 |
Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 12
(June, 2009) |
Identifying the beliefs of the school community as well as those of teachers is important for successfully implementing reform in schools. Haney et al. (2003) focused on a constructivist learning environment not only from the teacher’s perspective, but also from that of the administrator, parent, community member and student. Seventy-two participants of a year-long Eisenhower-funded project were purposefully selected for this study. The participants represented school community groups: 35 teachers, 9 administrators, 18 parents/community members and 10 students. The authors asked a single open-ended statement for participants to complete: “My perception of the relationship between students and teachers in the learning environment is ________.” Responses were rated using a rubric with a 1-to-5 point system for a statistical analysis. The findings of this study indicated that even though both administrators and teachers significantly held more positive beliefs than did the parent/community members, constructivist teaching ideas did not dominate their beliefs regarding successful teaching. Constructivist beliefs especially related to curriculum, use of instructional strategies and assessment techniques seemed to be lacking. Administrators reported significantly higher constructivist beliefs than did the parents/community members or students regarding the teaching for understanding construct including teacher as facilitator, student preconceptions and relevance, higher order thinking skills, demonstration of understanding and construction of student conceptual understanding. This finding is somewhat contradictory to the findings of previous studies (Haney et al. 1996) that teachers do not have administrative support while trying to implement constructivist reform. One reason for this discrepancy could be that the administrators in this study were involved in science professional development projects. This study reveals that the beliefs of the school community might be another factor that may affect teacher classroom practices.
