interviews and monthly facilitator reports.

Findings Analysis of the survey yielded interesting results on what science facilitators viewed as best practices for science teacher professional development. Among the set of options available, an overwhelming majority of science facilitators identified the same strategy as the most effective, namely modeling inquiry-based lessons in the actual classroom. This practice, chosen by over 90% survey responders, was followed in second place by practicing adapting preexisting inquirybased science curriculum together with teachers (chosen by 30%) and in third place, by teacher participation in inquiry-based activities playing the role of learners (18%). Given the almost unanimous consensus in favor of the value of modeling inquiry-based lessons in the classroom, we decided to examine in greater depth the reasons behind the effectiveness of this professional development strategy. Before further analysis, it is important to clarify that within the context of the program, the practice of modeling lessons in the classroom involves a fixed set of steps: • Teachers and facilitators plan an inquiry-based science lesson together, often by adapting science curriculum contents offered by the program, to teacher goals and particular classroom context. • Teachers and facilitators set a date for the facilitator conduct the lesson in the teacher's actual classroom.

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•

On the day of the lesson, the facilitator leads the class. The classroom teacher takes the role of observer or helper and records relevant aspects of the lesson. • After the lesson, teachers and facilitators meet in order to reflect on lesson development and outcomes in terms of student engagement, learning results and possible improvements. • The process is repeated once or twice over the course of the year. One month after the practical demonstration, teachers and facilitators set a date for a new lesson they plan together, this time reversing their roles, followed by a reflection meeting as before. This approach is designed to allow teachers to observe an expert in action within an authentic classroom setting, and be slowly introduced to a new set of teaching practices, starting out playing the more peripheral role of observers, and subsequently shifting into the more central one, taking charge of the lesson. What is the true value of this professional development strategy? As mentioned, 91 % of facilitators considered it to be the most effective, if teachers were going to be scaffolding into switching to this lesson modality on their own in the future. In the facilitators' experience, the significance of modeling inquiry-based lessons was related to teachers “seeing with their own eyes” the impact of inquiry-based teaching on student learning and participation, thus envisioning what it really meant in practice. Further analysis of the survey revealed two main pillars behind facilitator belief in effectiveness of this professional development practice, namely trust and understanding, which we discuss next. First, the modeling of inquiry-based science lessons in classrooms jointly with teachers establishes trust, not only in facilitator expertise, but also in the genuine value of inquiry-based teaching, and in their own students as learners. While witnessing inquiry-based lessons being taught to their very own students, teachers develop trust in professional facilitator skills, when these lessons are conducted effectively, in classrooms with large numbers of students described by teachers as “having learning problems”. It also increments trust the inquiry-based science activities promoted by the program, that actually increase student participation and learning. Finally, it permits the development of trust in their own students capacity to learn science in more demanding ways. Along these lines, many facilitators referred to the importance of gaining teacher trust before engaging in any professional development process. As described by one facilitator: “A teacher said to me: ´I think everything you are telling me sounds great, but I also believe it's not as easy to put into practice as you claim. That's why I would love to see you do it with the kids first. So I went to the school, where we had set a future day for me to lead the lesson we had planned together. It was a positive experience, students were very excited. The most rewarding moment came at the end of the class, when the teacher acknowledged the success of the experience saying: Well, to tell you the truth, you were right. When I teach, I never ask all those questions or follow all the steps you proposed to the kids, I see now just how different it is from what I was doing and why children engage more”. Facilitators also talked about the importance of modeling inquiry-based lessons in order to have teachers visualize (and therefore trust in) the impact of this kind of pedagogy on student learning and participation. As one facilitator pointed out, it is only after watching facilitators model inquiry-based lessons in classrooms and observing the effects on their own students that the teamwork with teachers really begins: “This professional development strategy is effective because it allows us to connect with teachers by discussing ´real teaching´ as opposed to just a theoretical approach to

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instruction. It helps us to bond with teachers because, by watching inquiry-based lesson outcomes in their own classroom, teachers start to see how their students can build ideas based on their own investigations of natural phenomena. It is only then that they begin to believe inquiry-based teaching actually works, and that's when the teamwork starts, because teachers begin to trust in us as professionals as they realize the approach we bring is not merely theoretical, and that it is really possible to have students acquire not only ideas but also science skills”. Watching students respond to inquiry-based lessons allows teachers to reconsider their potential as learners, award greater confidence to their capacity to understand things in new ways. In the words of another program facilitator: “The teacher did not dare teach the class we had planned on her own, she thought her students would not respond to the activities prepared. Yet, when I modeled it for her, she saw how her students actively participated , in varying degrees. Even the shyest student contributed to the conversation. When the class ended, the teacher told me how impressed she was that her students had been able to answer all the questions correctly.” These facilitator testimonials show us that in underprivileged settings, incorporating inquirybased teaching methods requires teachers to review their own underestimation of students as learners, and suggest that watching their students actively participate in class fosters this change. For example, one facilitator reported how one of his teachers started to describe her students as “different people” after seeing them actively participate in an inquiry-based lesson: “Over the course of the lesson, students elaborated their own hypotheses, collected data and recorded findings in tables, were able to draw conclusions and explain what they had learned. Their teacher was very surprised because the same children who had a reputation for “bad behavior” or had been labeled as “slow” by the staff, were the ones who stood out most. He mentioned that after the lesson I modeled, these particular students changed their attitude in class and now appeared to be entirely “different kids”. Even other teachers at the school have had trouble believing this teacher when he tells them about what these students are now able to accomplish in science class.” We also found that the value of modeling inquiry-based science lessons in the classroom requires teachers to understand what the method really means in practice, in order to envision themselves as capable of implementing the strategy. As mentioned, teaching science through inquiry involves putting students at the center of classroom dynamics and often requires teachers to tackle a wider variety of student questions that are difficult to predict in advance; something which, at first, teachers reject as “another utopia brought by teacher educators”. One facilitator explained it as follows: “I believe that it makes teachers see how to do something they have never done before. By watching another colleague (one of us) in action, they start to consider our proposal less utopian than in the past. It demystifies science education, helping teachers see the meaning and the value of learning science”. Yet another facilitator reflected, "teachers find inquiry-based approaches to teaching so challenging because they themselves have rarely witnessed this kind of lesson in practice, either as students or as pre-service teachers": “At the beginning of the project, teachers are usually resistant to the of changes we propose, because they feel that working with science means engaging in experimental

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activities with students for which they have had no preparation, even during their years of teacher education. Modeling successful inquiry-based lessons for them allows us to break the ice and show teachers that, in the real classroom, things are not as complicated as they seem on paper. This makes them feel safe and leads them to adopt a more active role in lesson planning and to start thinking of new activities to develop with students-” As in the quote above, many facilitators spoke about the importance of showing teachers the nuances of how an inquiry-based science lesson can be implemented in order to make them feel safe and trust in their own abilities. Then teachers start to understand what the proposed methodology is all about, and begin to envision in details how they might be able to teach in the same way themselves in the near future: “Once teachers can watch how the inquiry-based approach works ´live´, they begin to understand the different stages they need to go through to build a class, what kinds of questions they need to ask in order to guide student reasoning, and other important issues such as time management or key concepts to write up on the blackboard. Seeing the kind of classroom dynamics that inquiry-based teaching generates gives them more confidence and insight into the understanding they need to look for in a lesson.” In this way, putting inquiry-based teaching into practice also contributes to building teacher confidence in themselves as professionals able to teach science in richer ways than before. This is linked directly to the responses obtained to our second research question. When facilitators were asked to identify obstacles limiting inquiry-based teaching method application, many of them referred to teacher fear of losing control of the classroom (35%), both in terms of managing large groups where student behavior was an issue (39%), and in terms of having students pose unforeseen questions they did not know the answers to (57%). This last finding stands in apparent contradiction with the fact that teachers perceived students as deficient in terms of their ability to learn. However, as facilitators report, teachers fear of unforeseen questions is related to their lack of knowledge of the subject matter of science. Thus, even simple questions posed by students may present a challenge to them. For teachers, losing the fear of applying a new and more challenging teaching method, required by national curriculum guidelines, but one they have never received specific training for, remains the issue. Therefore, watching examples of how these lessons can be successfully conducted with their own students, becomes an important tool in helping them envision both the problems and the possible solutions when confronting the challenge on their own. Finally, many facilitators assigned great importance to engaging teachers in discussions on lesson outcomes, and reasons underlying successful results, after watching modeled lessons. This last step of the professional development modeling strategy we describe, allows teachers and facilitators to critically reflect on the kinds of teacher interventions that best promote student learning, and to think about ways to improve future lessons. As one facilitator reflected: “It is a very enriching experience, when the modeled lesson is seen as a practice laboratory of sorts. After observing and then coteaching a few inquiry-based classes, I find teachers become more reflective about what makes a lesson work and why. They become more aware of the learning goals targeted during each class and of how to introduce teaching scientific skills as well” We and others have previously shown that the process of learning to teach through inquirybased methods is a long and demanding journey, which requires a mix of careful planning and flexible improvisation (Furman et al. 2012). Inquiry-based lessons need teachers to put students at the center of the teaching process, without forgetting lesson goals, and allowing room for debate while incorporating student findings, in order to progressively build scientific knowledge.

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This last step involves joint reflection, which is at the heart of the modeling practice, and is therefore essential to help teachers gain ownership of this challenging process.

Discussion We have shown how the Bicentennial Schools program team of science education facilitators, almost unanimously chose on site inquiry-based lesson modeling as the most effective professional development practice, for teachers seeking to apply inquiry-based science teaching methods in class. This result underscores the importance of adopting a situated perspective when introducing teachers to a new and demanding instruction method that involves both a significant change in basic pedagogic concepts as well as a different approach to the teaching of the subject. As Lave and Wenger (1991) observed, learning a complex task such as teaching requires learners to become part of a community of practice, that gradually allows them to take on more central roles while learning the standard norms and practices of the community itself. In this case, starting the professional development process by having more experienced others (i.e. science facilitators), adopt central roles in the classroom community of learning (in this case, leading an inquiry-based science lesson), and teachers accept initially a more peripheral role and gradually move back to the center, seems to be a key strategy in facilitating learning to teach in new ways. We have found that modeling on site inquiry-based lessons in classrooms by teacher trainers, helps teachers build both trust and understanding. Building trust involves developing teacher confidence both in science facilitator expertise (key for establishing a real community of practice, where novices must trust experts in their roles as such), and in the benefits of the method proposed (i.e. that it will actually increase student learning and participation); and confidence in their own students as learners as well (abandoning the deficient model held by most teachers of students from disadvantaged schools). Building understanding involves having teachers comprehend what the proposed method actually implies in the context of a real classroom, including the nuances of putting it into practice, and is also related to building trust, in this case in themselves as professionals capable of conducting an inquiry-based lesson with real students. Our findings can be linked to those of Hilda Borko (2004) in her review analysis of different teacher education models, where in order to transform their teaching practices, the author believes teachers need “an existence proof” whereby strategies proposed by teacher educators are real and applicable within their own work contexts, and not just in some ideal school. Marilyn Cochran Smith (2000) has called them “proofs of possibility”, or evidence that the new teaching scenarios are really possible. As Lee Shulman (1983) pointed out, existence or possibility proofs are extremely important because they can “evoke images of the possible…. Not only documenting that it can be done, but also laying out at least one detailed example of how it was organized, developed, and pursued” (p. 495). This was especially true in our study, not only with respect to the potential application of a specific methodology such as inquiry-based science teaching, but also regarding the actual possibility of implementing it with students in disadvantaged settings, who are often described by teachers in our program as problematic, with learning difficulties, or deficient in other ways. Seeing individual students perform differently and better when offered richer lessons, fostered in their teachers greater trust in student abilities and as a result, the courage they needed to offer more challenging lessons. This study is part of a bigger research effort that aims to identify best practices in science teacher education, especially for those who teach (or aim to teach) in disadvantaged contexts. We acknowledge that looking at facilitators views on effective strategies for teacher education has limitations, since their perceptions might be different from what teachers really understand as those training practices that help them transform their actual practice. However, we also understand that the meaning that teacher educators (i.e. facilitators) give to their practice can

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shed an interesting light in order to understand the reasons why some training strategies work better than others. Next steps of this study involve looking at teachers perception of the effectiveness of different training practices and at the ways those practices transform classroom teaching. We believe these study results acquire greatest significance in relation to the designing of teacher education programs. Although the findings are not surprising in the context of a situated perspective on teaching and learning, which underlines the importance of engaging learners (in our case, practicing teachers) in authentic contexts, experiences of this nature, as mentioned in the Introduction to this article, are the exception rather than the norm in Latin America, both for pre-service and in-service teacher education. In most cases, teacher education is based on a theoretical approach, both to teaching and to the subject matter, in this instance, science. Our findings speak not only to the key value of having teachers see actual inquiry-based lesson plans in action and be able to reflect with more experienced others on the challenges of working with students following this approach, but also to the enormous possibilities opened by its use if we are to transform the kind of science currently taught in the region, and offer all children the possibility of achieving scientific literacy.

Acknowledgements A very special thank you to the team of Science Coordinators at the Bicentennial Schools Program who contributed to the development of the survey, and our most sincere appreciation to all Science Facilitators for completing it.

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REFERENCES Aduriz Bravo, Agustín. 2009. “Knowledge that circulates at the teacher education programs for secondary school science teachers”. A report prepared at the request of the National Ministry of Education. Buenos Aires: Ministry of Education Printing Office. Argentine Commission for Improvement of the Teaching of Science and Mathematics (ACITSM). 2007. Final Report. Buenos Aires: Ministry of Education Printing Office. Bitar, Sergio. 2011. “Teacher Education in Chile.” Document Nº 57. Santiago de Chile: Programa de Promoción de la Reforma Educativa en América Latina y el Caribe (PREAL). Borko, Hilda. 2004. “Professional Development and Teacher Learning: Mapping the Terrain.” Educational Researcher 33, no. 8: 3-15. Calabrese Barton, Angela. 2003. Teaching Science for Social Justice. New York: Teachers College Press. Consejo Federal de Cultura y Educación (CFCE). 2004. Núcleos de Aprendizaje Prioritarios. Buenos Aires: Ministry of Education Printing Office. Cochran-Smith, Marilyn. 2004. Walking the road: Race, diversity and social justice in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Duarte, Jesus, María Soledad Bos, and Martín Moreno. 2009. “Inequidad en los Aprendizajes Escolares en América Latina.” IDB Technical Note No. 4, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC. Furman, Melina, Angela Calabrese Barton, and Ben Muir. 2012. “Learning to teach science in urban schools by becoming a researcher of one´s own beginning practice.” Cultural Studies of Science Education 7, no. 1:153-174. Furman, Melina, and María Eugenia Podestá. 2009. La aventura de enseñar ciencias naturales. Buenos Aires: Aique. Gellon Gabriel, Elsa Rossenvasser Feher, Melina Furman, and Diego Golombek. 2005. La Ciencia en el aula. Lo que nos dice la ciencia sobre cómo enseñarla. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Gvirtz, Silvina, and Angela Oría. 2010. Alianzas para la mejora educacional. Buenos Aires: Aique. Gvirtz, Silvina, Angela Oría, María Eugenia Podestá, and Amelia Canavese. 2007. “La mejora escolar y el desafío de la escala. Aportes al diseño de la política pública.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Congreso Iberoamericano de Eficacia Escolar y Factores Asociados, Santiago de Chile, Chile, December 12-14. Harlen, Wynne. 2000. Enseñar ciencias en la escuela primaria. Madrid: Ediciones Morata. Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Leymonié Saenz, Julia. 2009. Aportes para la enseñanza de las ciencias naturales: Segundo estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo (SERCE). Santiago de Chile: Oficina Regional de Educación de la UNESCO para América Latina y el Caribe. Minner, D. D., Levy, A. J., & Century, J. 2010. “Inquiry-Based Science Instruction — What Is It and Does It Matter ? Results from a Research Synthesis Years 1984 to 2002.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 47, no. 4: 474-496 National Research Council (NRC). 1996. National Science Education Standards. Washington DC: National Academy Press. Oakes, Jane. 2000. “Course-taking and achievement: Inequalities that endure and change.” Paper presented at the National Institute for Science Education Forum, Detroit, Michigan, May 22-23.

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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2010. PISA 2009 Results: What Students Know and Can Do: Student Performance in Reading, Mathematics and Science (Volume 1). Paris: OECD, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. Osborne, Jonathan. 2007. “Science Education for the Twenty First Century.” Education 3, no. 3: 173-184. Rivas, Axel, Alejandro Vera and Pablo Bezem. 2010. Radiografía de la educación argentina. Buenos Aires: CIPPEC. Shulman, Lee. 1983. “Autonomy and obligation: The remote control of teaching.” In Handbook of teaching and policy, edited by Lee Shulman and Gary Sykes, 484-504. New York: Longman Supovitz, Jonathan, and Herbert Turner. 2000. “The Effects of Professional Development on Science Teaching Practices and Classroom Culture.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 37, no. 9: 963-980. Valverde, Gilbert, and Emma Näslund-Hadley. 2010. “The State of Numeracy Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.”. IDB Technical Note No. 185. Washington, DC: InterAmerican Development Bank. Valverde, Gilbert, Sarah González, J. Leonardo Valeirón, Luis Domínguez, and Sandra González. 2007. “How are Mathematics and Reading Comprehension Learned in the Primary Schools of the Dominican Republic? A Final Report of Highlights from the Educational Evaluation Research Consortium Study of Third through Seventh Grade.” Albany, NY: Educational Evaluation Research Consortium and USAID.

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Appendix: Survey for Science Facilitators Dear team, We are conducting a research study on professional development practices. We are interested in establishing which approaches work best in order to have teachers incorporate inquiry-based teaching methods in their classrooms. Please complete this online survey to let us know, in you opinion as Facilitators, which option most successfully helped teachers adopt inquiry-based strategies in their science class. Thank you! 1. Name: 2. Province: 3. Select the 2 professional development practices that, in your view, were more effective in helping teachers incorporate an inquiry-based approach to science teaching, and give an example of each strategy from your own work. Strategy 1: Example: Why do you think this strategy works? Strategy 2: Example: Why do you think this strategy works? Options to choose from: • Modeling inquiry-based lessons with students in teachers own classroom. • Working with teachers to adapt inquiry-based curriculum provided by the program. • Working with teachers to create inquiry-based lesson plans. • Asking teachers to create their own lesson plans. • Having teachers conduct experiments (in the role of learners) similar to those they will later perform with students. • Explain conceptual science topics teachers may be unfamiliar with. • Reviewing student course work together. • Analyzing other teachers written lesson plans • Watching and analyzing videos of other teachers' lessons. • Discussing science pedagogy material together. • Discussing particular science topics together. 4. From your perspective, which were the most common obstacles encountered by teachers trying to adopt inquiry-based science teaching methods? Select an option from the ones shown below. • Lack of scientific knowledge. • More time required for planning and preparation than a traditional science lesson. • Difficulties obtaining materials needed. • Lack of support from school authorities. • Large classroom size. • Student behavior issues. • Teachers feeling the approach involved "little science content" and that they were teaching less than with their traditional method. • Fear of losing control of the classroom • Fear of unpredictable questions from students they will be unable to answer. • Requires greater effort • Other (specify)

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Melina Furman: Melina Furman is Assistant Professor in Science Education at the School of Education, Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina. She obtained a Ph.D. in science education at Columbia University, United States and a M.S. in biological sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. Since 2007 she has worked as Science Coordinator for “Escuelas del Bicentenario” (IIPEUNESCO and Universidad de San Andrés), a school improvement program for schools in disadvantaged areas of seven provinces of Argentina. She also worked as Project Director for the Urban Science Education Fellows Program at Columbia University, aimed at prepare preservice teachers for effective teaching in urban schools serving minority populations. Her research focuses on finding new strategies for teacher education that allow teachers to reach all students and help them develop scientific literacy. She is co-author of the books “La aventura de enseñar ciencias naturales” (Editorial Aique, 2009), “La ciencia en el aula” (Paidós, 2005), among others. María Eugenia G.T. de Podestá: María Eugenia G.T. de Podestá is MA in Education, University of Bath; post-graduate in Education, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina; and BA in Biochemistry, Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is Director of the Extension Area and codirector of the Diploma “Postítulo de Actualización Académica ‘Los nuevos desafíos de la docencia’” at the School of Education, Universidad de San Andrés. She is member of the Board of Escuelas del Bicentenario (IIPE UNESCO and Universidad de San Andrés), Professor of Teaching Practice at the Teacher’s Training Course at Universidad de San Andrés and a pedagogical adviser in Natural Sciences and School Improvement. She is co-author of the books “La aventura de enseñar ciencias naturales” (Editorial Aique, 2009) and “El Rol del supervisor en la mejora escolar” (Editorial Aique, 2009) and co-author and editor of the books “Mejorar la gestión directiva en la escuela” (Buenos Aires, Ediciones Granica, 2007) and “Mejorar la escuela. Acerca de la gestión y la enseñanza” (Buenos Aires, Ediciones Granica, 2004). She is Director of a book series in Education edited by Aique Publishing Company in Argentina.

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Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Curriculum in Thailand Choojit Sarapak, Mahidol University, Thailand Tussatrin Wannagatesiri, Kasetsart University, Thailand Abstract: This paper reports on an effort to introduce basic concepts of nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) into Thai basic education. A questionnaire was completed by 35 science teachers revealed most of them agreed that NST should be integrated in the national science standards, particularly for grade 9-12 students. Next, possibility of introducing NST to high school students was convinced. The NST curriculum units were designed and implemented with 42 high school students; took place over 18 periods of 6 units. The data from classroom observations and a questionnaire were used to build up a detailed picture of the students’ response to NST content and its application that they were being introduced. The results showed that students responded high positive attitude toward NST curriculum integration. NST activities are sequenced by making the important connection between basic science principles and application to commercial nanoproducts and techniques. However, too complex science might build conflict in introducing NST with the limitation of basic knowledge of high school level. Then selection of NST applications should be simply explained how they work with relate high school science concept. Moreover, introducing the NST, the reasons of spending time and energy in proposing new content should be noticeably discussed. Keywords: Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Integration Curriculum

Introduction

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hailand, as a developing country, has taken into account that nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) are modern trends, stated in the Tenth National Economic and Social Development Plan (2007-2011). NST is focused on as an important area for research and development because the specific and unusual properties of matter at the nano size scale present the opportunity to produce new and sophisticated technologies in diverse fields such as medicine, energy and manufacturing (the National Science and Technology Development Agency: NSTDA, 2012). Moreover, nanomaterial goods/products are becoming a vital part of our everyday lives, e.g. clear (nanoparticulate), sunscreen, clean (nanosolar) energy, fine (nano) filters and so on. These influences of nanotechnology require a forward-thinking ideal in education to aid in the development of informed Thai citizens and consumers, and as a result the issue of NST education for Thais needs to be rising. In addressing NST into K-12 Thai classrooms, the crucial question to pose is “Can high school students learn NST?” However, little is known about this question due to few research studies concerning NST education in Thailand. Whereas there is evidence in several countries showing how NST has already had a significant effect on school science curricula, in terms of integrated curriculum, informal curriculum, as well as interdisciplinary curriculum. Some examples include the NanoSense project (2007), in collaboration with scientists and partner highschool science teachers, has developed four curriculum units that can be inserted whole or in part into high-school science classrooms. In Taiwan, a K-12 Nanotechnology program is provided by Nanotechnology Human Resources Development (NHRD) with a focus on providing teachers information about nanotechnology and to develop materials to inspire students to learn nanotechnology (Lu and Chia-Chi 2011). Accessnano (2011) is a unique, cutting-edge nanotechnology educational resource designed to introduce accessible and innovative science and technology into Australian secondary school classrooms. Moreover, in several European countries, various institutions are offering exhibitions, workshops, seminars, interactive lectures, many on-line resources and games for schools. Examples of such institutions are the Nanoyou project, NanoBioNet and various science museums (Laherto 2010). However there are slightly

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS AND TECHNOLOGY LEARNING

different ideas suggested by Orgill and Crippen (2009) that the use of nanoscience as a theme for the interdisciplinary study of science and mathematics can lead to a better understanding of NST. As had been discussed above, we might briefly say that NST can be used as a context for teaching K-12 school science (Jones et al. 2007; Ryu 2005; Stevens et al. 2007; Tretter et al. 2006). In order to develop outfitted integration of NST into the current science curriculum for Thais, various factors are needed to be considered throughout the integrated curriculum development process: 1) the planning step: assessing needs and issues and identifying key issues and trends in NST area-related to existing science curriculum, 2) the developing step: developing and sequencing of grade-level and unit objectives, identifying resource materials and identifying assessment tasks, 3) putting the curriculum integration into practice and evaluating, and 4) determining the accomplishment of the curriculum. As a pilot study, we attempt to incorporate science teachers and students in integrating NST into the current science curriculum, then two main research questions were posed as follows: 1. What are high school science teachers’ opinions on integrating NST into the current science curriculum? 2. What are high school students’ responses to learning activities in NST curriculum integration? To answer these questions, science teachers who are going the play an important role in participating in the NST curriculum integration, their agreements of how the NST content would be put into practice in high school science classrooms were examined. Then NST curriculum was implemented, changes in student understanding and their response were measured. After that, detailed consideration of the NST content and its integration into high school science curricula were discussed and the possibility of introducing basics concepts of NST to high school students was concluded.

Existing Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Curriculum The importance of NST education is rapidly increasing worldwide, a number of different and interesting programs and projects concerning NST aim to introduce NST to K-12 students though integration curriculum in science. For example, Nanoscale Science and Engineering Education (NSEE) raised in a workshop report in 2005 suggested 8 basic NST concepts: 1) sizedependence of solid state properties, 2) properties that change with nano-sizing, 3) uses of nanoscaled applications and devices, 4) changes in physical properties at the nano-scale, 5) increase in surface area/volume at the nanoscale, 6) chemical properties of nanoscale materials, 7) changes in size and shape of nanocrystals, and 8) preparation and manipulation of gold nanoparticles (NSF 2005). Next in 2007, the NanoSense project created classroom tests and disseminated NST curriculum units to help high school students understand underlying principles, applications and implications of nanoscale science (SRI 2007). Another study by Alford et al. (2009) suggested ideas of learning NST driven by the applications of nanotechnology. Lately, the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) and a research group at SIT and the Academies at Englewood High School developed, integrated and piloted biology and chemistry curriculum modules related to nanoscale in high school classes. The content of the modules is related to examples such as infection control and infection-controlling biomaterials, surface coating material, a surface coating and nanosized hydrogel, bacteria and biofilm and so on. CIESE modules had properly addressed National Science Education Standards (NSES) relating to life science, science as inquiry and science and technology (CIESE 2011). All information above put on view that NST could be introduced through integration of existing science curriculum by setting NST-related concepts and their applications. In Thailand, information of nanomaterials’ specific and unusual properties is only taught in undergraduate and graduated levels, mostly in the faculties of science and engineering only (Pornsinsirirak and Supaka 2005; Tanthapanichakoon 2005). The contributions of NST information, both in the public and in education, are the responsibility of the National Science 16

SARAPAK AND WANNAGATESIRI: NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM

and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), in Thailand only. There is no NST curriculum for K-12 Thai students (Pornsinsirirak and Supaka 2005). With high academic terms of nanonews, posed by NSTDA, in addition to understanding of basic NST knowledge, we could forecast that NST-literacy for all needs to be focused on as soon as possible.

Orientation for Teaching Nanoscience and Nanotechnology The teaching of NST should be added to classrooms as knowledge-centered and learningcentered environments, which concern creative thinking, critical thinking and life-long learning. Classrooms that emphasize interactive learning and cooperative learning would give students opportunities to work and participate with each other, while research-based learning would also provide students opportunities to gain hands-on experience (Michael et al. 2002). A research study by O’Connor and Hayden (2008) stated that the utilization of contextualizing nanotechnology in science classrooms could enhance students’ interest in learning about nanotechnology and enjoy its futuristic concepts. Problem-based learning is another approach that could enhance classroom discussions. Consorting teachers’ opinions on effective teaching of nanotechnology included in hands-on experiments, creating animations, holding contests, building websites and integrating nanotechnology into textbooks which need to be provided that would convey students’ interests in new technology (Chih-Kuan et al. 2006). Various orientations towards teaching NST are identified, e.g. Michael et al. (2002), Tahan et al. (2006), O’Connor and Hayden (2008), and Winkelmann (2009), that interactive learning, cooperative learning, contextual learning, activity-driven, discovery, project-based science and also inquiry all could be effective approaches for teaching NST. However, recently the Thai science curriculum is introduced with an inquiry teaching and learning approaches (5E inquiry). It is possible that the development of NST integration curriculum in Thai science classrooms should come along with the inquiry approach as well.

Methodology Research Participants Thirty-five science teachers from 10 public high schools participated in this study. The science teachers who participated graduated with bachelor’s degrees to master’s degrees. Nearly half of the science teachers graduated with a master’s degree, while another half graduated with bachelor’s degrees. More than 50% of the teachers had taught science for more than six years. The details of the teacher sample are shown in Table 1. The 42 high school students who participated were studying in Grade 12 (ages ranged between 16 to 18 year olds) of which 56 % are female and 44% are male.

17


Table 1: Science teachers’ background information Teachers’ Information Frequency (N=35) Sex

Percentage

Male

10

28.6

Female

25

71.4

20-30

12

34.3

31-40

17

48.6

41-50

4

11.4

>50

2

5.71

Bachelor

18

51.4

Master

17

48.6

Teaching Experience

g ave≥0.3; and “Low gain” when g ave 0.05) The group of 13 students who selected Physics as their future major was followed. There were 10 students becoming physics students (Group A). Two students turned to chemistry major and one to mathematics major (Group B). Table 5 indicates that although the three students did not become physics students, they also showed a good improvement in understanding. It seems possible to interpret the good learning gains in Electrostatics of students who turned to the chemistry major. As mentioned previously, there are many areas where chemistry and physics overlap. For example, learning a model of atom requires a basic electrostatic principle (Coulomb’s law). In an atom, there is an attractive force between a nucleus and an electron. According to the Coulomb’s law, the magnitude of force between the nucleus and an electron in the second shell will be larger than that the nucleus and the outermost electron (Taber 2003). In Table 5, the averaged normalized gains of the two groups were not statistically significant difference at the 0.05 level with the Mann–Whitney U test (Brungardt and Zollman 1995). This result implied that if only students had much interest in the field of Physics, they could improve themselves to learn and understand physics as well as actual physics students.

Conclusion The outcomes of this study could be summarized to answer the research question. The relation between students’ electrostatics learning gains and their field of interest was found. Students who had the most interest in Physics field performed the greatest pre–test and post–test scores and showed the highest improvement of understanding in Electrostatics as identified by the highest actual learning gain and the highest average normalized gain. Students who had the most interest in Chemistry also had good learning gains including the highest actual learning gain and the equivalent average normalized gain. These results were nearly similar to the results of Perkins & Gratny (2010). They presented the distribution of grades of all students. The A and B grades were mainly hold by students who intended to major in physics. That means there is a relation between achievement and interest. It also implies that student interest in physics could predict students’ physics achievement as shown in the previous studies. In addition, we found that 3 out of 13 students who were formerly interested in Physics field changed to select the other fields as their actual major. They also showed much improvement of understanding as well as the 10 students who majored in physics. Among the different fields of interest, the group of students who were mostly interested in Physics could perform the dominant improvement of understanding, particularly in the most difficult subtopic. It is seen that students with different interests, had different effectiveness of

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SUJARITTHAM: SURVEYING RELATIONS BETWEEN FIRST-YEAR SCIENCE STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF ELECTROSTATICS AND STUDENTS’ FIELDS OF INTEREST IN THAILAND

improving their understanding and learning. From the evidences, these might be used as a guidance for physics instructors and educators to study how to foster different students with different fields of interest to learn Physics. The instructors might include in the course the applications of electrostatics in other fields. For example, those involved in the photosynthesis, the nervous system and etc., to give more interest to students willing to major in Biology. Furthermore, it would give benefits to many researchers to study further about the characteristics of students who come to learn with or without interest in Physics in order to help them learn effectively.

.

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McDermott, L.C. 2001. “Oersted Medal Lecture 2001:” Physics Education Research—The Key to Student Learning”.” American Journal of Physics no. 69:1127. Narjaikaew, P., N. Emarat, K. Arayathanitkul, and B. Cowie. 2010. “Magnetism teaching sequences based on an inductive approach for first–year Thai university science students.” International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education no. 8 (5):891–910. Okpala, P., and C. Onocha. 1988. “Student factors as correlates of achievement in physics.” Physics Education no. 23:361. Perkins, K.K., and M. Gratny. 2010. Who Becomes a Physics Major? A Long‐term Longitudinal Study Examining the Roles of Pre‐college Beliefs about Physics and Learning Physics, Interest, and Academic Achievement. Paper read at AIP Conference Proceedings. Schiefele, U., A. Krapp, and A. Winteler. 1992. “Interest as a predictor of academic achievement: A meta–analysis of research.” The role of interest in learning and development: 183–212. Sharma, M.D., I.D. Johnston, H. Johnston, K. Varvell, G. Robertson, A. Hopkins, C. Stewart, I. Cooper, and R. Thornton. 2010. “Use of interactive lecture demonstrations: A ten year study.” Physical Review Special Topics–Physics Education Research no. 6 (2): 020119. Simpson, R.D., and J. Steve Oliver. 1990. “A summary of major influences on attitude toward and achievement in science among adolescent students.” Science Education no. 74 (1):1–18. Soankwan, C., N. Emarat, K. Arayathanitkul, and R. Chitaree. 2007. “Physics education in Thailand.” International Commission on Physics Education Newsletters (54):6–8. Taber, K.S. 2000. “Multiple frameworks?: Evidence of manifold conceptions in individual cognitive structure.” International Journal of Science Education no. 22 (4):399–417. Taber, K.S. 2003. “Understanding ionisation energy: physical, chemical and alternative conceptions.” Chemistry Education Research and Practice no. 4 (2):149–169. Uz, H., and A. Eryılmaz. 1999. “Effects of socioeconomic status, locus of control, prior achievement, cumulative GPA, future occupation and achievement in mathematics on students’ attitudes toward physics.” Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi no. 17:105112. Von Rhöneck, C., K. Grob, G.W. Schnaitmann, and B. Völker. 1998. “Learning in basic electricity: how do motivation, cognitive and classroom climate factors influence achievement in physics?” International Journal of Science Education no. 20 (5):551– 565. Wutchana, U., and N. Emarat. 2011. “Student effort expectations and their learning in first–year introductory physics: A case study in Thailand.” Physical Review Special Topics–Physics Education Research no. 7 (1):010111.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Thanida Sujarittham: Miss Thanida Sujarittham is a Ph.D. student in science and technology education at the Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand. Moreover, she is a member of the Physics Education Network of Thailand (PENThai) research group which aims to help improve teachers teaching and student learning in Physics. Her current research is developing teaching and learning on first–year Electricity and Magnetism. Asst. Prof. Narumon Emarat: Narumon Emarat, Ph.D. in Applied Physics, the University of Edinburgh, is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand. Her major fields of research are applied physics in fluid dynamics and physics education. Asst. Prof. Kwan Arayathanitkul: Kwan Arayathanitkul, Ph.D. in Physics, the University of Pennsylvania, is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand. His major fields of research are laser applications and physics education. Jintawat Tanamatayarat: Jintawat Tanamatayarat, Ph.D. in Physics, Mahidol University, is interested in physics education, laser applications, and forensic science. He is currently a lecturer at the Physics Department, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok. His current research areas focus on improving students understanding of properties of lasers, force and motions, electricity, and magnetism by applying invented demonstration sets through hands–on activity and an interactive lecture demonstration approach.

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Investigating Thai Freshmen Students’ Understanding in Five Basic Essential Properties of Laser Beam Jintawat Tanamatayarat, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand Kwan Arayathanitkul, Mahidol University, Thailand Narumon Emarat, Mahidol University, Thailand Ratchapak Chitaree, Mahidol University, Thailand

Abstract: Lasers play an important role in everyday life due to special properties of their emitted light. Students are familiar with lasers not only from lectures or textbooks, but also in real life. The evaluation of students’ knowledge in basic properties of laser beam is essential to understand students’ background. This can be useful in preparing the course and improving student understanding. An assessment instrument consisting of 12 items was developed to investigate 606 freshmen students’ knowledge in five basic properties of laser beam: directionality, beam divergence, intensity, speed, and monochromaticity. The reliability of the test was 0.5 measured by KR-20. The samples consisted of medical science students, science students, and agriculture and law students who participated in general physics courses. The average score from all students was 40%. The highest score was in the “directionality”, while the lowest score was in the “speed of laser light”. Additionally, the science students got the highest scores of 42%, which is still low. These results indicated that even though students were familiar with lasers, they still needed to improve their knowledge. Keywords: Properties of Laser Beam, Laser, Students’ Background Knowledge

INTRODUCTION

L

ASER THEORY WAS proposed for the first time in the beginning of the twentieth century. Forty years later, the invention of a laser was succeeded. It plays an important role in many fields of applications such as medicine, industry, military, metrology, scientific researches, and education (Billings and Tabak 2006; Kirkland 2007; Milonni and Eberly 2009; Thyagarajan and Ghatak 2010). Laser topic is usually included in an Introductory Physics course. Lasers are generally used as demonstration tools for demonstrating the properties of light such as reflection, refraction, diffraction and interference. Moreover, laser theory and the properties of a laser beam are discussed separately in the Modern Physics section (Serway and Jewett 2007; David Halliday 2008; Knight 2008; Tsokos 2008). In the context of Thailand, the instructions on lasers are mainly emphasized in a microscopic view such as atomic radiation and lasing process while the properties of laser light which are important for laser applications are roughly discussed in the classroom (IPST 2005). Physics education researches have revealed that many students already contain a number of ideas about how physical systems behave even before they study physics. These ideas are generally called “alternative conceptions”. The alternative conceptions in optics have already been surveyed and exhibited such as the vision of colors, refraction of light, image formation, and the nature of light (McDermott and Redish 1999; Hubber 2006; Nopparatjamjomras 2008; The International Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning Volume 19, 2013, http://thelearner.com/, ISSN: 2327-7971 © Common Ground, Jintawat Tanamatayarat, Kwan Arayathanitkul, Narumon Emarat, Ratchapak Chitaree, All Rights Reserved, Permissions: [email protected]


Yalcin et al. 2009; Kaewkhong et al. 2010). These researches are usually related to the properties of general light including laser. Laser radiates light which has some different properties from other light. It is extremely important to know students’ background knowledge in laser in order to provide advantages to them in keeping up with the fast pace of technology change nowadays. A laser beam has many interesting properties such as the coherence, radius intensity distribution, pulse duration etc. Initially, only five basic essential properties of lasers-directionality, beam divergence, intensity, speed and monochromaticity–are selected to study since these properties often emerge in general physics textbook and are vital for freshmen students’ background and obviously observed in the classroom (Marek, Patterson, and Schools 2002; Beiser 2003; Kutluay 2005; Petruševski, Monkovi , and Ivanovski 2006; Serway and Jewett 2007; David Halliday 2008; Walker 2008; Thyagarajan and Ghatak 2010). To evaluate students’ understanding, the developing of an assessing instrument is required. An initial goal of this research was to design a primarily qualitative test for assessing freshmen students understanding in laser beam properties in the Introductory Physics course. The test should be able to assess students’ initial knowledge and also determine the improvement of students understanding.

Development of the Laser Beam Conceptual Evaluation (LBCE) Preliminary works on the development of the Laser Beam Conceptual Evaluation (LBCE) began with work on surveying students’ understanding on the properties of laser beam. The first version of the test was designed as an open-ended question which covered five basic essential and visible properties of laser beam that are the Directionality, Beam divergence, Intensity, Speed of a laser light and Monochromaticity. This test was conducted with 271 freshmen science students in Bangkok in November 2010. The responses from the open-ended questions led to develop the multiple-choice test. The test was revised twice, firstly from the feedbacks of five graduated physics students and five physics education students and secondly from the suggestions of five physics instructors who had at least ten years experiences in teaching physics and also in advanced researches with laser. The topics and corresponding question numbers included in the test are shown in TABLE 1. All questions in the LBCE are shown in Appendix. Table 1: Conceptual Areas and Question Numbers that Address each Conceptual Area for the LBCE Conceptual areas

Question#

Directionality

1,2,6,7

Divergence

3,11,12

Intensity Speed of light Monochromaticity

4,5 8 9,10,11,12

Participants The LBCE was applied to 606 freshmen students from a university in the North of Thailand in the second semester of academic year 2010 before and after learning Atomic Physics in the Introductory Physics course. All students had experiences about lasers in their high school physics course in compliance with the compulsory Thai national physics curriculum by Institute of Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST); the government organization developing science and mathematics curricular in Thailand. Laser was a subtopic in Atomic Physics which is commonly taught in grade 12. Students were divided into three classes. Class 1 (N =

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TANAMATAYARAT: INVESTIGATING THAI FRESHMEN STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING IN FIVE BASIC ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF LASER BEAM

214) was medicine students, Class 2 (N = 205) was science students and Class 3 (N = 187) was agriculture students. There were two lecturers per class. One taught in the first half of the semester and the other taught in the second half. The Interactive Lecture Demonstration approach (ILDs) was provided to teach students in this topic. In the other word, the properties of laser beam were displayed in a real-time in the classrooms. In practical teaching of the general physics, the topic of laser is contained in Atomic Physics which was provided in the course syllabus with only six hours. Therefore, the pre-test, the teaching, and the post-test have to be completed within 3 hours.

Analysis of the LBCE The LBCE was subjected to the traditional analysis of both individual items and the overall test. According to the low pre-test score, it could be implied that many freshmen students in Thailand had alternative conceptions in many conceptual areas and some students also lacked of ideas in some topics about the properties of laser beam. Therefore, the following analysis was carried out on post-test results. The difficulty and the discrimination indices are two standard quality measurements of items on a test. The Difficulty index reflects how difficult the item is. It is normally measured by calculating the percentage of students who get the correct answer. The range of the difficulty is from 0.0 to 1.0. If no one answers correctly, the difficulty index is 0.0 while it equals to 1.0 when everyone gets the correct answer. A difficulty index equals to 0.5 is an ideal for the good test, but the accepted value is in the range of 0.4 to 0.6. The difficulty indices of the LBCE were calculated from both pre-test and post-test scores and represented in FIGURE 1. The values of many items from the pre-test are generally lower than 0.3. These corresponded to the above reason that the analysis was carried out on post-test results.

145


FIGURE 1: The Difficulty Indices of the LBCE Calculated from (a) pre-Test Score, (b) Post-test Score

The discrimination index indicates of how well an item differentiates between the excellent and the novice students. For a large sample group (n > 100), it can be calculated from the ratio of the subtraction between the number of students in the top 27% of the score range who got the correct answer and the number of students in the bottom 27% of the score range who got the correct answer and a half sum of these two groups. The value of the discrimination indices ranges from -1.0 to 1.0. The discrimination indices of the LBCE are presented in FIGURE 2. The values range from approximately 0.4 to 1.0. They are greater than 0.3 which is a lower limit for acceptability. The difficulty index affects strongly on the discrimination index. It is approximately 1.0 when a difficulty index is around 0.4 to 0.6. (Sim and Rasiah 2006).

FIGURE 2: The Discrimination Indices of the LBCE Calculated from Post-test Score

146


The validity and the reliability are standard overall qualitative measurements of a test. The validity refers to how well the test reflects the concept that the researcher is attempting to measure. In the evaluating process of the LBCE, the validity of the test was collated by five college physics professors in Thailand. All of them had experiences on using lasers in their researches and also had at least ten year experiences in teaching physics. They were invited to judge the item objective congruence. Each expert assessed if each item correlates with the stated objective of the item, by marking: agree (+1 point), in which the item and its purpose correlated, not sure (0 point), or disagree (-1 point), in which the item and its purpose did not correlate. Then the Index of the Item-Objective Congruence (IOC index) was calculated for indicating the validity of the test. The IOC index of each item can be calculated by dividing the total score of each item by the total number of experts. An accepted value of the IOC index should be greater than 0.75 (Turner and Carlson 2003). The calculated value of IOC index of the LBCE is 0.88 which is greater than the accepted value. Moreover, the test was also modified based on experts’ suggestions. The reliability indicates how consistently the test will reproduce the same score under the same conditions. The students who have equivalent knowledge and skill will get the same score on a reliable test. In other words, either two different students or the same student at two different times will obtain the identical score on a reliable test. According to the dispersion of the difficulty indices of the LBCE test, the reliability can be indicated from the Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR-20) (Ary 2006). The KR-20 formula is given by;

Where n is the total number of items, p is the proportion of people who answered each items correctly, q is the proportion of people who answered the item incorrectly, and S2 χ is the variance of the whole test. The KR-20 value of the LBCE was around 0.5. It indicated that the LBCE is reliable to use as a well-made classroom test.

Results and Discussions Overall Result The results were shown in Table 2. The first column shows the statistics of the test namely; the pre-test mean score and the post-test mean score (M pre, M post), the standard deviations of the pre-test and post-test mean scores (SD pre, SD post), the t-test (t-value, Sig. (2-tailed)), the average of the normalized gain (g ave) and its standard deviation (SD g). The others show the results of Class 1, Class 2, Class 3 and total, respectively. The results revealed that the post-test mean scores (M post) were greater than the pre-test mean scores (M pre) of all classes, proved by the paired t-test at 0.01 significant level. The students’ improvements were notified by the “normalized gain” which is simply defined as the ratio of the actual gain to the maximum possible gain (Marx and Cummings 2007; Hake 1998). The individual normalized gain can be calculated by using the formula;

147


The class average normalized gain (g ave) can be expressed by averaging the individual normalized gains. The values of the normalized gain was divided into three distinct levels: low (g < 0.3), medium (0.3 ≤ g < 0.7), and high (g ≥ 0.7). Negative normalized gain could also be observed if the post-test score was lower than the pre-test score. The results revealed that the pre-test score depended on the students’ major proved by the ANOVA at 0.05 significant level (F = 3.7237, P-value = 0.0247). The Fisher’s least significant difference (LSD) tests were used to distinguish between pairs of classes. The result implied that science students (Class 2) had the highest background about laser beam. Considering the improvement of the students, the average normalized gain of all was 0.52 which was classified in the medium gain. The differences between the class average normalized gains were tested by ANOVA. The LSD tests were done at 5% significance level. The result showed that the improvement of students were significantly different (F = 8.3951, P-value = 0.0003). Class 2 and Class 3 students had greater improvement than Class 1. This showed that the science and agriculture students had more ability to gain their knowledge that the other. Table 2: The LBCE Scores Students with the t-test and the Average Normalized Gains Statistics

Students Class 1 (n=214)

Class 2 (n=205)

Class 3 (n=187)

Total (n=606)

M pre

4.73

5.03

4.61

4.80

SD pre

1.61

1.47

1.68

1.59

M post

8.16

8.92

8.70

8.58

SD post

1.76

1.77

1.82

1.81

t-value

24.54

29.34

24.54

44.68

* Sig . (2-tailed)

< 0.01

< 0.01

< 0.01

< 0.01

g ave

0.46

0.55

0.54

0.52

SD g

0.25

0.24

0.27

0.25

* Considered at the 99% confidence interval of the difference To illustrate the students’ background knowledge, the average score for each concept was calculated as shown in Table 3. The first and the second columns showed five concepts of the LBCE and their corresponding questions, respectively. The last four columns show the average score in each concept for the three classes and the total students, respectively. The total results manifested that most students had the best background knowledge in the directionality while the speed of laser light was a topic which students had the smallest background. The results also showed that science students (in Class 2) had the best average pre-test scores in all concepts. They seemed to have better background knowledge than others.

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Table 3: The Average Percentage of Correct Responses in the Pre-test for Each Concept of the LBCE Average pre-test score (%) Topic

Question #

Class 1 (n=214)

Class 2 (n=205)

Class 3 (n= 187)

Total (n=606)

Directionality

1, 2, 6, 7

54 ± 24

55 ± 25

54 ± 23

54 ± 24

Divergence

3,11,12

24 ± 23

29 ± 26

24 ± 23

26 ± 24

4, 5

39 ± 28

43 ± 23

40 ± 31

41 ± 28

8

15 ± 36

19 ± 39

15 ± 36

16 ± 37

Monochromatic 9, 10,11,12

36 ± 21

41 ± 21

34 ± 23

37 ± 22

All

39 ± 13

42 ± 12

38 ± 14

40 ± 13

Intensity Speed of light

1-12

Detailed Results To interpret students understanding, the pre-test and the post-test responses of the students to the LBCE in each question were analyzed. The percentages of students’ answers in all questions will be illustrated and discussed separately in details. Directionality

Question 1 is a straightforward question in the directionality which asked students to provide the position(s) that a laser beam will propagate through after turning on the laser. Choice A determined students’ alternative conception if they believed that a laser radiates light to all direction as a light bulb. Choice B was constructed from a confusion about the imagination of placing objects at every interesting position. By using this way of thinking, when a laser is turned on, the laser light will be blocked by an object placed point B so none of the light can propagate through point C. Choice C determined another type of alternative conceptions about laser beam propagating in a straight line (both path A-E-laser aperture and path B-C-laser aperture are in straight paths). Choice D is a correct answer. Question 2 is an application of the directionality. Many kinds of light sources are given in the situation. In order to answer this question, students should understand about the propagating direction of the radiated lights from both laser and other general light sources. Choice A was constructed to determine students’ belief that a low intensity light cannot pass through a small hole while choice B is a correct answer. Choice C was constructed to determine the students who had troubles with the direction of a laser beam and choice D determined students’ belief that high intensity laser beam can pass through any obstacle. The pre-test results as shown in FIGURE 3 illustrated that about 80% of the students could answer question 1 correctly and about 70% of the students could answer question 2 correctly. However, only 61% (372 students) could answer both questions correctly. It implied that about 40% of the students still had confusion in describing the direction of the emitted light from both lasers and common light sources. After the instruction, the results showed a small reduction in correct responses of question 1. It indicated that some students seem to have misunderstanding during the instruction. However, a number of students who could answer correctly for both questions were increased from 61% to 67%. This showed the effectiveness of the instruction in order to improve students’ understanding in the directionality. It also indicated that this instruction could help students to interpret the direction of the emitted light from both lasers and common light sources. Questions 6 and 7 are correlated to the reflection situations. Question 6 provides a laser and a plane mirror in a situation. It asked students to determine the position(s) that the reflected 149


light would propagate through. It was simpler than question 7 when a laser, a light bulb, and four reflected rays are provided in a situation and asked about the sources of the reflected rays. In order to find the correct answers for both questions, students need to understand the law of reflection and the fact that laser radiates only one incident ray due to the directionality property. Therefore, it has only one reflected ray. A light bulb radiates light to all directions and therefore it generates the amount of reflected ray. The pre-test results showed that 79 students could answer correctly for both questions while only 49 students could give correct answers for all four questions in this topic. It implied that most students (greater than 80%) have confusion in determining the direction of light in the complex situations (questions 6 and 7). After the instruction, a number of students who provided the correct answers for all directionality questions were increased from 49 to only 118 (out of 606 students). It meant that most students still had partial understanding in the directionality. In addition, questions 6 and 7 could also elicit students’ understanding on the reflection of light. According to the pre-test, there were 239 students who could provide the correct answer for question 6 while only 140 students could provide the correct answer for question 7. There were 259 students answered choice B of question 6. This represented a major alternative conception about the law of reflection which was a reflected light should orthogonal to an incident light. This alternative conception was largely reduced after the instruction. There were 412 students answered choices C and D in question 7. Although both answers showed confusion about equality between angle of incident and angle of reflection but students who answered choice C had confusion in the property of light emitted from a light bulb while who answered choice D had confusion in the property of light emitted from a laser. The post-test result showed that the confusion in choice C was more difficult to solve than another. These implied that most students also had confusion in using the law of reflection even this is the simple conception and they had already learnt in their high school physics course. The distributions of the pretest and post-test responses in questions 1, 2, 6, and 7 were shown in FIGURE 3.

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Figure 3: The Distribution of Students’ Answers in the Questions Related to the Directionality. (Circles are Correct Choice.)

Beam Divergences

Question 3 asked students to provide their imagination picture of the laser beam shape. The given choices would display students’ understanding on the beam divergence directly. Choice A was created to determine students’ belief about a laser beam propagating without changing its shape. Choice B contains a correct answer. Choice C showed the rapid increasing of the laser beam size. Choice D was created from the open-ended question “Why does the laser beam diverge at a very far distance?”. It came from students who had an experience in using a laser as a star pointing tool. It was found that only one-sixth of the students provided a correct answer while most students answered choice A (65%). It showed a major alternative conception about the laser beam divergence. After the instruction, a number of students who provided a correct answer were increased tremendously which showed a strong conceptual change. In order to determine the number of students who had deep understanding in the beam divergence, the students’ responses to questions 11 and 12 would be analyzed. Questions 11 and 12 are the complicated questions. They asked the students to select a suitable light source for using in the given situations. They could be used to elicit students’ understandings on the beam divergence as well as question 3. The given situation in question 11 required a proper light source for pointing at the slides. Therefore, the light source emitting a visible light with a narrow beam divergence should be selected. The situation in question 12 required a light source radiating a visible light for large area. Therefore, the light source which emits light with a large beam divergence would be selected. The pre-test results displayed that only 6% of the students answered correctly for both questions 11 and 12 while only 1% could 151


answer correctly for all three questions. Students who could provide the correct answers for only questions 12 and 13 seemed to have background in the beam divergence but they had a belief in a rod-shape of a laser beam. After the instruction, the number of students who answered correctly in question 3, both of questions 11 and 12, and all three questions increased to 86%, 39% and 34%, respectively. These results revealed that some students were improved but most of them were still confused in applying this concept. These reflected the serious problem in developing students understanding on the beam divergence. The distributions of the pre-test and post-test responses in questions 3, 11, and 12 were shown in FIGURE 4.

Figure 4: The Distribution of Students’ Answers in the Questions Related to the Divergence. (Circles are Correct Choice.)

Intensity

Question 4 asked students to compare the intensity of light radiated from a light bulb and a laser. It contained an ability to determine students understanding on the intensity of an isotropic light. The intensity of an isotropic light decreases with the distance from the source corresponding to an inverse-square law. According to the pre-test results of question 4(see FIGURE 5), the most favorite students’ answer was choice C. It indicated that most students had background in the decreasing of the intensity of an isotropic light but they had a strong belief about a constant intensity of a laser beam along the propagating distance. Question 5 provided a situation of observing a photograph in a darkroom by using two kinds of light sources at different distances. Actually, it was more complicated than the other because it required the procedure of thinking. Firstly, students needed to determine the intensity by interpreting from the condition for observing the photograph. After that they would recall their 152


background about the characteristics of each kind of light source and then select the appropriate light source for each given situation. Surprisingly, the pre-test result showed that 69% of the students answered correctly even though this question required analytical thinking. It was probably because students were familiar with a laser pointer. When we observe spots of laser light at two different distances, they seem to have the same intensity. This situation might mislead them to conclude that the intensity of a laser beam does not change along the propagating distance. Actually, if the change in the distance is only a few meters, the intensity of laser light decreases insignificantly which is unclearly observed by bare human eyes. Considering the post-test results, the number of students who answered correctly in questions 4 and 5 increased from 12% to 66% and from 69% to 85%, respectively. It represented great improvements of students understanding. However, only 56%, of the students could answer both questions correctly. It suggested that a lot of students still had partial understanding even they had already learnt in the class. In addition, students’ conception of intensity related closely to their beam divergence. Most students’ responses in questions 3 and 4 in the pre-test showed the corresponding patterns to this idea. Pattern 1 contained 56% of the students who answered choice A and choice C for question 3 and 4, respectively. These showed students’ belief that “if the beam size is constant, that is the incident area is constant and light does not dissipate during travelling, so the intensity of light is constant”. Pattern 2 showed a correct pattern of answering both questions; answered choice B for question 3 followed by choice D for question 4. There were only 4% of the students in this pattern. After the class, a number of correct students increased to 58% while one-fourth of the students still provided their answers in Pattern 1. The results also showed that students’ improvement in question 3 was greater than question 4 (learning gain of 0.83 and 0.61, respectively). It implied that improving students’ understanding on the intensity was more difficult than in the beam divergence. The implication from the patterns of answering suggested that emphasising on the relation between the intensity and distances would be a possible way to help students to accomplish in these two topics simultaneously. The distributions of the pretest responses in questions 4 and 5 were shown in FIGURE 5.

Figure 5: The Distribution of Students’ Answers in the Questions Related to the Intensity. (Circles are correct choice.)

Speed of Light

The speed of light is a basic concept in physics. The investigation of students’ understanding in this concept began from the students’ interviews about a speed of a laser light. The interview results showed many alternative conceptions. Question 8 asked students to compare the speed 153


of a laser light with a general light. It would elicit students’ alternative conception in relating the speed of light to the irrelevant factors. The distribution of the students’ responses in question 8 was shown in FIGURE 6. It displayed that 14 % of the students answered choice A which showed a confusion occurring from the experiences of using a laser. It was found that only 16% of the students provided the correct answer while 69% of the students selected choices B and D. This showed the dominant confusion in determination of the speed of light by using an intensity and energy of light. After the class, the post-test responses showed a high improvement. In fact, students got the best learning gain in this topic.

Figure 6: The Distribution of Students’ Answers in the Question related to Speed of Laser Light. (Circles are Correct Choice.)

Monochromaticity

The monochromaticity is a topic that closely related to the spectral width of light. A monochromatic light is the light that has a narrow spectral width. Light emitted from a laser and light emitted from the Sodium-vapor lamp are examples of the monochromatic light. They are usually used to demonstrate many phenomena such as single-slit diffraction, pinhole diffraction, doubleslit interference and also refraction. Light with a wide spectral width shows a different characteristic from the monochromatic light when they travel to a different optical media. This phenomenon is called the “dispersion”. When white light propagates through a prism, it will disperse to be a rainbow. Laser light behaves differently. It still be seen the same as an initial after propagating through a prism. Therefore, students understanding on the monochromaticity can be probed by the dispersion. Question 9 provided a general situation about refraction of light without dispersion. Students needed to use their knowledge on the spectral width and dispersion of light to determine the type of light source. The pre-test showed that 36% of the students answered choice A (see FIGURE 7). This choice was not the best answer because a laser light behaves as a general light that could refract following the Snell’s law. It was found that only 19% of the students selected choice B which was the best answer. Laser light did not spread out after traveled to the water. Many students (30%) answered choice C which represented students’ idea about the different 154


behavior of the laser beam when propagating to different media. There was 15% of the students answered choice D which represented the idea about the absorption of light. This choice was corresponded to the attenuation of light phenomenon generally occurs in the ocean. When light propagates through the sea, it becomes attenuated with depth depending on its wavelength (Robert G. Williams 2009; Garrison 2009). After the instruction, the result showed that many students changed their answer from choice C to be choice B. It showed the efficiency of the instructional process that was intended to improve students understanding. In addition, a number of students’ responses to choice A remained approximately the same as the initial. It showed the difficulty to change this type of students’ belief. Question 10 asked students to determine the spectral width of lights from the observed dispersions. Choice A was constructed to detect students who lacked of an idea about the refraction of multiple wavelengths light and did not have an idea about the spectral width. Choice B was constructed to determine students’ belief that “light with a small spectral width has a small refraction from the initial”. Choice C was constructed to determine students’ belief that “light with a small spectral width has a large refraction from the initial”. Choice D is a correct answer. The results showed that students had a small improvement from pre-test to post-test (69% to 84%) because the pre-test result was already high. However they had a good success on the post-test. In addition, only 76 students (12.5%) answered correctly for both questions 9 and 10. It reflected that most students had background knowledge in the refraction of laser light but they had some confusion in connecting between dispersion and a spectral width of light. The students seem to have enough background to answer question 10 noticing from high percentage of correct responses for both pre-test and post-test. Questions 11 and 12 asked students to select a suitable light source for using in the given situation. They could be used to elicit students’ understanding not only in the beam divergence but also in monochromaticity. The situation in question 11 requires any light sources which emits a visible light with a small beam divergence. The monochromaticity is not a necessary property for this situation. In contrast, the situation in question 12 requires a visible light with a wide spectral width. The spectral width was the dominant property in this question because “the wider spectral width, the better to observe color”. The pre-test results showed that a number of correct responses in question 11 were greater than question 12 (see FIGURE 4). It implied that they had better understanding on the beam divergence concept than the spectral width of light. In addition, only 14% of the students got full score for this concept. It implied that most students still had confusions in monochromaticity concept and its application. The distributions of the pre-test responses in questions 9 and 10 were shown in FIGURE 7.

Figure 7: The Distribution of Students’ Answers in the Questions Related to Monochromaticity. (Circles are Correct Choice.)

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Conclusion The Laser Beam Conceptual Evaluation (LBCE) can be used for surveying students’ background knowledge in five basic essential properties of laser beam. It has a combination of questions that can be used to probe students’ conceptions as well as to determine how well students develop their understanding. It also has a combination of questions about the phenomena corresponding to the considering topic and questions about the application that require integration between two properties. The results showed that science students had better background knowledge and learning gain than the others. Students had the best background knowledge in the directionality while the speed of a laser light was a topic which students had the weakest background. In addition, the LBCE can be easily used to estimate students’ improvement of some important ideas in the laser topic. Some performance data were also provided in this article that will be an inspiration for others to develop and improve their instruction about the properties of laser beam. The present work can be enriched in the future by adding the questions related to other unique properties of laser beam that are necessary to learn. The multiple choices can also be developed further and then apply to a wider group of students. The study of dependencies e.g. between the responses in five aspects also is an interesting topic which is studied further. Moreover, students’ understanding in laser in different groups of students i.e. age, sex, and field of study are studied.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Jintawat Tanamatayarat: Jintawat Tanamatayarat, Ph.D. in Physics, Mahidol University, is a lecturer at the Department of Industrial Physics and Medical Instrumentation, Faculty of Applied Science, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand. He is interested in physics education, laser applications, and forensic science. He is a member of the Physics Education Network of Thailand (PENThai) research group. His current research areas focus on improving students’ understanding on properties of lasers, force and motions, electricity, and magnetism by applying invented demonstration sets through hands-on activity and an interactive lecture demonstration approach. Asst. Prof. Kwan Arayathanitkul: Kwan Arayathanitkul, Ph.D. in Physics, the University of Pennsylvania, is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand. His major fields of research are laser applications and physics education. Asst. Prof. Narumon Emarat: Narumon Emarat, Ph.D. in Applied Physics, the University of Edinburgh, is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand. Her major fields of research are applied physics in fluid dynamics and physics education. Asst. Prof. Ratchapak Chitaree: Ratchapak Chitaree, Ph.D. in physics, City University, is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand. His major fields of research are measurement and instrumentation, and physics education.

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