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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2012) John LOUGHRAN, Amanda BERRY, Rebecca COOPER, Stephen KEAST & Garry HOBAN Preservice teachers learning about teaching for conceptual change through slowmation
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Pre Practicum Learning Experiences
An important aspect of teaching about Slowmation to preservice teachers was to help them begin to see possibilities for focusing on students’ science conceptions and see beyond Slowmation as simply ‘a fun activity’. In this case, working collaboratively with peers in developing Slowmations helped these preservice teachers begin to recognise and respond to the range of conceptions that they held, not only in terms of what they are, but also how they might arise, and how they might be used in a classroom to generate discussion about that science idea. In the pre-practicum workshop, a major focus of discussion in some groups emerged around the use of language, and the ways in which everyday language can promote misconceptions in science. For example, one group decided tocreate a Slowmation on the topic of day and night. Through their discussion in the planning stage, there was evidence that some participants were coming to recognise problems associated with using the everyday terms, ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’:
2: When it’s day it’s light and when it’s night it’s dark which it’s not always.
1: Yeah like we say the sun ...
2: Rises [but] we’re [Earth is actually] moving.
1: The sun stays still. So the everyday language that the kids hear is that the sun rises. We tell kids every single day from when they’re little kids from when they come to school as if the Earth stays still. And at night ..
2: Goes down.
1: …sun sets but it doesn’t actually does it, it’s not as if the sun moves ...
2: Sunset is still and it’s actually the Earth that moves
(DS1: Grp 1).In developing their Slowmation, these participants also discussed how they might respond to this problem of a ‘static earth’. As a consequence, they were pushed to elaborate their thinking around a range of ideas including the earth’s tilt and the time taken for light to reach Earth from the sun. In this case, the process of planning and then manipulating the materials for the Slowmation acted as a stimulus for this conversation.
1: So what would be the main thing to address here?
2: Rotating Earth …
3: Yep.
2: Not moving sun.
1: That’s exactly it.
3: So you’d want that in the middle so that they don’t get a false conception. If we have the Earth in the middle they assume it’s you know, the centre of the universe.
2: Yeah that’s true.
1: Great idea. So now how ... to pictorially display that point ...
2: Well if you’ve got the sun in the middle or even to one side and Earth to the like equal sides wise you can maybe turn the Earth around the sun?
1: Does it turn around the sun?
2: Well no no, the sun sort of stays where it is and then you’ve got the Earth here but the Earth is like moving around while the sun stays still.
1: So what’s the Earth doing? It turns around ...
2: An axis. ... So yeah, you’ve got your sun and then you’ve got your ball of the Earth with its axis and it’s just moving.
1: So well let’s … grab a few things and we can start playing around with it ...
2: Rays of light coming out of …They move at the speed of light.
3: They take about 5 minutes to get there. Do we have 5 minutes?
1: Well for this [slowmation] speed doesn’t really matter ... but what does matter? What direction? Do they move in all different types of direction?
2: I’m gonna say yes but I’m not sure.
3: They go in sort of straight lines.
All: Yep
(DS1: Grp1)While planning and making Slowmations offered a productive context for recognising and discussing science conceptions, a further opportunity was created through whole class viewing and discussion of a completed Slowmation. In the following example, preservice teachers’ use of the expression, “survival of the fittest” was questioned by their peers after viewing a Slowmation on the topic of survival, and a discussion ensued about the meaning of the term in a biological context.
5: ... our slowmation is on ‘Survival of the fittest’.
6: So maybe I should talk it through, it’s a little bit hard to see. So beautiful scenery, along comes a beetle …Happens upon a frog, is eaten. Along comes a bird, eats the frog. Then there’s a snake that eats the bird and then a cat eats the snake and then a person kills the cat and in case you didn’t see the caption: ‘human-1, animal-none.’
7: That’s your first misconception.
8: So basically you’ve taken survival of the fittest to mean the survival of the biggest, strongest top of the food chain rather than survival of the fittest as in the process involved in evolution.
7: So yeah…instead of looking at it as an evolutionary process you’ve kind of mixed up survival of the fittest with the food chain in that yeah it’s just a bigger animal or a scarier animal kills the other one and then humans (who clearly aren’t animals) end up wining in the end because we’re the biggest and the best.
6: I think [the word] strongest is leading to this [misconception] but it’s more a favourable characteristic that’s becoming more favourable in a changing environment.
3: So as a science teacher you’d probably use the words ‘best suited’ and get rid of the word strongest ‘cos that’s what the kids are …
5: And we might just also want to address that ... they introduced it as survival of the fittest, they should understand that that term isn’t survival of the biggest and the strongest it’s the survival of the most appropriate to an evolutionary pressure type of thing.
(DS1)As the data above illustrates, Slowmation offered these science student teachers a way in to deeper consideration of the science concepts being examined. Their need to think through the science concept influenced their thinking about that which was portrayed, how and why. In the above examples, the role of language in creating misconceptions/alternative conceptions was highlighted and translated knowledge of alternative conceptions into personal and practical examples.
Post-Practicum Learning Experiences
Slowmation helped participants to bring to the surface their (school) students’ conceptions of the topic/theme under consideration. The first two examples (below) highlight how Slowmation allowed these preservice teachers to study their students’ understanding of the particular content. These examples, illustrate how a teacher deals with recognising and responding to students’ alternative conceptions. There is also the issue of whether the finished product (the Slowmation film) is an accurate representation of student thinking – and how the different parts can help the teacher gain access to students’ thinking.
The following transcript offers strong examples of not only how Slowmation helped to highlight alternative conceptions for teachers, but also how responding to alternative conceptions can become an important facet of learning to teach about science teaching and learning.Whole class discussion of a Slowmation about DNA replication created by school students
18: I think they’d need to have a little section on what DNA actually looks like; the little bits of it by themselves, ladders and the other bits you don’t have them joining at different parts, like …
12: Yeah like they are the separate… the size of the ladder, whereas the nucleotides themselves make up the base.
23: But I mean part of that can just be an artistic [issue] like you know, I’m bad at art and so doing something like this might make it look like they [students] have misconceptions they don’t actually, just because I’m not skilled in …
15: I think that might be when you ask them …
23: Yeah, absolutely but just in looking at it you know, it’s sometimes hard to show. In your mind it’s clear but it’s hard to show what you think.
15: I think that’s where the chunking sheet comes in. Like if for example you get them to do the chunking sheet and then you collect them and you can say, “what did you mean by this?” and like speak to the group …
12: Would you edit their work on the chunking sheet or would you just sort of take a note and let them continue and then address it when it’s all over?
32: I reckon you’d question them, “What happened there?”
Lecturer: And so you might do that as you’re walking around and they’re making their chunking sheets?
32: You should address it I think, misconceptions as you see them.
(DS2)Building on the transcript (above), the following transcript illustrates how, by viewing their students’ Slowmations and discussing aspects of the alternative conceptions apparent, that the problematic nature of science teaching emerged for participants which helped to challenge transmissive views of teaching science. In the transcript (below) the preservice teacher comes to understand that simply telling students what they ‘should know’ does not have the desired effect on students’ understanding of a concept. Hence, responding to students’ alternative conceptions becomes an important pedagogical challenge that is recognized and accepted in a meaningful way.Whole class discussion of slowmation about photosynthesis created by school students
Lecturer: What did you think of that one?
13: I think this one shows a better idea of it than the other one did.
16: We’re not supposed to call it ‘dark reaction’ anymore. …trust me! ... my [school based] supervisor got me for that one.
6: And they shouldn’t use that name because of the misconception of dark reaction …
16: Because the students were thinking it only happened at night. So they assumed because of the ‘dark reaction’ that it only happened at night in the dark ...
Lecturer: What about this bit? H2O splits? Where did they get this idea from? What did you think?
17: It’s interesting. Can we see it again?
18: But what would you say when they presented things like this because you wouldn’t want to tear them [students] down and they’ve spent this much time on it you can’t exactly say “that’s wrong”?
Lecturer: That’s a good point, what would you say? ...
6: Could you tell them upfront that in their first run they may have errors because of misconceptions and that you’d like them to draft one and say the work is great but needs extra work on electrons and stuff like that?
Lecturer: Ok so you could give them the opportunity to go away and perhaps take a few extra photos or add something to it you think?
6: Yeah.
16: I was going to say perhaps outline that you would keep your eye out for misconceptions at the start so they know what to expect.
33: Could you pick up on these misconceptions before they do the photos?
Students together: On the chunking sheet.
Lecturer: On their chunking sheet ... you might tell them on their chunking sheet and then what might happen?
Students together: They’ll still do it.
Students together: They won’t take any notice of it.
33: I was going to say as you’re moving around if there is something glaring [out at you] you should be able to see it ... you learn a lot as you do it more [it] is a really good opportunity to look inside kids’ heads and see what they understand.
(DS2)Whole class discussion of Slowmation created by school students
3: And most alternative conceptions cannot be spoken through so you’ll find that you cannot debunk an alternative conception by speaking to it and that’s the number one thing. How do you ‘break’ an alternative conception? Because you’ve got to remember that these students have had a lifetime of thinking this way or if they’ve learnt something they’ve got it from what they consider a legitimate source, text book or something like that, and you in 2 seconds cannot break that.Lecturer: The other thing they do is once they feel confident with it, and you tell them something that they don’t understand ... they will stick with what they know. So if your explanation is more confusing than what they understand then they won’t take it on board.
3: Or what they do is they split their brain into 2 halves; they’ve got the teacher understanding that they’ll regurgitate on a test and they’ve got what they believe. So they hold 2 models. So they give you what they think you want and then they believe what they want, “This is the truth for me, and this is the stuff that you want me to say.”
(DS2)Discussions derived of these experiences (as per the indicative quotes above) illustrate well that these student teachers viewed Slowmation as much more than an “activity that works” (Appleton, 2002). Seeing beyond “activities that work” is an important shift for student teachers in beginning to better understand the complex nature of teaching for conceptual change. (It also highlights positive ways of working with students’ alternative conceptions and begins to address the frustration of attempting to work with students’ alternative conceptions as reported by Berry and Milroy earlier in the paper.)
Post Program: Learning about Teaching and Learning of Science
It has been well documented that preservice teachers often reproduce the teaching approaches that they experienced as school students, thus unwittingly maintaining the status quo of school science teaching as the transmission of information. As we argued earlier in this paper, introducing Slowmation through science teacher education programs is one way of positively disturbing preservice teachers’ understanding of practice. This view is commensurate with that of Segall (2002), who argued the need to break the cycle of reinforcing the status quo of school teaching and learning.
Superficially, Slowmation can be seen as an innovative teaching approach that engages students (and teachers) in a variety of ways. However, the real issue is about encouraging teachers to recognise, and begin to work with, the range of conceptions that students hold about particular science ideas. In that respect, the preservice teachers in this research project clearly saw their experience of learning and teaching through Slowmation as an educative process – as opposed to the simple acquisition of ‘another activity’ to add to their ‘bag of teaching tricks’. Data from the interviews with volunteers at the end of the program supported the view that Slowmation helped participants in this project to articulate their thinking in a methodical way. As the data in this section illustrates, the importance of chunking for recognising and then responding to students’ ideas, and that teachers and students developed explicit awareness of their own thinking in relation to the science concepts under consideration, is clearly apparent.
Sarah: I think sometimes in science things can be really dry and boring and really theory based and I think slowmation brings out … there’s a creativity base to it, students get to use their hands and what not. And I think … well anyway the way I found going about it, doing the chunking sheet I think students got time to clarify their ideas and really think, “ok what is the next step?” and, “what are the important parts of whatever the topic you’re learning about?” What are the essentials? What do we need to include? What is not so important? And I think that’s … sometimes when you do other teaching strategies or what not I think it’s just like ‘here’s a lot of information, go through it yourself’ whatever other strategies are used, but I think, yeah, slowmation really allowed them to clarify their ideas …
(DS3)
Interviewer: Was there anything you learnt about teaching using Slowmation?
Sharon: Ah teaching, I found that it was a lot more student driven which I really enjoyed as a teacher because you know the students don’t like a teacher up there dominating the class all the time so I was just kind of a guide walking around the classroom rather than someone up the front continually talking to these students. So I learnt that.
(DS3)Helping preservice science teachers look into their teaching and their students’ learning in new ways was facilitated by the ways in which the elements of constructing a Slowmation worked together to highlight different aspects of the content/topic under consideration. The science student teachers used the chunking sheets as a way of opening up a discussion about alternative conceptions.
These preservice teachers used Slowmation in ways that suited their teaching contexts. Just as experienced teachers often use their professional judgement to unpack a teaching procedure and then adjust and adapt it to suit their needs, so too these preservice teachers were able to work with Slowmation in ways that demonstrated their ability to move beyond the procedure as a ‘recipe’ or interpret it as ‘one right way’ of using Slowmation.Interviewer: Tell me how you used the chunking sheets?
Sharon: Ah we used the chunking sheets at the start so we got all the students in groups and they chose their topics and from that topic each group had to come up with a chunking sheet. I collected their chunking sheets at the end of that lesson, had a look over them and just highlighted some areas where they might need to go back, just to try to avoid the misconceptions that they might put into their slowmations, and then we spent another 20 minutes where the students went back, looked at my corrections and then changed some of the stuff that they were going to produce in their slowmations and then I had a look at that again and then they went off and completed their slowmations
(DS3)
Interviewer: So you found the chunking sheets really important?
Sarah: It [chunking sheet] points out if there are any misconceptions cos they’re putting their own ideas on to the paper and as I said I collected them after the first one and I was looking at them and I have to say the ones I did most of them were pretty spot on with their ideas. But it allowed me to look at them and go, “ok this student here has got this idea a little bit confused” so maybe speak to them you know highlight and say, “maybe include this information” or “this isn’t quite correct” and then I think getting the students into groups and doing the same process and making another big group chunking sheet was good because each of the different students had maybe one little bit to add or they’ve included a little bit more information to this part and I think that was good that it allowed other students to go, “Oh ok, I didn’t think of that” and then they could build on each other’s ideas as well.
(DS3)As the data demonstrates, by paying careful attention to alternative conceptions these preservice teachers recognized the value of Slowmation in offering insights into the relationship between teaching and learning in new ways. Their focus shifted from the delivery of information to that which students brought with them to the classroom (prior knowledge) and the ways in which they interpreted the science content under consideration.Sarah: I decided that I’d use slowmation to pull it all together in a way because they had all these separate ideas of how, you know ‘this is light’ and ‘this is sound’ and I wanted to sort of pull the processes together, they’re all different forms of energy and what not and they didn’t have those connections so I started off doing the chunking sheet and I thought that was one of the most valuable tools. … I took up their chunking sheets and I put them into groups of what sort of processes they did. So like say 4 or 5 of them did echoes so I said, “Ok you guys do echoes together and work it out and do a new chunking sheet.” So they then had another group chunking sheet and they went and made their movies and they really enjoyed it. A few groups actually changed their chunking sheet when they made them[their movie]. They said, “Oh, you know, we haven’t included this step” or, “this wasn’t included” or, “it’s really important to include this part.” And that lasted 2 other periods and then the next one when we put it all together on the computer.
(DS3)Interviewer: You said earlier that you thought that Slowmation makes the students think.
Enid: Yes. It’s that whole breaking down the concept idea because it’s easy enough for them to rattle off a definition or say, “step 1: you do this, step 2: you do this” but to actually have them show you and show how it happens then it’s really easy for them to show it or it might be really hard depending on their knowledge and then you can see where they need to improve or where your teaching has a flaw or something like that.
(DS3)As these preservice teachers reflected on their use of slowmation, their learning about students’ alternative conceptions became a major shaping force in their learning about teaching.
As the data (above) illustrates, preservice teachers and their students found Slowmation to be a new and different way of learning about science in line with Hoban’s (2005) original claims. However, as the present study illustrates, when the focus of Slowmation moves beyond a view of ‘an activity that works’, the participants’ learning through the Slowmation process dramatically impacts the ways in which they are able to recognize, respond and work with students’ alternative conceptions in productive ways.Interviewer: So with the Slowmation movies when they presented, did they talk to their movies?
Sharon: We [class] watched them throughout and then another time they stopped and actually explained what was going on in the parts of the movie just because they kind of had a little one about pulleys and it was a whole little story about a car being crashed into a tree and the pulley coming along but then actually to get more of the science side of it we watched it once throughout which the kids really liked and then we watched it together and they started pausing it and saying, “This is what a pulley does and how it works” and I think that way I got to see [their thinking] because they were speaking orally I got to see how much they knew and we got each member of the groups to speak as they were doing it because sometimes they’re making it but you don’t actually know if what [they’re thinking], but when they produce it you can see the misconceptions but actually getting them to speak about it. So I could actually see where the misconceptions actually lay and who had the misconceptions in the group and if the whole group thought that or just one student ...
(DS3)
Copyright (C) 2012 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 13, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2012). All Rights Reserved.
