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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Article 2 (Dec., 2011) |
This study used the naturalistic paradigm to investigate the relationship between teachers’ NOS conceptions and their inquiry science practices because naturalistic paradigm provides the best fit when the purpose is to get at the meaning as constructed by the participants (Guba & Lincoln, 1989).
Research Context and Participants
The participants of this study are practicing teachers who were accepted into an online science education Master’s program at a southern university. This Master’s program is specifically designed for practicing science teachers who are certified. One of the logistical aspects of this program is to reach out to practicing teachers who are unable to attend college courses for a variety of reasons to include time and distance. The main purpose of the Master’s Program is to help teachers improve their science teaching methods, research abilities, pedagogy, and philosophy of science teaching in their classroom. Three online courses constituted the research setting of this study: (1) Special Problems in the Teaching of Secondary School Science: Nature of Science & Science Teaching (NOSST), (2) Curriculum in Science Education (CSE), and (3) Colloquium (COL). The purpose of the NOSST course was to enhance teachers’ understanding of NOS conceptions. Whereas the main purpose of CSE course was to enhance teachers’ understanding of inquiry science by engaging them in inquiry science activities and providing them a context to reflect on their experiences. Finally, the purpose of the COL course was to provide a context for teachers further discuss the issues that are related to NOS and implementation of inquiry science in middle school settings.
At the beginning of the semester, all of the 14 teachers enrolled in the NOS course were administered the VNOS-C questionnaire by the course instructor in order to get their views about the NOS. After the respondents completed the questionnaires, each participant’s NOS responses were analyzed by comparing and contrasting each teacher’s responses with the desired NOS conceptions mentioned in McComas (1998). In addition, the teachers’ electronic postings in the NOS course were analyzed. As a result, the teachers’ responses were holistically categorized into three groups as those who hold: (1) simplistic, (2) sophisticated, and (3) in-between NOS conceptions. The initial plan was to purposefully select (Guba & Lincoln, 1989) two teachers from each category. None of the teachers held sophisticated understanding in all aspects of the VNOS questionnaire. Therefore, four teachers who thought to be the best informants (Guba & Lincoln, 1989) were selected as focus group teachers. Through the middle of the research, one of the teachers asked to be excluded from the research due to her overwhelming course and work schedule. The teachers’ agreement were sought to participate in the research by having them sign a letter of consent. Pseudonyms are used to protect the teachers’ confidentiality.
Multiple data sources were used for data triangulation (Miles & Huberman, 1984) in order to understand the relationship between participants’ NOS views and their conceptions and beliefs about inquiry-based science teaching. These include: (1) VNOS-C questionnaire, (2) Electronic postings in all three online courses, (3) Semi-structured interviews, (4) email correspondence, and (5) Samples of inquiry teaching videos and lesson plans.
VNOS-C Questionnaire
The VNOS-C questionnaire (STILT, 2004), contains ten open-ended questions about teachers’ NOS conceptions. Each question deals with a different aspect of science. All teachers enrolled in the NOS course were to take the VNOS-C questionnaire as part of fulfilling the requirements of the course. Once the questionnaire was completed, each participant’s VNOS-C responses were summarized (Abd-El-Khalick, Lederman, Bell, & Schwartz, 2001). Then a comparison and contrasting of each teacher’s responses with the desired NOS conceptions (simplistic, sophisticated and in-between) mentioned in McComas (1998) was made.
Electronic Postings
Electronic postings were composed of reflections and responses of teachers that were posted in discussion boards in the Blackboard system throughout the semester. These discussion board topics included but were not limited to: (1) Weekly critical reviews of assigned readings, (2) Other participants’ responses to teachers’ critical reviews, (3) Teachers’ responses to weekly prompts assigned by the instructor and (4) Weekly peer assessments. The length of the teachers’ reflections and responses ranged from a couple sentences to three pages. All of these electronic interactions were archived in the Blackboard system.
Semi-Structured Interviews
Interviews are particularly useful while investigating issues in a more in-depth-way, (Guba & Lincoln, 1989) as they often reveal detailed information on the perceptions, intentions, thoughts, and beliefs of participants (Guba & Lincoln, 1989; Fontana & Frey, 2000).
In this research, the interviews were conducted in a semi-structured format allowing the researcher to be flexible in following up the given responses. The questions during semi-structured interviews focused on the following themes: (1) Participants’ descriptions of inquiry learning and inquiry-based science teaching; (2) Participants’ experiences with inquiry science instruction ; (3) Participants’ perceptions of advantages and disadvantages of inquiry learning and inquiry-based teaching; (4)Participants’ NOS conceptions; and (5) The influence of the NOS and inquiry online courses on participants’ classroom practices. Each teacher was interviewed twice. The length of the interviews ranged from approximately two hours to two and a half hours.Videotapes
For the purpose of the Curriculum and NOS courses, teachers were to videotape at least one class period of their inquiry teaching and mail it to one of the course instructors. The lengths of the videotapes were approximately two hours, an hour, and an hour for Kelly, Amy, and Jason, respectively. Videotapes were analyzed in order to gain an understanding about how teachers utilized inquiry-based teaching methods while teaching scientific concepts.
Each teacher’s inquiry class was categorized in one of the three categories of open, guided and structured inquiry using an Inquiry Scoring Rubric(ISR) developed by the author. Each category consisted of eight variables. According to the Inquiry Rubric, for instance, “Open Inquiry” teaching involved the following characteristics: (1) Student questions give direction to the lesson; (2) The teacher strongly encourages student thinking and reasoning; (3) The teacher never provides the correct answer; (4) Student participation is strongly encouraged; (5) Students hypothesize, make predictions and design their own investigations to test own hypothesis; (6) Students deeply engage in data analysis; (7) Students exchange ideas among each other and with the teacher; and, (8) Investigations may extend over a long period of time.
Data collection and data analysis were conducted simultaneously in this research. Simultaneous data analysis in qualitative studies has several advantages over the analysis that takes place after all data is collected. First, as Miles & Huberman (1984, p.49) argue, reflecting on the newly collected data in small chunks rather than in big bulk enables the researcher to generate new questions and give new direction to the study. It further enables the researcher to collect “better quality” data as the researcher gains better insight into the study s/he is conducting.
Using constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), data was reorganized by identifying several patterns, categories, and themes. Throughout the data analysis procedure, comparisons and contrasts were made (Miles & Huberman, 1984) between different data sources. Data was analyzed many times always looking for relationships and themes to emerge. Some of the themes that emerged from the study were influence of teachers’ NOS conceptions on their confidence and intentions of using inquiry in their classrooms,. The themes and assertions were verified by further data collection and analysis. Finally, interpretations and assertions were made as a result of the analysis of each data source that was confirmed, combined with other assertions, or unconfirmed. The final outcome of this study was reported as a set of assertions supported through the triangulation of the various data sources.
The researchers attempted to enhance information richness by providing thick description of the research context. The purpose of thick description is “to facilitate the transferability of judgments on the parts of others who may wish to apply the study to their own situations” (Guba & Lincoln, 1989, p. 242). The validity of themes and assertions was enhanced through triangulation with interviews, electronic postings, VNOS questionnaire responses and teaching videos.
The researchers sought focus group teachers’ approval of the interpretations before putting them in the final draft. During this member checking process, the focus group teachers were sent the final draft along with a letter that encouraged teachers to add, delete or comment on the interpretations made in the final draft. . The focus group teachers did not have any revisions on the final draft and as requested sent a signed letter back to the researcher that indicated their approval of the researcher’s interpretations.
In order to further enhance the validity the interpretations the researcher employed peer debriefing technique (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). The researcher and several other doctoral students met on a weekly basis to discuss their research findings and analysis of data. During these meetings the researcher shared the categories and themes that emerged from the data and asked his colleagues to provide feedback on the soundness of the categories, themes and his interpretations. The researcher also met with his major professor (the second author) to discuss the findings of the research more in depth.
