Teaching future K-8 teachers the language of Newton: A case study of collaboration and change in university physics teaching

SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION

Mark Windschitl, Section Editor

Teaching Future K-8 Teachersthe Language of Newton:A Case Study of Collaborationand Change in UniversityPhysics Teaching

CAROL BRISCOE, CHANDRA S. PRAYAGAUniversity of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514, USA

Received 21 June 2002; revised 6 January 2004; accepted 7 January 2004

DOI 10.1002/sce.20005Published online 30 June 2004 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

ABSTRACT: This interpretive case study describes a collaborative project involving aphysics professor and a science educator. We report what was learned about factors that in-fluenced the professor’s development of teaching strategies, alternative to lecture, that wereintended to promote prospective teachers’ meaningful learning and their use of canonicalways of communicating physics concepts. We describe how the professor’s beliefs influ-enced the pedagogy that he used to communicate the language of physics and the natureof what was communicated. We also report how our collaboration fostered change as wedeveloped a shared language that allowed us to discuss how students learn and to explicatethe referent beliefs that supported the professor’s practices. We found that focused reflec-tion on referent beliefs led to a change in the manner in which the professor communicatedwith the prospective teachers. Traditional lecture pedagogy focused the professor’s concernon how he was teaching evolved toward a pedagogy that focused on how students werelearning. Classroom interactions were increased with a primary goal of orchestrating a dis-course of physics initiated in the language already accessible to the prospective teachers.This change in the manner that classroom interactions occurred provided opportunities forthe prospective teachers’ language to evolve toward eventually communicating their ideasin canonical physics language. C© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 88:947–969, 2004

Correspondence to: Carol Briscoe; e-mail: [email protected] paper was edited by former Section Editor Deborah Trumbull.

C© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

948 BRISCOE AND PRAYAGA

INTRODUCTION

In the complicated world of physical phenomena, nothing is really as it seems. In order tounderstand real world experience, one must enter an invented world of models and languageabout experimental arrangements and observations that has developed since the time ofGalileo (Hanson, 1958). This model world and its accompanying language abstractions hasmade possible great advances in physics but it is quite contrary to the world of prospectiveelementary teachers, whose experiences drive their thinking and communicating in waysthat are often compared to that of Aristotle (Di Sessa, 1982). These prospective teacherswho will communicate their thinking to future generations will need to be initiated intoscientific ways of knowing and to learn to use the language physicists use to communicatewhat is known. But, research suggests that due to the differences inherent in the language andrepresentations that are common to the structure of the discipline as physicists understandit and the representations and language that structure students’ prior knowledge based onexperience, difficulties arise (Deng, 2001; Driver et al., 1994; Gunstone & Watts, 1985;Klaassen & Lijnse, 1996). Furthermore, traditional instruction may not change students’Aristotelian views (Ginns & Watters, 1995; Lemke, 1990; Roth & Tobin, 1996; Trumper& Gorsky, 1996) that act as a boundary to deter learning (Roth & Tobin, 2002). If studentsare to learn the language of physics they must be provided with opportunities to use thelanguage themselves, to set up logical arguments, and to examine relationships betweenthe language and the mathematical relationships derived from it (Champagne, Klopfer, &Anderson, 1980; Seely Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Van Heuvelen, 1991).

Numerous studies and reports have pointed out that undergraduate science teachingtypically does not prepare prospective teachers to meet these goals (American Associationof Physics Teachers, 1996; National Science Foundation (NSF), 1996; National ResearchCouncil (NRC), 1996; Taylor, Gilmer, & Tobin, 2002). These publications recommend thatcollege faculty should be moving away from lecture as a means of instruction and increaseopportunities for students to discuss experimental results and issues related to content andthe nature of the discipline. As suggested by the NRC (1997), “The teacher’s role is toorchestrate discourse among students about scientific ideas . . . to listen, encourage broadparticipation, and judge how to guide discussion---determining ideas to follow, ideas toquestion, information to provide and connections to make” (p. 32, 36).

The call for reform in teaching is clear; however, research in the K-12 sector has demon-strated that changing what happens in classrooms will not be easy. Long held beliefsof teachers and students are strong influences on how lessons are presented by teachersand how students approach learning (Briscoe, 1991; Cornett, Yeotis, & Terwilliger, 1990;Tobin, Tippins, & Gallard, 1994). These beliefs, grounded in personal experiences, arehighly resistant to change (Block & Hazelip, 1995).

Although studies have attempted to characterize the beliefs about teaching held by uni-versity instructors; Kane, Sandretto, and Heath (2002) site a weakness in these studies asnot focusing on the relationship between beliefs and the observed practices of teachersat the tertiary level. Further, they suggest that cues should be taken from the literature atthe primary and secondary levels that focus on connecting beliefs to practice in order tounderstand how academics develop as teachers and how their practices evolve through time.

Kane et al. (2002) enumerate various methodologies that researchers have used to expli-cate teachers’ beliefs. Many of these methods are designed to engage teachers in strategiesof reflective practice through self study (Gibson, 1998) or in collaboration with other facultymembers (Abbas, Goldsby, & Gilmer, 2002). In collaborative settings, reflective dialoguecan become a key to unlocking and changing teachers’ beliefs regarding their practices(Elliott, 1991). Tobin and Jakubowski (1990) suggest that once beliefs are explicated they

COLLABORATION AND CHANGE 949

can become objects of reflection. Teachers can critically examine the congruence, or lackthereof, between their espoused beliefs about teaching and learning and the beliefs in usethat drive their practices (Briscoe, 1991; Clandenin & Conelly, 1987, 1991; Elbaz, 1981,1983). The possibility of practical change is enhanced because teachers develop a bet-ter understanding of themselves and their situation (Briscoe & Peters, 1997; Briscoe &Wells, 2002; Fenstermacher & Richardson, 1991; Richardson, 1994; Sparks & Simmons,1989; Watts, 1985). Critical reflection among colleagues affords individuals opportunitiesto develop alternative ways of interpreting their reality and is considered to be an essentialcomponent of the development of teaching expertise at all levels (McLean & Blackwell,1997; Wildman et al., 1990).

Accordingly, collaboration between science and education faculty to improve the sci-ence education of future teachers is a central theme of several national programs (NRC,NSF). However, research has indicated that the development of strong institutional collab-oration between scientists and educators is fraught with obstacles. Contributing to misun-derstandings that hinder collaboration are conflicting beliefs regarding the knowledge basefor teaching and learning, lack of understanding of one another’s disciplines, and depart-mental workings and goals, and lack of support from other members of the departmentor the university. Among the most important factors that contribute to positive experi-ences in collaboration are the development of (a) a language of collaboration, (b) trustamong participants, and (c) respect for one another’s beliefs and values. If collaborationthat leads to reform in university science teaching is to be successful, the boundaries thatseparate the two cultures must be carefully negotiated (Duggan-Haas, Smith, & Miller,1999).

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

This study explores collaborative reflection and change in teaching as it was experiencedby one physics professor during a 2-year period (four semesters of teaching), while workingwith a teacher educator at the University of West Florida. Unlike other studies which havereported how science and education faculty set out together to change science teaching bypurposefully engaging in collaborative research and reflection (Abbas, Goldsby, & Gilmer,2002; Krockover et al., 2002), this study examines a case in which collaboration was notthe initial goal of the participants. We examine the beliefs that had historically served asreferents for the scientist’s teaching practices. We then explore the factors that contributedto the scientist’s and educator’s crossing the cultural boundaries that typically inhibit col-laboration. Finally we explore changes in the professor’s beliefs and practices and howthese changes affected how he orchestrated discourse that facilitated students’ participationin developing a shared language of physics.

CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

The context of this study is a college level physics course designed especially for middlelevel and elementary preservice teachers. Prior to the development of this course, educationmajors had been enrolling in university general physics. An evaluation of the success rateof students in the course indicated that most of the students were unable to handle the rigorof this algebra-based course and the drop out rate was high among education majors. Whenfunding became available through a small grant from the Florida Consortium for Excellencein Teacher Preparation (FCETP) the science educator, Briscoe, met with the head of thephysics department and he agreed to provide faculty for a new course. Constraints relatedto the structure of the physics curriculum and course scheduling influenced the original


design of the course. In order to meet scheduling constraints within the physics depart-ment, the course was scheduled as a lecture session that met twice a week for 1 h and 15min. A separate laboratory was scheduled; however, it was not required and few studentselected to take it. Enrollment was originally set at 30 students to ensure that the problemsassociated with learning in large group settings would not affect this course. However, thedepartment head viewed the course as an opportunity to increase the department’s full-timeenrollment (FTE) and insisted that enrollment be open to all students, rather than beinglimited to education majors. Text selection for the course the first semester was limited toone of three texts that the head of the department viewed as reputable among universityphysics professors. After reviewing the three texts, Briscoe recommended the text with leastmathematical focus (Krauskopf & Beiser, 2000).

Initially, a nontenured instructor was scheduled to teach the course; however, after re-viewing the requirements as set by the grant application, he declined because he did notwant to teach a course that was not entirely lecture based. It was not until 2 weeks prior tothe start of the semester that Prayaga, an associate professor, received the assignment forteaching the course.

A meeting was set by the department head to discuss the curriculum. It was at this meetingthat Briscoe and Prayaga met for the first time. During this meeting and at one additionalmeeting we discussed how the curriculum should be planned based on the recommendationsin the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996). Focusingon reform issues in science education, Briscoe suggested that the course might focus on afew major concepts rather than the entire text. Consistent with the National Standards, sherecommended that the prospective teachers have opportunities to explore physics conceptswith concrete materials in class sessions because they were not likely to take the labora-tory. Because actively involving students in laboratory-like activities during a scheduledlecture session in a small class room, did not seem feasible to Prayaga; Briscoe suggestedthat student demonstration experiments could provide some hands-on experience. From anumber of middle level and elementary texts, we selected five activities for students to per-form (Newton’s second law, Archimedes principle, fluid pressure, heat of fusion, electricityand magnetism). These limited alternatives to the use of lecture alone for content deliverywere negotiated with difficulty. Prayaga and the department head viewed the course as atypical physics course covering traditional content, only with less emphasis on mathemat-ics. Prayaga agreed to consider implementing these negotiated alternatives; however, as thecourse was implemented the decisions regarding the day to day classroom instruction weresolely his responsibility.

After this initial organization of the course, the implementation was followed for foursemesters. The evolution of the curriculum and the strategies used to teach the content arereported in this study.

RESEARCH METHODS

Participants

The Professor---Coauthor. Prayaga had taught calculus and algebra based physicscourses for science and engineering majors at the university level for 14 years. His owneducational experiences in India had been quite traditional---didactic teaching with a strongfocus on covering the syllabus for national exams. He had taught graduate physics therebefore coming to the United States. He enjoyed teaching, and he had won awards for excel-lence in university teaching and was confident regarding his teaching skills. He became apart of this study by coincidence of his department head assigning him to teach the course.


The Science Educator---Coauthor. Briscoe was a secondary teacher of biology andchemistry for 20 years before joining the university faculty where she had taught sci-ence education courses for 10 years. At the university she had also worked with elementaryteachers facilitating reform in science teaching at both the individual and school levels.

The Students. The students enrolled in the course over the three semesters were primarilyprospective K-6 teachers. About 20% of the enrollment included lower division studentswho elected to take the course (see Table 1). A survey of the students’ academic recordsindicated that their mathematics backgrounds were mixed. Most of the students had taken atleast two courses. About one half of them had a credit in college algebra. Other mathematicscourses taken by these students included prealgebra, liberal arts mathematics, mathematicsfor elementary teachers, and basic statistics. Less than 25% had taken a physics course inhigh school.

Design

The study employed an interpretive design (Erickson, 1986). Interpretive research focuseson how behaviors of individuals are related to the social and cultural milieu in which theseactions are defined. Erickson uses the term “interpretive” to refer to research which focuseson “the immediate and local meanings of actions, as defined from the actors’ points of view”(p. 119). The basic assumption of this type of research is that the researchers’ subjectiveexperiences and insights become part of the data and the lens through which further inquiryis conducted. In this case, which focuses on the collaborative relationship that was forgedbetween the authors and the manner in which it facilitated changes in the implementedcurriculum, the primary data sources include transcribed data from discussions betweenthe researchers as collaboration was developed and progressed, field notes from all classesconducted over four terms, transcriptions of audiotapes of all classes conducted over thesecond and fourth terms, and transcriptions of interviews with four selected prospectiveteachers at the end of the second and fourth semesters.

Data Sources and Analysis

Each transcript of class meetings was reviewed to characterize and categorize patterns ofstudents’ interactions with Prayaga. Although the time spent on lecture was noted, of criticalinterest during the analysis were student-initiated and student-controlled interactions andteacher-initiated interactions. From these data we generated descriptions of changes in themanner in which physics concepts were communicated by the teacher and students as thestudy progressed.

TABLE 1Semester Enrollment by Gender and Area of Study

Education Majors Other Majors

Semester Female Male Female Male

Fall 2000 23 1 3 6Spring 2001 22 0 8 7Fall 2001 18 2 4 5Spring 2002 20 3 4 2


A total of 36 h---13 sessions—of transcribed audio-taped meetings between the re-searchers as well as notes from informal discussions served as a primary data source foridentifying the beliefs about teaching and learning that served as referents for Prayaga’spractices. The transcripts were first reviewed holistically by Briscoe. Four primary themesin the data were tentatively identified including Prayaga’s beliefs related to (a) the contentof university science; (b) the practice of science; (c) language, logic, and the discipline; and(d) the nature of the science student. From these themes coding categories were generated.The transcripts were reviewed again and the data were coded as related to each theme.Field notes and transcripts of class meetings were also coded based on the same themes.Through the process of constant comparison among the data sources interpretations wereconstructed as to the coherence or lack thereof between the implemented curriculum andPrayaga’s espoused beliefs.

Audio-taped interviews with the students provided a view of students’ beliefs aboutphysics and physics teaching as well as their perceptions of the learning environment inthe course. These interviews, conducted by Briscoe, were semi-structured with six primaryquestions that were followed by probes that allowed elaboration (Appendix). Prospectiveteachers were selected purposefully based on the amount of participation they demonstratedin class (significant participation to no or little participation). From among those who fitin these two categories, we selected volunteers who were willing to participate in thestudy which required that they take time outside of class to participate in the interviews.Additionally, in our final selections we considered the likelihood that they would articulatetheir course experiences clearly, honestly, and completely.

The purpose of interviews with these students was to obtain information about theirperceptions of the teaching– learning environment particularly in relationship to teacher–student interactions. These interviews took place near the end of the second and fourthsemesters and provided opportunities for member checks of the credibility of our interpre-tations of what was happening during class sessions (Guba & Lincoln, 1989).

The use of multiple data sources allowed for interpretation of the data from multipleperspectives and increased the probability that the story of change that we have constructedand present here is consistent with the variety of data. In reporting the data chronologicallyas a story, we hope to communicate the multidimensional process that is educational changeand make possible understanding on multiple levels that can engage both the scientist andthe science educator.

INTERPRETATIONS

Part I: Teaching the Language of Physics

Prayaga believed good teaching was exhibited in the way one organized and communi-cated material. The syllabus provided a week by week listing of text chapters to be taughtand it was not significantly different from syllabi for other science courses. Basic infor-mation regarding tests and the experiment demonstrations that students would be assignedas part of the class was provided; however, no credit was associated with the latter as-signment. Historically Prayaga had taught physics using didactic methods and he adoptedsimilar strategies for teaching the prospective teachers. The following scenario of one class,constructed from field notes, is representative of a typical class in the first semester.

Prayaga begins: “How does one describe motion? In describing motion, one obvious quan-tity comes to mind. That is speed, or how fast. Let us suppose we are driving in our car toTallahassee, a distance of 200 miles and we get there in 3 hours, what is our speed?”


A student asks: “Is that like velocity?”

Prayaga continues: “Speed is not the same thing as velocity. Each concept in physics hasa specific definition and no two terms define the same concept.” On the board he draws apicture of a car on the highway and represents the distance and time stating “You must havea clear mental picture to solve a problem. Draw a picture. Every problem is a situation thatis happening. Think about what is happening as a picture in your mind, not a formula.” Herecords on the board each term and definition that has relevance in explaining the drawing,and emphasizes applicable physics principles by recording them as well, saying: “Thedetailed writing down of your thought processes is very important, because, from the pointof view of your own education, you are learning to state clearly what you think and that is avery important aspect of your learning in this particular course.” He continues, emphasizingthe logic used for the explanation and how it relates to the picture. He demonstrates therelationship between the description and the development of the appropriate mathematicalformula, “speed equals distance traveled divided by time taken.” He comments, “You havea story to be told in English and then that English story, or that story in your native languagewhatever that might be has to be translated into a formula. You have to do the translation butyou must first tell the story. Nobody gives you this formula first.” As a last step he assignsvalues to the variables in the formula and works through the computations.

Prayaga used this pattern of instruction for nearly all concepts. As he planned for pre-sentations, he focused on what he would say and how he would say it in order to emphasizeto the students that this pattern, drawing and explaining the phenomenon, linking it to theprinciples or laws that were applicable and, through logic, generating the formula, wasthe most important thing they could do to help them build an understanding of concepts.Prayaga invited questions as he lectured, but few were asked, and he rarely asked questions,himself, so students had few opportunities for extended interaction in the class.

Assertion 1. Prayaga’s view that physics as a school subject is grounded in languageoutside of experience supported a transmission model for teaching and learning. To Prayaga,the practice of physics was separate from the learning of physics. The following commentis representative of this view:

As a school subject, science is developed in logical order. To teach physics we start with thewell-established ideas and present them in a logical order. The material is presented in thelogical fashion in which it exists. Namely that it’s a law. And logically a law is not provedor justified. A law is taken as a law and used to explain other things.

In his view, logical thought and language were inextricably linked. It was important tohim that students developed the right language to communicate physics concepts. As henoted, “Clarity of expression and clarity of thought go together. Practicing expression isone way of clarifying thoughts. My own thinking is that if an undergraduate is clear on theconcept, he should be able to express it.” Prayaga’s model for teaching fit his belief thatstudents at this level were not prepared to reason logically about physical phenomena. Heconsidered their capacity to observe and analyze phenomena and communicate a logicalargument that explained important relationships among variables as limited. Accordingly,even though he provided opportunities for students to present demonstrations in class, hedid not value these as opportunities for students to develop a language of physics. Instead,he took responsibility for their learning by discussing the demonstrations, himself, after thestudents completed them, justifying this practice in the following way:


When they are discussing something, they are very loosely and repeatedly making mistakesand never getting it right. In fact they are probably perpetuating a mistaken idea in theirown mind . . . . [These experiments] are actually very complicated in the sense that thereare many different laws of physics that come into play and explanation of them is verycomplicated. They lend themselves to intuitive and experience based thinking. But manythought processes based on daily experience are not correct. It is the teacher’s job to guardagainst common sense based mistakes students make as they reason about physics concepts.

Prayaga believed that for most students, particularly those with weak mathematics back-grounds, school physics was difficult to learn. His own understanding of physics as anundergraduate had been built upon many hours of study; however, he had found that hisstudents rarely studied physics outside of class with similar amounts of time and effort.He did not want the students to feel uncomfortable because they did not know the content;therefore, he assumed the responsibility for learning, himself, in the role of informationgiver. The authoritative role he adopted in deciding what would be taught and how it wouldbe delivered was supported by a deficit model of student learning. Tobin (2002) argues thatwhen teachers make the assumption that students are unwilling or unable to learn, it servesto distance them from the learners rather than to promote learning. He further argues thattaking a more positive view of learners could have the effect of increasing their enthusiasmand desire to learn.

What was observed in this physics class during the first semester is typical of whatmight be observed in many university science classes (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997; Tobias,1994). It has been noted that teachers learn to teach by observing during their undergraduateexperiences (Lortie, 1975). The same holds true for university faculty. Long held traditionsassociated with a transmission model of teaching represent significant social forces thatinfluence the beliefs individuals hold about teaching and constrain innovations in universityinstructional practices. We have identified several beliefs that seemed to drive Prayaga’spractices in this first semester; however, he was not necessarily aware of them and howthey were influencing what happened in his class. One of the major constraints to changeis that teaching routines that have developed over time are based on subconscious beliefsabout teaching and learning (Tobin & Espinet, 1989). Fenstermacher (1979, 1986) arguesthat change cannot take place unless teachers become aware of these beliefs that are built onlife experience and undertake investigations to confirm or disconfirm them. Nespor (1987)extends the argument by stating change in beliefs are likely to occur only if alternativenew beliefs that make sense in the context of teaching are available to replace the old. InPrayaga’s case the transmission model of the learning environment that he had constructedfrom his own history fit well with his beliefs and the theories of action he used to guidehis teaching. Furthermore, within the university science culture, reflective activities thatfocus faculty on explicating and evaluating the beliefs and cultural influences that supportestablished models of teaching and learning is not the norm.

Part II: Building Collaboration and Initiating Curriculum Change

Although Briscoe believed that working with Prayaga could affect a difference in theway the physics course for teachers was taught as compared to traditional courses, she hadnot suggested that she and Prayaga collaborate during the first term because she believedthat it would not be a fruitful endeavor. Because Prayaga did not volunteer for this teachingassignment and the innovations for the course were not negotiated with him, Briscoe as-sumed that Prayaga might not be willing or able to adopt new practices consistent with theintent of criteria written into the grant. Further, she believed he would be even less likely


to want to critique his teaching in relationship to those criteria. Briscoe’s assuming the roleof participant observer during the first semester provided time for a relationship based ontrust to be established between her and Prayaga. In a role as participant observer, Briscoewas able to interact with Prayaga as a novice in learning physics. In this nonevaluative roleshe did not challenge his personal beliefs about teaching and learning. As Prayaga laterreflected,

When I was assigned the course my plan was to just go in and teach as I always had. I wouldnot have accepted or even considered any suggestions about changing my way of teachingat that time. You gave me space to do what I thought I should do.

A primary factor that influenced Prayaga’s agreeing to collaborate with Briscoe wasthat in November 2000, just before the end of the first semester, they had attended theannual conference of the Florida Higher Education Consortium for Mathematics and ScienceTeaching (HEC). This organization which includes scientists, mathematicians, and scienceand mathematics educators from various state universities and community colleges has asits goal, developing ways for improving university mathematics and science experiencesof prospective teachers. It was the first time Prayaga attended an educational conferenceand this shared experience seemed a crucial experience in opening lines of communicationbetween coauthors. Prayaga reflected on the conference experience in the following way:

Certainly the very first and probably most important thing I recognized was the total differ-ence in language between the way we [scientists] speak and the way educators speak. Thereis no question that what you think should go into planning a course is different from whatwe think should go into planning a course . . . . I planned about what is necessary to be taughtin physics and (thought) you just talk about it. But the conference was talking about theexperience the students are going through . . . . That was a totally new perspective . . . . Youwere talking about experiential learning, a word that I’d never used before.

I always had a source of great pride that I was a good teacher. But I must say that thisconference has made me look at things differently. Not only what am I teaching, but howare the students learning. It is important that we make an effort to look at it from the point ofview of the students, and of course, many of the people at the conference suggested manydifferent methods of doing precisely that. It’s important for these two groups of people toget together a lot more and plan and execute courses together a lot more. We’d learn a lotfrom each other, I think.

After this conference experience, Prayaga became more interested in investigating alter-native practices to lecture in the course for prospective teachers. A contributing factor tothis decision on his part was the fact that he felt strongly that teaching was an importantaspect of his life at the university. He loved his discipline and wanted to share that love withstudents in a way that was meaningful to them. Accordingly, when Briscoe suggested thatshe and Prayaga might continue meeting during the semester to research how changes inthe curriculum were affecting students’ learning, he agreed.

As the two researchers considered problems that Prayaga was experiencing he began toconsider other strategies that might increase students’ participation in class discussions.Prayaga suggested a more student oriented teaching strategy that he had tried before inhis University Physics classes. He would ask the students to read the text (Hewett, 2001)and come prepared to discuss questions raised in the reading. He also chose to limit thecurriculum to fewer topics (Newton’s laws, kinetic/potential energy, heat, electricity, andmagnetism). This decision was based on the fact that, at the conference, it was repeatedlybrought out that students were learning science only in a cursory manner because too much


content was presented in a given course. However, choosing which topics to address wasa difficult decision for Prayaga. He understood the basic theory behind “less is more,”in terms of content, but he was concerned that in limiting content, he would inhibit thelearning of more capable students in the class. On the other hand, he wanted to lessenthe content covered in order to increase classroom discussion time that might allow stu-dents to develop more desired ways of using language in defining and explaining physicsconcepts.

Although coauthors worked through a number of curriculum decisions that would affectPrayaga’s practices during the second offering of the course, there was one issue they werenot able to negotiate. Briscoe suggested, that based on the National Science EducationStandards (NRC, 1996), Prayaga might consider providing more opportunities for studentsto participate in inquiry investigations either in class or as homework. He might then usethese investigations to enhance students’ participation by discussing them in class. Prayagaagreed that such experiences might be important and selected laboratory activities on severaltopics (free fall, Newton’s second law, friction, pendulum motion, heat of fusion, andcircuitry) that students were assigned to perform as experiments outside of class and developa written report. However, during classes, even as related concepts were introduced, neitherhe nor the students referred to these experiments. He explained his reason for not discussingthese activities:

Lab experiences are a very tough thing. The things that interact in that experiment are somany that they only tend to distract the students rather than teach them anything. At homewhen they do it there are too many uncontrolled interactions. It is true that they learn bestfrom experiences but what experiences will not confuse them? I don’t think the students’own logical training has developed sufficiently to appreciate the logical steps which lead toa conclusion and to see the connections as the physicist sees them.

Prayaga’s belief that students should learn physics concepts as physicists understandthem, without confusion, and avoiding the formation of misconceptions continued to be astrong referent for teaching practices that separated learning science from practicing science.In constructing meaning for the term “experiential learning” as applied in the context ofteaching physics outside a laboratory environment he focused on language experiencesrather than concrete experiences as the central concept.

Assertion II. Keys to building collaboration and the change process were experiencesthat introduced Prayaga to the language community of teaching and learning. Effectivecollaboration between scientists and educators requires careful negotiation of the bound-aries separating their distinct academic cultures. Accordingly, during the first semester,Briscoe placed herself in the role of participant observer. Although she was able, on occa-sion, to share her observations of the teaching and learning environment with Prayaga andidentify some reasons students were having difficulty from day to day, she did not go beyondan occasional short meeting after class to share some interesting observation. Understand-ing the differences in culture that had to be addressed in order to establish collaborationshe honored Prayaga’s knowledge as a physics teacher. However, she believed that invitingPrayaga to attend the HEC conference was one way to begin bridging the cultures. Two fac-tors influenced this decision. First, the participants included scientists and mathematicianswho came from departments similar to Prayaga’s. These were members of his communityand shared or at one time may have shared similar models for teaching science. Second,the conference brought together these scientists and educators to work toward a commongoal of improving teacher education by improving the teaching of university science and


mathematics courses. Briscoe assumed that because of the importance Prayaga placed onteaching, he would also be interested in that goal.

The conference provided the shared experience that allowed coauthors to structure bordercrossings (Giroux, 1993) between their two communities and the discourses unique to each.When the grant to support the course was written, provisions for students doing science andfor participating in a discourse of science ideas had been a primary intent for developmentof the course. Yet, it was not until the conference that Prayaga began the journey towardmaking sense of what participatory or experiential learning meant in terms of curriculumdevelopment and teaching practices. Several times during the first semester, Briscoe hadsuggested that students might not have responded as well on a test as Prayaga expected orthat they seemed to have a problem with a concept in class while he was teaching, becausetheir participation experiences were limited. They needed time to discuss the ideas anddemonstrations in class and to make meaning of the language he was using and the wayhe was using it. But at the time, Prayaga was only concerned with teaching the content inan organized and logical manner that made sense to him. Therefore, he considered thesesuggestions as having no relevance to teaching physics as he understood it. As he noted:

You pointed these things out to me during the first semester, that language of physics doesnot come naturally and students need experiences to make sense of the concepts. Did Irecognize that fact earlier, I don’t know, I don’t think so. Certainly it became clear at theconference when I heard the same ideas expressed by many people.

The conference provided a starting point for collaboration, but the nature of the relation-ship that would form between coauthors was yet to be established. At first, issues of teachingand learning were not major topics of discussion because Prayaga needed time to vent thefrustration he was experiencing in implementing change. These early discussion centeredon his own experiences as a student, his experience teaching engineering students, his con-cern for students’ lack of commitment to learning, and concerns relating to course content.The discussions were guided by both participants. As Prayaga’s beliefs about teaching andlearning were explicated through the discussions, so were Briscoe’s beliefs. These conver-sations were important to the developing relationship between coauthors as they came tounderstand one another’s points of view and began to negotiate a common ground. Theirability to plan together new teaching strategies that Prayaga might experiment with waspredicated on the mutual respect and trust which grew out of the discussions.

As the discussions continued, they played an important role as “constructivist interven-tions” in the process of change (Peterman, 1993). Prayaga’s classroom experiences withthe prospective teachers and discussions with Briscoe were challenging his beliefs aboutwhat should be taught and how it should be taught. He had reached a state of disequilib-rium in that his theory of action that supported the transmission model of teaching was notapplicable in the context of teaching prospective teachers. Agyris and Schon (1974) arguethat when conflicts arise between teachers’ theories of action and the reality of practicethey begin to critically examine these theories. Through this process they may formulatenew theories that lead to their growth as teachers. As Prayaga and Briscoe reflected on theirbeliefs about teaching and learning together, and each shared his or her interpretations ofincidences of interactions as Prayaga was teaching, Prayaga began to formulate alternativebeliefs that might support changes in his practices. He began to develop an awareness ofstudents’ classroom needs in building an understanding of physics, rather than his singularrole as the instructor.

As their work together continued over several semesters, the roles of these researcherswere as peer teachers constructing solutions to problems related to teaching physics to


prospective teachers. However, the learning that ensued from constructing tentative solutionswas clearly situated in the context of teaching prospective teachers. For Prayaga, applyingnew beliefs about teaching and learning toward experimenting with alternative strategiesdid not extend to his other physics classes. Constraints related to the fact that universityphysics courses were preparatory to students’ next courses or for exit tests that would leadto certification in their fields caused him to continue the transmission model of teaching incontexts outside the course for prospective teachers.

Part III: Learning and Change Are Accompanied by Frustration

A major change in practice observed during the second semester was that Prayagabegan to invite students to contribute their ideas as various phenomena were discussed.For example during a discussion of Newton’s first law the following interchanges tookplace:

Prayaga: The second part says, an object moving in a straight line, which is in uniformmotion in a straight line, continues to do so unless there is an external force acting on it.That’s the part that certainly bothers me. First what is meant by uniform motion in a straightline? That is my question, who wants to answer that?

Robert: Well it may be the center of gravity isn’t changing a lot. The center of gravity isn’tthrown off by change so it means the object just stays.

Prayaga, Interupting: Uhm OK, I always hesitate when I make this statement because I alsohave the feeling that I might curb your enthusiasm, but in physics we must be very careful.Notice that physics proceeds from concept to concept there is no backward motion whentalking about physics, it never is there, and no word is used unless you define it clearly oryou already know what it means. So if you want to define uniform motion, and you use theterm center of gravity in it, that means you are using something else that has not yet beentalked about. We don’t know what center of gravity is. OK? The second part is spinning,the center of gravity of a body that is spinning can still be in uniform motion. Be carefulabout that.

Robert: Then, is it not accelerating?

Prayaga: Ah now we are talking. Uniform motion means not accelerating. That is correct.Because we already know what it means by accelerating. So when you say not acceleratingyou are conveying something absolutely perfect. We don’t know if it is correct or not, butfirst you have stated something very precise. Can something be very precise without beingcorrect? Yah, but you are correct in this case. So uniform means, at least he thinks, noacceleration. What does that mean?

Margie: Its not slowing down or accelerating its,

Prayaga interrupts: Don’t use the word acceleration again.

Margie: Ok, its not moving in a different direction either.

Prayaga: Its not changing direction. That’s one thing

Sue: Is it like a constant velocity?

Prayaga: Its not like, it is constant velocity. It is indeed constant velocity. Constant speed,constant direction, so let’s write that down. Uniform motion in a straight line, means motionwith constant velocity, which also means constant speed and constant direction.


Robert: Wouldn’t uniform mean in a straight line?

Prayaga: Not necessarily, uniform is used in many cases. For example uniform circularmotion is not in a straight line . . . .

At this point Prayaga continued and the discussion evolved to a lecture covering thetopics, velocity, acceleration, force, and net force and computations and conversions forsolving problems involving these concepts. Although the interaction represented here wasminimal, it does represent a change in what had traditionally transpired in Prayaga’s classes.In this class the total interaction time between Prayaga and the students was 10 min, whilehe lectured for 45 min. Reviews of other tapes indicated similar patterns of interaction.Students’ interaction times varied from as little as 5 to as much as 20 min in a given75-min class period. The difference in what was happening in comparison to the firstsemester is perhaps not significant in terms of students’ opportunities to participate inscience discourse; however, it was a major change for Prayaga who had never before givenstudents an opportunity to share their own ideas. It signaled the beginning of change.

Although Prayaga did not intend to use lecture as the primary means of communicatingconcepts; he had difficulty orchestrating discussions among the students. As this exampleindicates, students were having difficulty using the language that Prayaga considered appro-priate for communicating concepts. Furthermore, only a few students, most of whom weremale, participated. Many female students, when directly questioned, generally responded, “Idon’t know.” Even when Prayaga continued to question and probe they declined to respondwith more than a word or two.

Prayaga struggled with the fact that he was not successful in developing a strategy fornegotiating more sustained interaction among the students. Although each day when heentered the classroom, he intended to encourage and facilitate students’ participation indiscussions, he often reverted to lecture which was a well understood practice for him. Heexplained his actions in the following way:

I ended up lecturing again. I realized it towards the end of class. As soon as the first studentsaid the wrong thing, I started off. I should resist the temptation . . . . but when studentsdon’t know the correct information, they become uncomfortable. Sitting by and watching astudent make a mistake is not easy. Emotionally, it is very difficult for me. Outside of classit seems perfectly sensible that I should guide a discussion among the students. But whenI am teaching, there is a heat of the moment and at that moment the most important thing(to me) is how to convey the right idea to the students.

The students who were interviewed identified several factors that contributed to thepatterns of classroom interaction that were observed. All four students who were interviewednoted, they were interested in learning physics, but they did not want to participate in classdiscussions for fear of being embarrassed if they gave an incorrect response to Prayaga’squestions. Jean noted that for her, the language was a problem, “I understood where I wastrying to get across. But he did not understand what I was trying to say. So, I was notusing the correct wording.” Mary suggested that in some cases students’ lack of scienceknowledge made it difficult for them to make sense of the readings or discussions, “Hewas holding people who have no base of knowledge in physics to a very high level ofknowledge in physics . . . . Some of my friends in the course had never had physics, and itwas like learning a whole new language.”

All four students were concerned that discussions did not follow the reading assignments.Amanda explained, “One person would have a question and that’s where he’d get stuck.Instead of answering it and then moving on and continuing with the chapter he would think


of something else to ask, and then something else. That’s him, he knows physics, but Idon’t think the discussions were very productive.” Furthermore, lecture, as the pattern ofinstruction in college science courses, was also familiar to the prospective teachers and theyexpected this course to follow the same pattern. This view is represented in the followingstatement, made by one student during a class discussion after the first test, “We need thestructure of the lecture otherwise we go off on tangents. We want you to teach us, to fill ourminds with physics. We want you to lecture.”

Assertion III. The beliefs that served as referents for Prayaga’s teaching practices con-strained the bridging of his language community and that of the students. Just as bridgesneeded to be built between Prayaga and Briscoe in order that they could communicate fruit-fully with one another; as described by Tobin, Roth, and Brush (1995), professors need tobuild bridges that allow students to cross the gap between their language and the languageof physics. By virtue of his expertise in physics Prayaga had the majority of control overthe discourse and material that was offered in the class. As Susan described her perceptionof the class students appreciated his expertise, “Physics scares me, and I think it scares alot of people, but it’s kind of looked at in the class as he has a lot of information to offerand if I can take as much of that information as I can possibly get away from this class,I am better off.” Although her statement indicates a desire to learn physics, she does notview learning as a participatory activity. She sees her role is as an information receiver. Yet,as the prospective teachers indicated, the language used to deliver the information seemedforeign; therefore, it was difficult for them to construct a personal understanding of the con-cepts and communicate in a way that was consistent with what Prayaga expected. Althoughthere are many ways that bridges between language communities can be constructed anda shared language developed, it takes patience and practice to develop the strategies thatpromote such communication. During their interviews the students commented on waysthey thought that discussions might have been established. Jean suggested it would havebeen helpful if they could have had small group discussions to build their language beforebeing asked to participate openly in class and Susan suggested that if they had been givenhomework and provided feedback on their work during class it would have helped herprepare for class discussions. Furthermore, as students suggested, Prayaga did not tap intothe common experiences, such as the at-home laboratory experiments, as a starting pointfor developing their language. An example was Amanda’s comment, “I think people thenwould have understood something to contribute. Because everyone should have done it, andthey did get results, and they could stand up and say, well we did it this way and it turnedout this way, and it could be because of this. Everybody could get involved.”

This story of the second semester exemplifies two major factors that can influence theimplementation of innovations in classroom practice. First, it is readily apparent that changein classroom practice cannot be a unilateral act on the part of the teacher. The meaning of anyclassroom learning activity must be negotiated with the students who are also participantsin the change process. Simply deciding to engage students in discussion of the text wasnot sufficient action on Prayaga’s part to orchestrate change in the patterns of interactionin this physics class for prospective teachers. The beliefs students held about their rolesas science learners conflicted with Prayaga’s views of what their roles should be and thisconflict is reflected in the interaction patterns observed in the class. Students expected amore organized, text book related approach to the lectures. They also expected Prayaga todiscuss the labs and provide feedback, and give and grade homework. These activities aretypical of the culture of science classes as they have experienced them (Lortie, 1975). It isa culture to which they had adapted quite well and were successful (received high marks).


Lack of participation may have resulted because students did not feel safe in an environmentwhere the expectation was that students would read and initiate discussions themselves ontopics with which they were not very familiar. As Jean reflected, “It was not a structuredenvironment. I look for structure and so I was confused.” Or as Mary noted, some studentssimply did not buy into the idea and refused to participate, “I think, a very serious problemin the class that he was expecting us to come to class prepared, read the chapters and cometo class with questions and answers, and half of the students in the class weren’t reading thechapters. They had no idea what was in the chapters so how are they going to participate?”

Second, the language differences that separated the students’ means of communicatingphysics concepts from the manner in which Prayaga communicated ideas also needed to benegotiated. In essence students were being asked to “use the tools of a discipline withoutbeing able to adopt its culture,” (Brown et al., 1989, p. 33) and they were clearly unsuccessful.At the same time, Prayaga was struggling with the tension between allowing students tomake sense of phenomena in their own way through the discussions and wanting to makesure they understood physics as he understood it. Although Briscoe had suggested waysthat Prayaga might increase students’ participation by using the laboratories as discussionstarters or by allowing students to address a question in small groups (many of the sameideas presented by students during their interviews), long held beliefs related to his ownlearning experiences in physics and his understanding of the discipline continued to serveas referents that Prayaga used to interpret discussions during this second semester. Thesebeliefs constrained his use of strategies that might serve as border crossings between hislanguage community and that of the students. As he later reflected:

(The discussions) became very confusing to me because the overall structure of physicsas a logically connected thread was all-important. That was one of the things that I reallywanted to convey to the students. Because I was not stating all the things myself, I was notclear in the discussions, where we were in developing the connecting thread. That was theproblem.

Part IV: Conflict Resolution and Changing Practices

By the end of the second semester, Prayaga had begun to construct new beliefs based onthe experiences of the first two semesters:

I think the first two classes were two distinct experiments and neither of them really worked.In some sense the second one was a little better than the first one. Now what this class shouldbe is to somehow convey to the teacher that there has to be a certain attitude and approachto teaching a science. Sometime after that [second] semester I realized that, at the levelat which these teachers will be dealing with physics, it is more important for them tolearn to approach a given topic systematically, logically. They do not need to know thestructure of physics as a whole, which is impossible to convey to them anyway. You cantry to get across a rough idea to the student that this is how the logic goes. You can give areasonable conviction that would allow them to get rid of the basic fear that they have ofscience.

Consistent with this change in perspective, he no longer felt the need to make sure everyconcept was covered and he no longer felt guilty that he wasn’t covering “enough.” Hebegan to focus more on the prospective teachers as learners rather than on his own teachingand to view students as being able to think critically about physics concepts and expresstheir thinking in their own language. He explained:


If the students are made to talk about it on their own, the ideas are generated in their ownlanguage. It is coming out of their own experiences in thinking. The question should notbe, “have the students learned this particular law of physics or this particular equation, buthave the students started thinking about what ever you are teaching.?”

This shift in Prayaga’s beliefs about prospective students’ needs in learning physics wasclearly represented in the way curriculum was planned and implemented during the third andfourth semesters. Although the syllabus listed some major topics that would be addressedin the course (Motion, Energy, Electricity, and Magnetism), Prayaga made it clear to thestudents that the pace of the course and the depth to which each topic was covered wouldbe based on their interest and participation. Four at home laboratory activities (free fall,pendulum, heat of fusion, electric currents and magnetism) were still a part of the courseand Prayaga used these experiences to promote discussion in class. During these semestersa very different kind of classroom interaction was observed than that which took placeduring the first semester and even during the second semester when students first beganto have opportunities to participate in discussions. Students were actively involved in allclassroom discussions. Analysis of the field notes indicated that on average students werein control of the class discussion for 49 min during a 75-min session as they were askedto explain their ideas, draw examples of phenomena on the board, and create statements ofapplicable laws. Prayaga still focused on the importance of making precise statements thatexpressed the physics concepts involved. However, he accomplished this goal by guidingthe students in examining and correcting their own statements rather than providing thelanguage himself. When there was disagreement among students regarding which ideas weresupported by evidence, the professor encouraged students to question one another to clarifytheir ideas and also asked questions to encourage continued investigation. The studentswere involved in generating specific definitions for terms that they had at first used withoutspecificity to describe motion, for example, the following discussion of Newton’s firstlaw.

Discussion began with Prayaga stating, “I push this cart and it moves, I push this deskand it doesn’t move. Tell me what you think about this.”

Various responses came from the students, “One is too heavy to move.” “One is glued tothe ground.” “You need more force to overcome friction.” “You need to overcome gravity.”“Does gravity produce friction?” “Doesn’t force between two objects cause friction?”

Prayaga then stopped the students and stated “We are now spouting technical terms thatneed explanation. Force, friction, gravity, light, heavy, as you can see, daily events areactually very complicated and a lot of different concepts are needed to explain them. . . Solets simplify the situation, think of pushing these objects in deep space, no gravity, noground, just me and the object in space pushing. Same thing in basketball. Michael Jordancan make baskets with very complicated moves. But when we start out, we just stand in oneplace and learn to shoot.

One student who had taken high school physics then responded, “An object at rest willstay at rest unless a force is exerted on it. An object in motion remains in motion unless it’sacted upon by an equal or unbalanced force.”

Prayaga responded, “OK, good, if I push it, it moves. OK, equal or unbalanced, what isequal? Equal to what?”

The student responded, “If an object is moving and I want to stop it I have to put a forceon it that is at least equal to the force that started it.”

Then another contributed, “Can I just read Newton’s 1st law from the book? Everyobject continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line if no force actsupon it.”


At this point Prayaga suggested that just because it was written in a book did not meanthat the statement should just be accepted. He stated, “You must make sense of it yourself.Now what does this mean?

As the students discussed this statement, they were engaged in generating definitionsfor terms such as speed, velocity, force, and net force and deciding how to apply theseterms to the concept of uniform motion. As the discussion progressed they created multiplerestatements of the law. Eventually, a final law by consensus was stated, An object does notchange its velocity unless a net external force acts on it. This statement includes specificlanguage that physicists would use to describe motion, but it made sense to the prospectiveteachers because they worked toward this statement from a point of beginning in their ownlanguage. The emphasis of this teaching– learning experience was not on getting the rightanswer, but on the thought processes involved in establishing its clarity and accuracy aswell. Prayaga described how he viewed his teaching role:

I try to lead the students, through their own discussion and through their own observations,to arrive at something approaching the law. A lot of qualitative discussions are carried on.Then at the end of the discussion, when the law is stated it makes more sense to them interms of their own language and understanding. The statement of the law comes at the end,not at the beginning. If I state the law and expect them to solve problems based on that andwhile solving the problems understand it better, that approach is undoubtedly foreign to thenatural or daily way of thinking of the average student. The student approaches the situationfrom a common sense point of view ingrained by his entire life of looking at things. Statingthe law and deriving conclusions from it is not a daily way of thinking. The student has away of making meaningful contact with the world and we should try to see that he makesthe same kind of contact with physics.

Interviews with the prospective teachers indicated that they had a different perspective onwhat was happening in the course than the students of the previous semester had expressed.Although many were no less unwilling to participate in discussions, they valued them asopportunities for learning. The following comments are representative.

It was interesting to see the different points of view that people had. . . it kind of showedthere were different ways of thinking about things (Barb).

I think its good he does that so he knows where we are to start with, because in the classthere was one guy who seemed to know everything and then there’s me who knows nothing.So it was a good idea that he’s trying to figure out where to start (Lucy)

I think the discussion part helped me in the sense that you got everyone’s perspective onit and sometimes it helped that if I didn’t understand it that someone else could explain itin terms that made more sense to me (Linda)

Assertion IV. The key to Prayaga’s change in beliefs and practices was grounded inlistening to the language of physics learners. As Prayaga had reflected on his experiencesin teaching physics to prospective teachers in the first two semesters, he became aware of thefact that the beliefs that supported the strategies he used in teaching science and engineeringmajors were not satisfactory in the context of teaching prospective teachers. The constraintsof maintaining a specific focus on content so that science oriented students would be preparedfor the next science course, did not apply in the context of the new physics course. Throughhis experiences with the prospective teachers he had experienced disequilibrium, first whentraditional practices did not seem effective and then when alternative practices were notworking well either. The new concerns generated by the fact that these prospective teachers


were not learning to talk physics forced him to rethink his strategies and what it wasimportant to teach in this new context. As Nespor (1987) has argued, new beliefs that madesense had to be formulated to replace those beliefs that had supported a transmission modelof teaching.

An important factor in the change in his teaching was that Prayaga had become awareof students’ learning processes and the role of their prior knowledge in understandingphysics concepts. In listening to how students represented concepts in their own languagehe learned a great deal about the way they thought about physics concepts and he began tochange his own ways of communicating physics concepts. He considered such factors asstudents’ difficulty in developing abstract concepts such as forces acting at a distance. Healso considered the difficulty students had in using physics terms such as energy, force, andmomentum, in the rigid framework they are applied in physics, because, as he found, theyused them interchangeably in their daily language. It is particularly important to note thathe began making adjustments as he taught to accommodate the students’ difficulties, a kindof reflection in action as described by Schon (1983). He described this change in teachingin the following comment:

In this semester I seem to be able to help them state their ideas more effectively, but I seemto be realizing these things only after I do them. It [the knowledge of how to communicatethe concept] is coming out while I am doing it in an unplanned fashion. For example todayI decided to use a uniform notation for all the forces. The literature abounds with namessuch as weight, tension, centripetal force and so on. These are special names given to forcesand they do tend to give an impression to the students that they are somehow differentfrom other forces. Therefore, I am avoiding special names given to forces. Every force iswritten as F and you write what is exerting the force and what the force is being exerted on.These things that I have never done before seem to be helping the students to understandthe concepts.

Reflection in action was not a practice that had been evident in Prayaga’s practices in thefirst or second semester the course was taught. He had generally reacted to students prob-lems by adding to his explanations or providing additional examples, rather than changingthe manner in which he used language to develop the explanations. Clearly his focus hadchanged from himself as the teacher and what he had to say toward listening to the stu-dents and building the bridges that allowed students to cross the gap between his languagecommunity and theirs.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Teaching at any level is a complex process that is influenced by multiple personal andcultural dimensions. Yet, it is common for university academics to have little or no formalpreparation as teachers (Boice, 1992). Having formulated most of their beliefs about teach-ing and learning during their years as undergraduate and graduate students, and as a resultof “trial by fire” when they began teaching themselves (Lortie, 1975), it is no surprise thatuniversity faculty do not meet calls for reform in science teaching with enthusiasm.

Fullan (1982) argued that whether change is viewed as a worthwhile activity, dependson how teachers view the balance between the rewards and costs of their efforts. AlthoughPrayaga took the assignment to teach the physics course without intent to change how hetaught, his love of teaching and desire to be a good teacher was integral to the changethat took place and is represented here. It may be that this case and others in the literature(i.e. Taylor et al., 2002) represent a select group of individuals for whom the rewards


exhibited in student learning were worth the time and effort they put into learning more aboutthemselves and their teaching. In this case, when Prayaga’s assignment had to be changedso that he could serve as department head, the instructor, who had refused the assignmentthe first semester, received the assignment. Although he voluntarily spent one full semesterobserving Prayaga as he taught, his beliefs about teaching and learning were not necessarilychanged by this activity. Informal discussions with current students suggest the course is,once again, primarily a lecture course. It seems clear that in order to institutionalize thetransformation of university science teaching and to encourage interactions among scienceeducators and scientists or among scientists themselves that focus on pedagogical reform,university and department policies that do not reward such efforts must be renegotiated.Unless institutional and departmental support for learning about teaching provides as muchbenefit to faculty as the support they receive for their research efforts; faculty are not likelyto move beyond the beliefs and models of action that have been established within the normsof their cultures.

On the other hand, in cases where science faculty may identify a need for change, theresults of this study add to our understanding of factors that may enhance their professionaldevelopment. First, although collaborative reflection has been key to several studies thatreport K-12 science teacher change, it is rather rare at the university level (Carr, 2002).Briscoe’s model for initiating the collaboration was built to overcome obstacles commonlyreported in the literature (Bondy & Brownell, 1997; Duggan-Haas et al., 1999); however,Prayaga’s personal love of teaching also contributed to its success. The relationship betweencoauthors was unique and a very labor intensive interaction. Accordingly, it is not likely thatthis model of collaboration can serve as a model for professional development that leadsto large scale reform in science teaching. However, it is possible that interactions amongscientists and science educators such as those Prayaga experienced at the conferences heattended can provide a stimulus for individual reflection and change through action research.We would argue that the exchange should not be unidirectional, but that research on teachingand learning university science should be made available at science oriented conferences.University science research faculty are also teaching faculty and as such should share inresearch into teaching and learning that supports practices consistent with the calls forreform. Scientists and educators have much to learn from one another about critical issuesthat drive the curriculum in university science courses. Until we reach some agreed uponunderstanding of these issues together, we cannot begin the task of learning to work togethertoward meeting the calls for reform.

Second, the results of this study support Lemke’s (1990) argument that communicationis a social process whereby participants, “create, or re-create a community of people whoshare certain beliefs and values” (p. x). However, we learned from this study that whenparticipation is unilateral, the creation of a shared community is unlikely. The differencesbetween the discourse communities of the prospective teachers and the community of whichPrayaga wanted them to become members was the barrier over which Prayaga had to builda bridge to enhance their learning. Prayaga and Briscoe found a similar barrier confoundedhow each of them made meaning of teaching and learning. In both cases it became clearthat if language and communication is to be shared, both language communities must havethe opportunity to interact in their own discourses, to try out the discourse that has beenconstructed on the basis of separate experience and to negotiate a shared language and ashared set of beliefs and values, built on combined experience. Conference activities suchas those suggested above may also serve as that combined experience.

Finally, this study supports the argument of Kane et al. (2002) that our understand-ing of university academics’ development as teachers can be enhanced through stud-ies of teachers’ beliefs. Research that answers questions of how teachers’ beliefs and


conceptions of teaching relate to their models of learning environments and the theoriesof action that influence their practices can serve as a beginning point for creating profes-sional development activities. Kember (1997) argues that research on university academics’conceptions of teaching has suggested that commonalities exist among the theories of ac-tion they possess. For example, in the area of science education one may ask whether thespecialized language of various science communities influences formation of beliefs thatsupport transmission models of teaching. In Prayaga’s case it was an important factor andstudies of discourse as used in other university science settings suggest that similar beliefsmay be held by other faculty (Griffith, 2002; Roth & Tobin, 1996, 2002). If there are indeedcommonalities among the beliefs that support the theories of action of science faculty, pro-fessional development activities may be designed that focus on bringing into question thosebeliefs and theories of action much as conceptual change activities (Posner et al., 1982) aredesigned to enhance students’ science learning. What is clear, is that excluding the beliefsthat science faculty hold from any attempt at professional development would be equivalentto ignoring students’ prior knowledge when planning for student learning.

Further research is needed to explore the kinds of cross cultural experiences that canprovide a common ground where scientists and educators can work together effectivelyto critically examine the beliefs and theories of practice that constrain reform across set-tings of university science teaching. This study and others in the literature have provideda number of examples of collaboration and transformation in college science teaching;however each is more or less unique to the setting in which it has originated. Research isneeded that explores how what has been learned in these unique settings can be appliedin broader cultural settings and facilitate the hard work of negotiating reform in scienceteaching.

APPENDIX

Student Interview Question Protocol

1. When you were coming into the physics course, what were your feelings about it.What did you expect?

2. How did your expectations change as you engaged in the course experiences?3. What are the kinds of experiences you had that helped you learn?4. What kinds of experiences hindered your learning?5. If you had control of this course, how would you change the design of the course to

increase students’ learning and class participation?6. What are some things that the professor did that you might adopt for teaching chil-

dren?

This work was partially funded by a National Science Foundation grant to Florida A&M University,Florida Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Education, Minigrant 32-1706-020 through Subcon-tract to Florida State University B12-796-41.

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