A curriculum innovation: Focusing on student teachers' developing conceptions of good science teaching

What is our plan and what have we achieved so far?

Stage 1 - Production of the relevant teaching resources

A CD-ROM comprising a series of video clips (a total of one-hour duration, selected from more than 100 hours of raw footage from an earlier QEF project), showing teaching segments of exemplary lessons of Integrated Science taught by competent practicing teachers, has been produced and used as the major tool to elicit our student teachers' views on what is good science teaching. The sampling of video clips to be included in the CD-ROM was guided by Kember's (1997) framework of the five dimensions of conceptions of teaching, namely

the essence of learning and teaching
the roles of the student and teacher
the aims and expected outcome of teaching
the content of teaching, and
the preferred styles and approaches to teaching.

Accompanying each of the selected clips is some background information about the lesson in the video. This is to facilitate the viewers to make sense of what is going on in the lesson before they can comment and reflect on it.

Interview protocols have been designed for use in two semi-structured interviews with each of the student teachers on two different occasions i.e. Entry Interview and Exit Interview (see Tasks 2 and 7 below). The purposes of the interviews are to clarify and follow up with student teachers' written responses in the assignments that they have submitted prior to the interview (see below for details about the assignments)

Stage 2 - Data Collection

Data collection, in form of assignment submissions by student teachers (as seven different tasks to be submitted at different times of the course) are detailed below. To date, the first three tasks have been satisfactorily completed.

Task 1: Entry Conception - "What is Good Science Teaching?"
Before the program of Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PCEd) formally started, student teachers were briefed on the nature of this project, the various tasks, the timeline and the assignments involved. In this briefing session, student teachers were asked to list out features of good science teaching in their own opinion on a task sheet.

Task 2: Entry Conception - "Views on the Science Lessons in the CD-ROM"
At the end of the above briefing session, each student teacher was given the abovementioned CD-ROM of exemplary science teaching, but told that they are just ordinary science teaching occurring in schools. They were asked to review the CD-ROM at home and answer questions in a task sheet with questions including what are the good features of the lessons, areas requiring improvement, etc. Questions on what are the factors and how those factors may have shaped their conceptions of good science teaching were also asked in the task sheet. In particular, the extent of the influence of viewing of the lessons in the CD-ROM on their conceptions of good science teaching was also sought.

Task 3: Entry Interview - "What is Good Science Teaching?"
This was to clarify and elaborate on what students have written down in their Tasks 1 and 2 above and to probe further into their conception of good science teaching and factors that have been shaping it. All the Entry Interviews were completed before the academic year started. This was to make sure that student teachers' Entry Conceptions of good science teaching had not been in any way affected by our program instruction.

Task 4: After the First Teaching Practicum-"Views on the Science Lessons in the CD-ROM"
Student teachers will be asked to review the lessons in the CD-ROM again and complete a task sheet similar to that of Task 2. Additional questions on the influence of various components of our PCEd program, including the First Teaching Practicum, on their conception of good science teaching will be asked.

Task 5: After the Second Teaching Practicum - "Views on Science Lessons in the CD-ROM"
Student teachers will be asked to review the lessons in the CD-ROM again and complete a task sheet similar to that of Task 4 above. Additional questions on the influence of various components of the PCEd program, including the Second Teaching Practicum, on their conception of good science teaching will be asked.

Task 6: End of the PCEd Program - "A Personal Reflection: Changes in My Views of What Good Science Teaching Is"
All the task sheets previously submitted by each of the student teachers will be returned to them. They will be asked to identify for themselves if there are any changes in their own views of what good science teaching is and to reflect on these changes, in particular, what are the factors that have been shaping it.

Task 7: Exit Interview - "What is Good Science Teaching?"
This is to clarify and elaborate on what students have written down in their Tasks 4 to 6 above and to probe further into their conception of good science teaching and, in particular, the factors that, they think, have been influencing in shaping their conception, especially those that are related to our PCEd curriculum. All the interviews will be audio-recorded, transcribed and translated. A developmental profile in terms of student teachers' conception of good science teaching will also be made for each of the student teachers.

In short, the purposes of these assignment tasks are two fold. One, to collect data which illuminate student teachers' personal thinking and development as a science teacher; and the effectiveness of various components of the PCEd program in contributing to this goal. Two, these tasks are designed to help student teachers to become a reflective practitioner as well as to keep track of changes in their own view of what good science teaching is.

Stage 3 - Data Analysis

The various literature-based attributes of teachers' conceptions of teaching will serve as our initial framework for data analysis, bearing in mind that the final framework needs to be fleshed out through an iterative process.
Data will be first coded into categories related to the student teachers' conceptions of teaching. Over time, the number of these initial categories will be reduced by eliminating and merging categories and by clustering still other categories based on perceived connections. This repetitive process will eventually lead to the construction of qualitatively distinct, conceptual categories.
The student teachers will also be classified into one of the different categories of description for good teaching in science according to their dominant conceptions of good science teaching (as emerged from the data and perceived by the project team).
These categories will then be used to determine what relationships exist among the different categories of student teachers' conception of good science teaching and the factors they perceived to be influential in shaping their conceptions, especially those related to our PCEd curriculum.
Data analysis will be carried out both individually and collaboratively among colleagues participating in this project. This will provide reliability checks on data coding, analysis and interpretation performed by individual members of the project team.