 |
Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 1, Article 4 (Jun., 2011) |
This study followed a qualitative approach to explore how secondary science teachers’ learning in a professional learning community influences the ways in which participant teachers learn about, and develop their science teaching practice.
Secondary school teachers in Bangladesh seldom receive recurrent training (Hossain, 1994, 2000). In most cases, training is conducted on an irregular basis depending on when funds are available, rather than the needs of teachers (Ministry of Education, 2005). Moreover, the teaching community also works in what appears to some to be a state of isolation with a lack of collegiality clearly apparent (Hossain, 2000). In this study, two science teachers from the same school formed a peer pair for classroom observation purposes. Seven such peer pairs worked in this intervention implementation process. According to the Figure-1, in this stage, firstly, all peer pairs conducted ‘Teaching session-One’ using a constructivist teaching approach (the use of a POE). All pairs followed the same science teaching topics from the junior secondary level. Within each peer pair, one teacher taught while the other observed the peer’s full lesson. For example, in peer-A, teacher 1 taught while teacher 2 observed the lesson. Secondly, both the teacher observer and the teacher reviewed their notes individually after the teaching session using the same classroom observation schedule. Thirdly, these individual reflections formed the basis of discussion between both teachers in which they shared, provided feedback and critiqued and challenged each other’s observations. At the same time, I took field notes as a participant observer.
When all of the peer pairs had completed the classroom ‘Teaching session-One’, they came to ‘Professional Workshop-One’. Issues about which they were undecided or were notable for some reason, including those that I had recorded as a participant observer during post-teaching discussion time for all pairs, were considered. I included all of these as issues to be discussed with the whole cohort of teacher participants for this subsequent workshop after each teaching cycle. At this stage, teachers worked with their science colleagues as a research cohort from nearby schools to discuss together the issues and their situations with the aim of improving their practice.
Figure-1: Outline of research design
After that, all participant teachers went back to a further round of classroom teaching and observation, ‘Teaching session-Two’ with a swap of responsibilities within each individual pair, i.e., in peer-A, teacher 2 then taught while teacher 1 observed the lesson. After that, they reflected on their notes using the same classroom observation schedule and then joined the subsequent post-teaching discussion as before. In this stage teachers found scope to apply their learning from previous sessions they had attended. They also started to construct a deeper understanding for the intervention process they were using in collaboration with their colleagues.
Participant teachers met for ‘Professional Workshop-Two’ to discuss again the issues about which they were undecided or were notable for some important reason, as recorded by them or myself from teaching round two. This workshop also provided these teachers with opportunities to refine their ideas regarding their teaching perceptions and the culture of their professional practice. This set of activities together constituted one cycle. In this research, I conducted two cycles, in order to better understand the intervention and possible changes to teachers’ practice.
Qualitative research tools were used in the course of this study in order to shape my understanding of the change in professional practice of these secondary science teachers. In particular, as a participant observer, I took notes to explore patterns and themes emerging during post teaching discussions and professional workshops. Basically, this paper focuses specifically on the use of one research tool, whereas the full study (Rahman, 2011) draws on a range of tools.
I used ‘convenience’ sampling to select 14 secondary science teachers from seven nearby schools from those who volunteered to be further involved in the study. Consideration for inclusion was based on availability, easy recruitment and willingness to participate in the study (Mertens, 2010; Robson, 2002). Moreover, the nature of the intervention demanded participants from nearby schools within a local area. To fulfill that purpose, I selected seven nearby schools form Ashuganj UpaZilla of Brahmanbaria district of Bangladesh in order to make further involvement easy for participants and to attend the follow up professional workshops. Each individual peer pair then followed up through classroom observation, post-teaching discussion and professional workshops to see how ideas from different components of the intervention influenced their science teaching practice.
Twenty-eight participant observers’ comments for all peer pairs from their post teaching discussions and four professional workshops were analyzed using NVivo 8 to code themes and issues that contributed to the findings. The discussions were audio taped that were later transcribed. In this procedure, themes were identified from the qualitative data regarding different aspect of secondary science teachers’ culture of professional practice. These themes are the indications of changes in the culture of their professional practice and are described in the next section.
