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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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It has been well recognized in the literature that teaching for conceptual change is an important component in quality learning in school science (Scott, et al., 2007). Therefore ensuring that teaching for conceptual change becomes an integral aspect of science teachers’ practice is crucial if genuine change in school science is to occur (Mortimer & Scott, 2003). It stands to reason then that a beginning point for such change is teacher education. By purposefully addressing understandings of, and approaches to, teaching for conceptual change in science teacher education programs, the likelihood of challenging the status quo of school science teaching becomes a real possibility.
As the extensive elaboration of the theoretical framework underpinning Slowmation described by Hoban et al. (2011) makes clear, the semiotic system that underpins the representational influence on learning central to the pedagogical power of Slowmation offers a clear breakthrough in teaching for conceptual change. Hoban et al. described those underpinnings as being important because:
... each representation [is] a semiotic system ... making meaning (the interpretant) as they made decisions about which modes to use (the representation), as well as thinking about how to integrate them to best explain ... the referent. Furthermore, the final semiotic system is a multimodal digital animation that the preservice teachers designed by aligning the modes of slow moving images, still images, text, and narration to complement each other ... Another feature of the making process that distinguishes it ... is that the creation process involves the preservice teachers in ‘‘translating’’ ... the content five times through a progression of representations. This sequence of interrelated semiotic systems, involving a transfer of meaning from one representation to the next culminating in the final narrated animation, we call a semiotic progression. [Importantly], this progression of meaning is not strictly linear, because in the construction of each representation, there [is] a good deal of recursive checking of information ... with previous representations ... [Therefore], each representation [has] a role or affordance that focuses the preservice teachers’ thinking about the concept in a particular way. ... the affordance of the final representation is that the preservice teachers use technology to integrate the four modes of writing, moving, and still images and narration. Constructing each representation therefore allows the preservice teachers to revisit the content for different purposes ... [and in] creating a slowmation to explain a science concept produces a digital artifact that can be shown publicly, which may illuminate ... alternative conceptions and in so doing, the conception may be modified in light of discussion or further research. (Hoban, et al., 2011, pp. 1001 - 1003)
Genuinely teaching for conceptual change in teacher education requires preservice teachers to not only be aware that students carry conceptions that influence their learning of science ideas (i.e., move beyond a ‘nod’ to the research literature), but to be better equipped to pursue approaches to responding to the situation in their own practice. Therefore, at the very least, student teachers need meaningful opportunities to see such conceptions in themselves, and in their students, in order to seriously consider taking that knowledge into account in their own teaching – something that has been called for in the literature for a long time (see for example, the extensive research based claims of, Wandersee, Mintzes, & Novak, 1994).
Through the learning about teaching for conceptual change made possible through the theoretical framing of Slowmation (briefly revisited above), real opportunities for impact on preservice teachers’ practice becomes possible. As Hoban et al. (2011) have argued, and the data in this project illustrates, through Slowmation (as a process of representation), student teachers not only recognize, but also begin to respond to learners’ alternative conceptions. Through the four distinct phases of making a Slowmation, teachers are given different ways and different times of seeing into learners’ alternative conceptions which creates multiple opportunities for pedagogical responses.
This research highlights how, in teacher education, there is great value in sensitising student teachers to their own and their students’ science conceptions through Slowmation. In so doing, teacher education can make real gains in helping science teachers teach for conceptual change in meaningful ways.
Copyright (C) 2012 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 13, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2012). All Rights Reserved.
