Preservice teachers learning about teaching for conceptual change through slowmation

The best known conceptual change model in science education, based on students’ epistemologies originated with Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog (1982) ... and applied to classroom instruction by Hennessey (1993) ... In this learning model, resolution of conceptual competition is explained in terms of the comparative intelligibility, plausibility and fruitfulness of rival conceptions. (Duit & Treagust, 2003, pp. 673 - 674)

A central tenet of learning as conceptual change is that knowledge cannot be transferred during teaching; that existing thinking influences outcomes. This is one of the reasons why, for some, aspects of science are difficult to learn. A learner’s personal understandings must be uncovered and brought to the surface in order for the teaching activity to contribute to the reconstruction of prior knowledge and ideas (Pringle, 2006). Teaching therefore should, “provide opportunities to probe students’ developing understanding in a formative way, allowing subsequent teaching to be responsive to students’ learning” (Scott, Asoko, & Leach, 2007, p. 38).

Although various meanings have been attributed to the term conceptual change, it is typically associated with constructivist perspectives, “In a general sense, conceptual change denotes learning pathways from students’ pre-instructional conceptions to the science concepts to be learned” (Duit & Treagust, 2003, p. 673), and therefore focuses attention on the ability of teachers to identify such pre-instructional conceptions. To do so requires a change not only in perspective but also in practice from transmissive to constructivist understandings and approaches to teaching.

Many teachers are not aware of their students’ pre-instructional conceptions, and even when they are, “Some teachers are aware that students’ pre-instructional conceptions have to be taken into consideration but usually they do not explicitly see them as ‘goggles’ that guide observation and interpretation of everything presented in class by the teacher or the textbook” (Duit & Treagust, 2003, p. 683). Therefore important in conceptual change is first to recognise that students bring conceptions of scientific phenomena into class with them, and as a consequence, teachers need to see how these conceptions act as a lens through which students learn science.

There is also a social and affective dimension that is important to take into account for conceptual learning to occur and “teachers who ignore the social and affective aspects of personal and group learning may limit conceptual change” (Duit & Treagust, 2003, p. 679). As the literature demonstrates, knowledge about conceptual change abounds, however, the ability of teachers to know how, or to be able to, teach in order to facilitate such change is not so vast. In many respects, the teaching and learning situation in teacher education programs is not that different to that of school science classrooms.

Student teachers’ learning about science teaching cannot be conceptualised as a process of transference, their prior experiences have important consequences for their expectations of, and approaches to, their students’ science learning. Therefore, finding ways to help student teachers recognise this is important if teacher preparation is to genuinely impact student teachers’ understanding of teaching and how it influences their students’ learning.

The conceptual change literature highlights a number of important issues that impact teacher education. For example, to raise, confront and reconstruct students’ thinking is often difficult to implement in classrooms. There are few specific examples of how to do this documented and accessible to teachers and it is time consuming for teachers to develop such materials themself as they can be quite complex (see Berry & Milroy 2002). Further to this, the ‘dissatisfaction with existing ideas phase’ of conceptual change approaches can create difficulties for teachers when challenging students’ views, and for the students, can be very confronting as they experience the affect of having their views challenged. Given the well documented difficulties that student teachers often experience in terms of their content and pedagogical confidence (Appleton, 1992; Garbett, 2007; Parker & Heywood, 2000), the idea of teaching for conceptual change based on the examination of students’ views adds another layer of complexity and difficulty to student teachers’ learning about teaching science.

A pertinent example of this situation is offered through the work of Berry and Milroy (2002) when, as teacher researchers, they sought to do something about the alternative conceptions that they had uncovered in their students’ understandings of the science topics they were teaching.

It was clear that telling students the answer did little to change their views ... From the outset we were keen to draw on research to inform our teaching. Our … University experiences had been significant in influencing our views and we saw value in accessing the possibilities that a conceptual change approach might have on students' learning ... However, when we turned to the research literature to find a context for teaching about atomic structure or practical classroom assistance for dealing with the particular conceptions we had uncovered and wanted to challenge, we found little.

This frustration persisted throughout many of the units we taught. Probes of children’s conceptions of scientific phenomena and descriptions and analyses of the shortcomings of much classroom science teaching were abundant, but there was little to support a conceptual change approach … for dealing with the variety of individual conceptions – how to challenge; what to do with those students who already had a coherent view of the phenomenon; what the likely response to various situations might be; good teaching procedures targeting particular concepts ... (pp. 107 - 201)

As Berry and Milroy (above) make clear, although the research literature abounds with knowledge about alternative conceptions, practical advice for teachers about what do as a consequence of uncovering them is not so plentiful. Clearly, if this situation is difficult for experienced teachers it carries great import in terms of implications for science teacher education programs. Although student teachers may be taught about alternative conceptions and even encouraged to confront and reflect on these ideas in terms of the impact of such thinking on their subsequent practice, there is a major difference between recognizing a situation and actually doing something productive about it in practice. For student teachers, that prospect is both challenging and demanding.

The problematic aspect of finding pedagogical approaches that might be implemented to advance learning beyond knowing likely conceptual starting points and barriers is clearly apparent and the literature has very little, “to say about how to shape instruction in order to help students come to terms with the scientific point of view” (Scott, et al., 2007, p. 51). Yet, while it is important to acknowledge the context specific nature of teaching some instructional approaches may in fact be more helpful than others because they “involve a motivating activity for students, or challenge students’ thinking in an engaging way, or allow students the opportunity to articulate their developing understandings” (Scott, et al., 2007, p. 51).

It is this need to examine productive ways of recognizing and responding to students’ alternative conceptions that can create real opportunities for science teacher education programs to respond to these issues in teaching for conceptual change. One such purposeful approach is through Slowmation. However, it cannot be that Slowmation is a solution per se, rather that it is through understanding the theoretical underpinnings that its impact on learning can really be understood and inform student teachers’ developing knowledge of their own professional practice. Through concept construction and representation created through Slowmation, real gains in student teachers’ learning about teaching for conceptual change are realized. Hence, making the pedagogical purpose of Slowmation strong and explicit by creating situations through which student teachers personally experience learning as both students and teachers is the key to moving beyond ‘activities that work’ (Appleton, 2002).