Exploring the Pedagogical Reasoning of Skilled Teachers (original) (raw)
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Explicating the Elusive ‘Pedagogical Reasoning’ of Expert Teachers of Science
Educere et Educare, 2018
Quality teaching that enhances student learning and engagement in science is a focus for all educational systems. Whether fuelled by the results from international studies, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), or from what is already evident from the research, highly skilled teachers can greatly improve the educational outcomes of students (MOURSHED, CHIJIOKE & BARBER, 2010). It is this fundamental principle that underpins the recent development and implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APSTs), which identify explicitly the qualities that teachers are expected to demonstrate in each of four career stages: Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished, and Lead (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2012). Underpinning teacher quality in at least four of these standards is the elusive tacit or pedagogical knowledge that is held and used by ‘expert’ teachers of science in their teaching. The study dis...
Re-examining Pedagogical Reasoning as Means of Identifying Science Teacher Expertise
In 1987, Lee Shulman introduced the construct of teachers' pedagogical reasoning; one agenda he had was to give greater status to the complex, often sophisticated, but typically tacit wisdom of practice. Shulman's work has been much cited, but there have been few empirical studies in the area; these commonly conflate expertise with mere experience and Shulman's relatively linear 6 stage process has not been significantly explored or advanced. We report on a five year project involving teachers who were highly skilled and experienced in articulating tacit wisdom. Unlike Shulman's model, their pedagogical reasoning was a complex, rapid and very non-linear interaction between several distinct, but richly connected foci: framing big ideas, routes to student engagement promoting quality learning and developing quality learners and responding to contextual constraints and opportunities -we label this "pinball reasoning". Each of these foci can be regarded as a body of conceptual and practical knowledge. Expert practice can be explored both by researching how each focus is used as well as exploring the links between them and how reflecting on one stimulates thinking about another.
World Journal of Education, 2012
A cognitive model of how teachers plan instruction was validated in laboratory settings but remained to be tested empirically in authentic situations. The objective of this work is to describe and compare pedagogical reasoning in laboratory and authentic contexts and across expertise levels. The "state-driven hypothesis" and the "knowledge-driven hypothesis" were used in two studies to show how pedagogical reasoning was performed by novices and experts in laboratory (n=18) and in authentic context (n=14). Globally, the results show (1) similarities and differences in how pedagogical reasoning unfolds in laboratory and authentic contexts and (2) how domain knowledge influences only some aspects of this process. The work presented lays the foundations for the fine-grained study of how domain knowledge determines problem-solving in pedagogical-reasoning.
From Knowledge to Knowing: An Inquiry into Teacher Learning in Science
1998
This paper elaborates upon the idea of pedagogical content knowledge through close examination of a teacher's learning in science and addresses a question derived from Shulman's (1986) original work on teacher knowledge: "What is learning for teaching?" Pedagogical knowing is viewed as the practice of seeing into the subject matter through the eyes, hearts, and minds of learners, an image adapted from Ball. Presented is a case study of a second year, fifth-grade teacher as she conducted an investigation of aquatic ecology over a period of several months, in the context of a four-year project in which teachers examined science, science learning, and teaching through their own and their students' experience as learners. How this teacher came to learn to see into the subject matter, her own learning, and her students' learning as she worked to understand aspects of the ecology of a local pond, and how her experience figured into her identity as a learner and her practice as a teacher are analyzed. (Author/WRM)
Primary Science Teachers’ Perspectives about Metacognition in Science Teaching
European Journal of Educational Research, 2021
Metacognition in science teaching involves processes that include self-awareness and self-regulation. Metacognition enables the teachers to facilitate student learning and to reflect on their teaching in order to enable themselves to improve or to make any changes to their teaching. In particular, teaching activities, especially in the 21st century, do not merely involve the transfer of knowledge and then applying that knowledge into daily life, but teachers need to reflect, plan and evaluate learning outcomes to enhance further in teaching. This study attempts to gain the perspective and implementation of metacognition skills in teaching science in the primary school classroom. The data was collected through a qualitative research method based on interviews with six science teachers in primary school using semi-structured interview protocol. The interview data were analysed for emerging themes, guided by the research questions. Teachers have a similar perspective of the understandi...
Understanding Teacher Expertise in Primary Science
2007
In recent years much emphasis has been placed, both by researchers and by policy-makers, on the role that subject knowledge plays in the classroom practice of primary teachers. Within UK research on primary science education, this emphasis is often linked with constructivist ideas about effective teaching. In this article, I explore the implications of applying a rather different approach, based on sociocultural theories of cognition and learning. These stress the situated nature of knowledge and the complex interdependence of learning and action. Above all, these perspectives treat expertise as defined in action by relevant communities of practice. Thus, in this article, I draw upon data from an in-depth qualitative case study of one primary science teacher who is recognized in her local environment, and more widely, as an expert practitioner. I examine her views about subject knowledge, and her beliefs about the learning and teaching of science. I also investigate her practice. One outcome of this study is the conclusion that teacher expertise is eclectic in character, drawing on a variety of pedagogical strategies and theories of learning in dealing with the contingent situations faced in the classroom. I conclude by suggesting that this aspect of primary science practice is particularly important today, given that currently influential views configure teaching in terms of abstract standards concerned with level of subject and pedagogical knowledge.
Exploring the pedagogical reasoning of a physics teacher educator
2017
The education literature reviewed recognises a preponderant role played by teacher educators in preparing student teachers for classrooms. However, it also recognises that not so much is known about how teacher educators express and represent their pedagogy. The study used an interpretative phenomenological analysis method to investigate what is important to science teacher educators when teaching how to teach, why that is relevant and how they know it. The study was focused on the pedagogical reasoning (PR) of a physics teacher educator; how he perceives and expresses it pre, during and post teaching in a physics discipline unit in a graduate teaching program. How his pedagogical reasoning is perceived by his student teachers and to what extent it is connected with their learning experience. Shulman's model of pedagogical reasoning and actions was used as a lens to observe this physics teacher educator's PR including his perceptions and beliefs around teaching. Mostly throu...
1985
The authors claim that the principal contribution of research on teacher thinking is enrichment of understanding of what teachers know and what teaching entails. Studies of teacher planning, decision making, knowledge, and theorizing can be used to provide prospective teachers with a realistically complex picture of the cognitive aspects of teaching. This research also supports the development of a conception of teaching as a reflectively professional enterprise. For both novices and experienced teachers the proposed goals of applying this research are to promote understanding of teaching as a design profession and to empower teachers in self-directed professional development efforts. Knowledge about how teachers get their work done is of worth to teachers not because it will provide them with new tools to use, but rather because it changes the way researchers view what teachers need to know; researchers can then be of more help to teachers. Descriptions of teaching that have been produced by studies of teacher thinking can help to provide a framework for researchers to decide what sorts of information, advice, and support will be useable in the classroom.