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Student Teachers' Beliefs about ScienceMargareta Wolf-Watz aa University of Umeå , SwedenPublished online: 20 Dec 2006.
To cite this article: Margareta Wolf-Watz (2000) Student Teachers' Beliefs about Science, Journal of In-Service Education,26:2, 403-413
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Journal of In-Service Education, Volume 26, Number 2, 2000
403
Student Teachers’ Beliefs about Science
MARGARETA WOLF-WATZ University of Umeå, Sweden
ABSTRACT This study is part of a longitudinal research project following students from initial teacher education into their first job, to provide insights into how student teachers become novice teachers of science. This paper reports the results from the first part of the study focusing mainly on the beliefs that student teachers have about the teaching and learning of science. It draws on Östman’s three didactic typologies of science to show the popularity among student teachers of experiments, every-day science and constructivism. The findings of the study challenge teacher education to develop science teaching and learning as a more democratic, moral and cultural enterprise. This will later then have an impact on thinking about how and what students learn in science classes. The study reported here forms the background for future research on how stated values and knowledge about science (and mathematics) are enacted by novice teachers and put into their practice.
Research that contributes to the understanding of pupil and teacher thinking about mathematics and science as well as other subjects, is to be much welcomed (Hiebert & Carpenter, 1992). The aim of this study [1] is to provide insights into the value systems of student teachers as they move to become novice teachers in science. I attempt to understand, describe, analyse and interpret their beliefs about their learning and teaching of science.
Contextual and Theoretical Background
Teachers in Sweden are expected to teach according to nationally agreed standards. Teaching and learning science in the Swedish curriculum has the same broad goal as most western countries, i.e. ‘science for all’ (Fensham, 1988). It aims to provide citizens with sufficient scientific ability to participate in debates concerning science in society.
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Significantly, pupils in schools are influenced by the emphases that teachers place on their teaching of science (Roberts, 1988). Östman (1996) found the same kind of emphases in Swedish science textbooks. He discusses three didactic typologies for the teaching and learning of science: disciplinary, applied and moral. A ‘disciplinary’ approach encourages pupils to learn science through concepts and theories as an introduction to science. An ‘applied’ approach focuses on humans in natural settings and how science is learnt in every day life. A third ‘moral’ approach encourages science teaching and learning to focus on Nature, and the actions that need to be taken for survival and preservation of Nature.
The third, broader view of science teaching and learning is also picked up by Svein Sjøberg (1995), who argues that political, ideological, philosophical and sociological aspects should be included. Science is thus placed in a broader societal context, for example, through courses linking science, technology and society (Sjøberg, 1998). Sjøberg argues that science education should give greater emphasis to cultural and democratic perspectives, rather than focusing mainly on disciplinary and economic issues as in the past. Science here becomes more interesting and relevant to all – attractive to both men and women, as well as to different cultural and ethnic groups.
The science curriculum in Sweden stresses that a main concern for teachers is to persuade both girls and boys [2] to be more interested in science (Utbildningsdepartementet, 1994a,b). Gisselberg (1991) found that girls and boys tend to develop their knowledge in science in different ways. Staberg (1992) argues that teachers (and student teachers, I suggest) need to be more aware of girls in science lessons. Nationally, there has been a suggestion that the compulsory school has not fully explored all possibilities of encouraging girls’ interest in science (Skolverket, 1993). Girls and boys, and their understanding of science has thus become an important focus for teachers.
Swedish policy on curriculum emphasises the importance of constructivism across all subjects. (Utbildningdepartementet, 1994a,b). Constructivism is a view of learning in which learners are actively involved in the knowledge construction process and use their existing knowledge to make sense of any new experience (Hewson et al, 1998). Sjøberg (1995) argues that constructivism has played an important role in the development of science teaching and learning. In the process of learning to teach, constructivist theory suggests that student teachers bring beliefs to their teacher education programmes that influence their view on teaching, learning, subject matter and students (Richardson, 1996). ‘Belief’ research is a growing domain. There have been many definitions concerning beliefs (e.g. Thompson, 1992; Richardson, 1996). In trying to understand teachers’ underlying thoughts and decisions, I have drawn mainly from Lindgren’s (1997) interpretation of beliefs as ‘a
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person’s subjective, implicit knowledge of science and its teaching and learning’. Beliefs are ideas that people are committed to. It is also important to look closely at prevailing beliefs or value systems of disciplines. Particularly in the education field, mathematics and science have long been viewed as bodies of established knowledge comprising facts that are true and that have been known for a long time. An alternative view of science and mathematics is that they are dynamic and human pursuits. This understanding of science and mathematics implies that these disciplines also provide processes by which scientists and mathematicians produce knowledge and make judgments (Loucks et al, 1998).
Here, I describe and try to understand the beliefs that student teachers hold of science teaching and learning towards the end of their period of teacher training.
Research Questions
The research questions raised by the issues above include the following:
What beliefs do student teachers have about the teaching and learning of science?
How do student teachers understand knowledge? How does this understanding relate to the construction of teaching and
learning of science?[3]
Method
The study was largely qualitative, although a range of different research methods were used. First, a short questionnaire was distributed among all students with mathematics and science as major subjects in their initial teacher education. This was followed by in-depth interviews of selected individuals. Sixteen students with different backgrounds were chosen for interview. Each interview took place in a quiet room in the university and lasted around 90 minutes. The reason for choosing interviews as a methodology is that they provide ‘nuanced descriptions of different qualities of the interviewed persons conceptions about the world’ (Kvale, 1997)
The interviews were semi structured and provided the student teachers with space to talk about their views on mathematics and science, teaching and learning. They were asked to reflect on their school experiences and to talk through a mathematics and science teaching/learning situation. They were also asked to think aloud about their responses to the questionnaire, and also to add any other opinions they had about the teaching and learning of science. After each interview, as researcher, I noted down my impressions. All the interviews were
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taped and transcribed. Then the data were reordered into categories or themes as outlined below.
According to Kvale (1997) the analysis of interviews involves several stages: description, identification, interpretation during the interview, and analysis of the text afterwards. Initially, two interviews were analysed to see what categories emerged from the data and these were used as a basis for analysis of the remaining interviews. During this process, as might be expected, the categories needed to be revised yet again. What is reported here reflects the stated and intended[4] beliefs about science, and the teaching and learning of a particular student teacher group.
Findings
The results are reported in different categories or themes, which in turn are divided into sub-themes. Individual or less popular points of view that are not easily fitted into the main sub-themes are reported in the text that follows each table.
Subthemes: the nature of science
Representations (phrases, words)
Number of mentions
as experimental
Experiments; practical; to do and learn; try and learn; exciting and thrilling
11
as integrated Increasingly integrated at school; all together; floats into each other; a unit; all disciplines
8
as separate disciplines Big chunks; not in a unit, separate subjects
5
Table 1. The nature of science (n = 16).
As we can see in Table I, the nature of science as ‘experimental’ had most significance for 11 out of 16 student teachers.[5] This experimental view of science involves the pupils engaging in hands-on activities, where they learn by doing in order to understand the world. This is an applied typology according to Östman (1996). Experiments are essential to this approach to science (as are other specific methods, techniques), and accordingly, to science teaching and learning. Students reported positive feelings about science, such as, ‘it’s fun, it touches me, interesting, miracle and wonder’.
A disciplinary typology of science emerges when the student teachers reported that science is abstract, academic and theoretical. The different subjects within science (physics, chemistry, biology) were viewed as based on definitions, models and concepts. Those who held this belief framework thought that each subject is different. Their
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perception was that biology is more theoretical than physics, ‘you just read [chemistry] in books’ and ‘biology is not fascinating’. Physics was seen as closely related to mathematics and chemistry and as mainly dealing with formulae.
Most student teachers expressed positive feelings about science [6], although one reported largely negative experiences when she was at school, where she ‘felt stupid and not clever at all’. Other statements about the nature of science concerned the opinion that science is not structured in steps like mathematics, while one student claimed that the same cognitive and logical ability is needed to understand both science and mathematics.
Science as essential
Representation (phrases, words)
Number of mentions
in every day life
To connect science to real life; easy to find associations; to know what happens around; how it works in everyday life; the use of applications; to cope in everyday life; to understand and explain everyday life
8
in society put in a context; to cope with life in society; knowledge about environment to survive; our role on earth; for our own good
5
Table II. Science as essential (n = 16).
We see from Table II that half the student teachers interviewed held a perspective on science as essential and everyday, for example, ‘everything around, absolutely everything around us is science’. Whilst this is a clear example of Östman’s applied component of science, there was also some evidence of students looking at science within a moral framework, for example, ‘knowledge [is needed] about environment to survive’. The main sub-themes to emerge here show how student teachers saw science as a part of life as exemplified by work on energy, environment, ecology and health – in fact, as utilised in the STS approach.
Table III shows that just under half (seven) of the student teachers thought that pupils should have more experience of open-ended experiments in order to increase their engagement in the process of scientific inquiry, planning and carrying out experiments, as well as in drawing conclusions. This open-endedness, they suggested, gives pupils more of an opportunity to think for themselves and construct their own knowledge. According to Andersson (1989), a debate about the need for greater openness in experiments is necessary if pupils are to become more involved in their own scientific learning. Student teachers reported their own experiences in school of ‘closed’ experiments, where expectations were that they should ‘write on the dotted line’. Nevertheless, they said they had been encouraged to take a more open
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approach to science by their teacher educators. Two students, however, thought that it was not possible to work more openly with experiments preferring instead a more structured pathway through scientific inquiry. Additionally, one student mentioned the importance of encouraging children to be involved in scientific thinking by posing questions and thus helping children to develop questioning skills as a basis for investigations (Harlen, 1996).
Science to develop thinking
Representations (phrases, words)
Number of mentions
through open inquiry
do not direct questions; how to get to know this; leave open; free inquiry
7
to give opportunity to think
think for yourself; students have to learn to think themselves
5
not to write on the dotted line
not to sit and write on the dotted line; my own experience
5
Table III. Science to develop the thinking process (n = 16).
Science as dependent on teachers’ knowledge
Representations (phrases, words)
Number of mentions
of girls and boys and science
boys push themselves forward; physics and technology boy-friendly; boys more interested; boys take up space; girls take up less space; girls less interested; teachers choose boy-friendly content; girls worry about not doing the right thing; science more equal than maths
12
about subjects new knowledge; knowledge from upper secondary is not enough; life long learning; need more knowledge than in maths; 15 credits do not cover the discipline
10
about how students think and learn
everybody can think of something to relate to; different for different children; teachers must understand the child’s perspective; observe and follow the learning process; get children to want to learn
7
about the contextual perspective
Study visit; thematic teaching; in real life; in the context where it is used; connect to oneself and ones life
7
about different teaching methods
adjust to different pupils; serve different things; instruct in different ways; knowledge in didactical and methodological skills
5
Table IV. Science education as dependent on teachers´ knowledge (n = 16).
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Table IV shows that most student teachers (12) reported having more equitable gender experiences in their initial teacher education than at school. Mainly, they seemed to have become more aware of the stereotypes that can be found in science teaching and learning, as reflected in statements such as ‘teachers choose boy-friendly content’ and ‘boys are more interested’.
Overall, student teachers appeared highly appreciative of the science content of their teacher training.[7] As science and mathematics majors, these subjects took up 50–75% of their overall time, depending on the choices made. Ten students commented on this aspect, and that they realised that new knowledge was being added and that updating their scientific knowledge would be a lifelong endeavour.
Östman’s applied approach was apparent in a range of different statements from the student teachers. These included using awareness of the conceptions about science that pupils bring to school, to help them better understand the science of every day life. This was then to be used as a basis for their teaching of school science. Knowing more about pupils, according to some student teachers, makes it possible for a teacher to understand and strengthen children’s scientific experiences. Perceptions about the context of science teaching and learning also help pupils to ‘connect to oneself and one’s life’. Five student teachers mentioned, interestingly, that they needed a broad and varied instructional repertoire to meet pupils’ own experience of the world.
Other views on teachers’ knowledge were that science needed to be closer to reality and less theoretical, and that the teacher should be a role model for children in the way he/she acts or in the science content he/she chooses. One student mentioned the need to arrange teaching and learning so that pupils can learn by themselves. Here the study shows that the student teachers had an awareness of their own role and influence that they bring to school with them.
Conclusions and Discussion
This article reports a study of student teachers’ beliefs about the teaching and learning of science. The analysis was framed around Östman’s three pedagogical typologies: disciplinary, applied and moral (Östman, 1996). The most popular approach to teaching science in the study was ‘applied’ and emerged in sub-themes, such as ‘science as experimental, in every day life, contextual, how students think’. The other typologies were found, but not to the same degree. Disciplinary aspects emerged when the students referred to ‘separate disciplines, knowledge about subjects’. Concern with morality emerged in the category ‘science as essential’ and in statements such as its use ‘to cope with life in society’.
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How is it that that the beliefs of these student science teachers focused mostly on its applied component? One reason was that some teacher educators favour this approach to science. Another reason was that students lacked this aspect in their earlier science teaching programme. It would seem likely that student teachers would be more attracted to a discipline-based approach since initial teacher education in Sweden often is organised by subject in different departments. One group, a minority, emphasised cultural and democratic perspectives of science education mentioned by Sjøberg; that is the view of science as a dynamic, human pursuit rather than a fixed body of truth (see also Loucks et al, 1998). Still, there remains the challenge of developing science teaching and learning as orientated towards more democratic, moral and cultural enterprises. This is important for teacher education and for practice in schools.
The Swedish curriculum states that teachers should address girls and boys and their conceptions of the lived world. There was an awareness among many of the student teachers about gender issues in science. It will be interesting to note how this is put in practice. The study suggests that student teachers also have an awareness of the importance of teachers’ knowledge about science in order to make science teaching and learning more effective.
How do student teachers view knowledge and learning? Social constructivists view learning as an active construction process where new information is added to earlier knowledge to make sense of new experiences (Hewson et al, 1999). Hewson et al argue that the way in which views of knowledge are constructed is a critical factor to student teachers, and in their own study, they suggest that a substantial number of student teachers enter teacher education with a non-constructivist view of knowledge and learning, and leave the teacher program with the same view.
This was not the case in the study reported here, where there was evidence of a constructivist view of the teaching and learning of science, for example, when student teachers referred to ‘open to inquiry; opportunity to think, know how students think, contextual perspective, different teaching methods’. This is linked to support for open-ended experiments and for children to develop their thinking in order to construct their knowledge of science. In fact, half of the group indicated that they were constructivist in approach.
Constructivism, as we have seen, suggests that student teachers bring beliefs about learning, teaching and subject content into their initial teacher education. This study throws light on the beliefs of student teachers at the end of their professional education. It is not possible to say if their beliefs have changed as a consequence of initial training although some statements suggest that this has been the case. Some students’ beliefs have clearly been challenged, for example, ‘I did not
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think about more open experiments before entering teacher education, now I have internalised it’.
Reflections
Teacher education is central in developing school practice. New teachers who are aware of their own beliefs in science education, can help to develop science teaching practice in schools. How can science teacher education programmes change to meet the challenge of a more democratic and moral science content?
The study raises the following questions:
How can content and pedagogy of courses be arranged to encourage democratic and moral forms of scientific thinking?
Do teacher educators give teacher students time and possibilities to reflect and develop beliefs that are consistent with Swedish curriculum values and formulations?
How should teacher educators deal with different students with different views and prior knowledge?
What might teacher education programs offer in order to help students reflect on their often taken-for-granted beliefs?
As a consequence of the study and others like it (Hewson et al, 1998), science teacher educators at Umeå university are rethinking their courses, programmes and practices. That is the value of such studies as that which is reported in this paper.
Correspondence
Margareta Wolf-Watz, Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Teacher Education, University of Umeå, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden ([email protected]).
Notes
[1] The study is part of a longitudinal project that started in late 1996 with a group of student teachers as they left teacher education at Umeå university. I followed this group in their work in schools in different places in Sweden. I have been in contact with them twice after leaving their teacher education and will meet them once more after 3 years in school. The study focuses on teachers of mathematics and science, though this article concentrates on science.
[2] The maths curriculum does not stress this for both girls and boys.
[3] Future work on the project will address how novice teachers’ beliefs of the teaching and learning of science change, and what influences the development of their views of knowledge and learning.
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[4] Future project work will focus upon teachers’ enacted teaching of science in school.
[5] In this aspect this is different from mathematics, which is seen as less experimental and inquiring.
[6] There were more positive feelings about science compared to mathematics.
[7] Student teachers said they valued science content in teacher education more highly than maths content.
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