Research in Science Education, 1992, 22, 123 - 131

RECONSTRUCTING THE INTERACTIVE SCIENCE PEDAGOGY: EXPERIENCES OF BEGINNING TEACHERS IMPLEMENTING

THE INTERACTIVE SCIENCE PEDAGOGY.

Teresa S. Fernandez and R. Garth Ritchie Lynfield College University of Auckland

ABSTRACT Six beginning primary school teachers pioneering the Interactive Teaching approach to science were studied in their first year of teaching. Interviews with the beginning teachers revealed that they faced several obstacles to the implementation of the interactive teaching of science. These included lack of collegial support, lack of feedback on their teaching, difficulty assessing the learning of their pupils, and the differences between the culture of learning of the alternative science pedagogy and that of their pupils. By the end of the year, teachers had reconstructed the alternative science pedagogy in ways that reduced these difficulties. The interviews also provided evidence that ongoing support by teachers and teacher- educators verscd in the alternative pedagogy can make beginning teacher's implcmentation of the Interactive Teaching of science less difficult.

INTRODUCTION Beginning teachcrs often experiencc a "reality shock" when they begin their teaching careers (Wubbels, Creton, Hooymayers, & Holvast, 1982; Cooke & Pang, 1990; Marso & Pigge, 1987). The initial experiences of the reality of the classroom may make young teachers irritable and depressive and they may doubt whether they will ever become good teachers (Muller-Fohrbrohdt, 1973). There may also be a discarding of innovative attitudes by beginning teachers (Olgers & Riesenkamp, 1979). Discipline may emerge as the major concern of beginning teachers (Veenman, 1984; Cooke & Pang, 1990).

The origins of "reality shock" may lie in the difficulty that beginning teachers have in constructing a satisfactory teaching role for themselves. The expectations of colleagues and pupils may run contrary to the beginning teacher's own wishes. Their expectations reflect the institutional nature of schooling such as the hierarchy of power, the gender regime, the workplace conditions such as class size, timetabling, availability of resources, the difficulties of relationships with learners. Beginning teachers experience their own inability to turn their ideals and wishes into concrete behaviour (Wubbels et al., 1982). In the first year of teaching the beginning teacher may develop from initial concerns with self-preservation, to concerns about tasks, and later to concerns about the impact of those tasks on the learner (c.f. Fuller, 1969; Adams, 1982). The teacher may also progress from being merely an implementer of a pedagogy, to feeling a sense of control over the pedagogy (c.f. Schon, 1987; Baird, Mitchell & Northfield, 1987). Some beginning teachers will develop as reflective practitioners (Schon, 1987), others may become locked into being a replicate of the teachers that they had been taught by (c.f. Knowles, 1987).

What the outcome of the first year of teaching is in terms of a teacher's development, may depend upon a number of factors. Wubbels et al. (1982) suggest the main elements to be

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personality of the teacher, (e.g. their willingness to try out n e w ideas), their ideals influenced very much by their past experiences in their own education (e.g. acting democratically and taking personal responsibility), and thirdly the school environment which includes the different expectations of other teachers, pupils, and principal.

The research reported here studied the experiences of beginning teachers in their first year of implementing an alliernative science pedagogy. The research looked at the difficulties, role strain and reality shock, that the beginning teachers experienced as a consequence of their teaching science quite differently from other teachers in their schools. Changes in the beginning teachers' ideas and science pedagogy were examined in relation to their implicit theories, past experiences, and their difficulties and supports at school.

The research took the form of a one year longitudinal study exploring the experiences of beginning primary school teachers who were enthusiastic and committed to the I.T. approach. These teachers were interviewed at the end of term I of their first year of teaching at school. Three teachers were then followed up for the rest of the year through observations of their science lessons and further interviews.

The Alternative Pedagogy. The interactive teaching (I.T.) approach was developed by the Learning in Science Project (LISP) team at the University of Waikato. The pedagogy of the I.T. approach is explained in depth in the book Making Sense of Our World by Biddulph and Osborne (1984). It involves five phases: preparation, exploration, children's questions, investigations and reflection. The key feature of the approach is children asking questions about the science topic and their involvement in investigations to seek answers to their questions. The progress of their learning can be studied from their before statements or views (children's ideas at the beginning of a science unit) and their after statements or views (children's ideas at the reflection stage of the unit). By the late 1980% the I.T. approach was being taught to training primary school teachers in a number of Colleges of Education in New Zealand. The research reported here is the first in-depth qualitative research into the experiences of beginning teachers implementing the approach.

METHOD The transcripts reported in this paper are taken from interviews with six beginning teachers who were committed to implementing the I.T. approach for teaching science. The six comprised one male and five females in their early twenties, two of whom were of Maori descent and four of European descent. They were selected upon consultation with their Teachers College lecturers. All were perceived by their lecturers as committed to the Interactive Teaching approach, and were willing to take part in the research.

Six beginning teachers were interviewed after completing Term 1 in their first year of teaching. Four were interviewed in their classrooms and two in their homes. The interviews lasted between two to three hours and all were audiotaped. They were transcribed and the transcripts returned to the teachers for clarification. Three of the six teachers were followed through for the rest of the year with classroom observations and interviews.

In the interviews at the end of term 1, teachers were invited to reflect on their experiences as beginning teachers implementing the I.T. approach in science. The researcher had some broad areas where reflection could be focused if necessary and some guiding questions for each area of interest.

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The five broad areas and their guiding questions were:

experiences as a beginning teacher in Term I. views about learning/teaching of science. views about their school environment. own schooling background particularly of science experiences. experiences at Teachers College

In the interviews at the end of their first year of teaching, the three selected teachers were invited to reflect freely on any issues from the past year. The main exploration was in the area of changes with respect to behaviour, attitudes and views of the beginning teacher in the first year of teaching and in particular, teaching of science.

RESULTS The interviews with the beginning teachers revealed that they had experienced a number of difficulties in their first term of teaching. Some of these difficulties were common to all beginning teachers; others were associated with the pioneering of an alternative pedagogy. In the account below we give examples of the difficulties which arose from implementing an alternative science pedagogy, of the supports that teachers found valuable, and of some of the changes in approach of the three beginning teachers who were followed for the year.

Difficulties in Implementing I.T. All six beginning teachers experienced difficulties in their first term in school. These difficulties hindered teachers in their implementation of I.T., and were responded to in different ways by them. Seven types of difficulty that impacted on the implementation of I.T. were identified. These difficulties are listed below along with comments of the teachers which illustrate the nature of these difficulties.

* Lack of support from colleagues:

l discussed with him (tutor teacher) the approach ... and got my friends to send a video down on a unit done on "Trees". I wanted him to look at the video because 1 wanted to try the approach. He wasn't impressed with it ... He didn't think much of the approach. (Teacher C, Interview I)

* Lack of feedback from others knowledgeable in the I.T. approach:

There was no real in-class support. There was no observing a lesson and talking to me after class saying "This is the feedback I want to give you." ... I felt 'are they actually learning? Have they actually done something or am I just sort of entertaining, just keeping them busy?', because I wasn't getting any feedback. (Teacher B, Interview II)

* Difficulties in validly assessing the learning happening in their classrooms:

The biggest worry is that you can't write down what the children had learnt. They still expected evaluations. I have to test these kids. I tried to test them and I was shocked at what they hadn't learnt ...

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Necessity to give a test is hard. It's so hard to check the interactive approach. I should really have a checklist for evaluation related to the interactive approach but I don't have time to mark it off. I'm not really evaluating the children individually enough. But I find evaluation very hard this year, because I just have no time to begin with. I didn't require them to do any writing, there was hardly any writing, so I wouldn't know how to test. I'm sure they learnt (Teacher A, Interview I)

* Concerns about covering the content that is expected of their pupils in future years:

I think, 'Oh I am not really teaching them anything.' Sometimes I think, 'Gosh, what are they supposed to know before they get to intermediate?' There's always this ...'Maybe the parents are thinking that I'm not teaching them enough.' (Teacher C, Interview II)

* The lack of familiarity of children with their roles as learners under the interactive approach:

I think that basically these children have been spoon-fed a lot. They have been taken too much by the book. Consequently they don't know how to ask questions for themselves and that makes it hard ... It's different from what they had before." (Teacher F, Interview I)

* Lack of ideas,in the planning and organisation of interactive science lessons:

"They would ask questions like 'why is the yolk round?' which is a really neat question (I was rapt about that) but how to find the answer to why the yolk is round - it was just beyond me .... Like we do the beginning where they ask a lot of questions and they experience them. But then there is that part where they are supposed to experiment and move along with their questions, that's the bit missing." (Teacher D, Interview I)

* Having the time and ideas to develop resources:

It gets really hard when you see all these other teachers sitting around at lunchtime and going home at three o'clock, and teaching is a breeze to them. I'm tearing my hair out, running around all day. I'm here till six o'clock at night and I go home to do some more work and my day is not organised even at that. I think, 'What the hell am I doing, it'll be much easier to do what everybody else is ...find out what they are doing and do what they are doing.' So that's the greatest pressure. (Teacher B, Interview I)

Supports for continuing with I.T. Faced with the difficulties listed above, certain types of support were critical in the beginning teachers decision to continue with the alternative pedagogy. Five types of support were the main reasons for continuing with interactive teaching:

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* Support from peers that allowed the teacher to view positively their efforts as a beginning teacher:

At the beginning of the year, it ]group support] was really important because we're all just about ready to quit, we're all struggling and it was so nice to know that we weren't the only ones...

To go back home and realise that other people were in worse situations or were having the same sort of problems was really important. But as the year went on, the group petered out so that was when everybody was feeling they've got more confidence. (Teacher A, Interview !1)

* Encouragement from other teaching professionals for the beginning teacher's efforts to implement Interactive Teaching:

The staff are really good ... they give me the positive encouragement that I need ... Having a staff like this really helps towards being successful in the classroom.

I showed it [a child's work] to another teacher and she went 'Wow! how did you get him Io do it?' ...My tutor teacher came in and looked at my learning centres and she said that she was gaining so many ideas for her classroom. In a way I guess that's good too. (Teacher F, Interview I)

* Assistance with resources for Interactive Teaching:

... got up to college and got ideas off M. and J. [Teachers College lecturers]. I wouldn't have done electricity if college hadn't lent me the equipment.

So long as I have the collcge here and the support here from the college then I'll use it II.T.I . (Teacher A, Interview I)

* Encouragement from the response of Icarners to the science lessons:

One of the main things that l enjoyed... One of the things that really impressed me was ... some of the children who were slow to work, when they read out their after statements, they could see how much they had learnt and just to see the sparkle in their eyes was enough for me. Some of them may not have learnt a lot but 1 can say all of them learnt something about mammals. Evcn now I can pull out questions and they can answer. (Teacher C, Interview I)

* Their belief that using i.T. they could teach science in spite of coming from a limited science background.

Even at Teachers College, I was scared about doing science curriculum...We did elcctricity...it was neat because I didn't have to know more than them. I thought this was a really neat idea. I'm not expected to be God and they are not expected

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to learn masses... It's good because it takes a lot of stress off me because I don't have to pretend I'm something I'm not. (Teacher D, Interview I)

Chan~es in the be~innin~ teachers' science teachin~ The three teachers who were followed through all their first year of teaching evidenced changes in the way thai they taught science. The changes evinced by the teachers included more content and structure in the topics they taught, more emphasis placed on the need for guidance by the teacher, and increased consideration of the need to prepare pupils for future years of schooling.

At the beginning, I thought that I had to have before statements and questions, and that I couldn't put anything structured in at all because that wasn't the interactive approach. But now 1 don't, now I do what suits me in the class. (Teacher A, Interview II)

1 think it's good [referring to a mix of methods], that's why I haven't used it [I.T.] fully. Now and again I might have somebody say, "Gee, you know at intermediate, a lot of children didn't know this." You sort of manipulate a couple of things. That's not the interactive approach but I think that if the children need to survive over there they better know this. But I try to manipulate it so that they feel that they were not forced to learn it. (Teacher C, Interview II)

I have come to realise the extent which teacher direction is needed. The interactive approach won't work on itself or won't work with just the kids going for it because they need direction and guidance and focus. They need to be shown how to go, or when they are going, be given ideas how to get there. (Teacher B, Interview 11)

By the end of the ycar, all three teachers had moved from a phase of their teaching life in which the I.T. pedagogy dictated their science teaching goals, to a phase in which they set their own goals in teaching science. At the end of the year, elements of I.T. were still utilised in their teaching, but they had developed their own approaches to teaching science. In spite of the changes, all three teachers remained committed to the child-centred education philosophy underlying I.T.

Even in my more structured science there's still a lot of interactive approach in there, s011 a lot of questioning ... In every topic I'll always stick to that because I think that's neat, something that the children don't get to do much, ask questions and find out the answers without being told them, and it's activity based ... I choose bits of the interactive approach. (Teacher A, Interview II)

I still believe in the importance of the child as central. There needs to be a lot of teacher input though, teacher involvement in that, but the child is central and control their learning. (Teacher B, Interview II)

I don't think I've used it [I.T.] approach fully. But I think that I am improving all the time and getting towards that goal, using the approach fully. 1 have to an extent used it but not fully. Last year I just touched upon a lot of things, whereas this year I really want to develop in the interactive approach, further than what

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I've done. I feel I'll get there. I'm confident I'm going to use it, that's better than last year. (Teacher C, Interview II)

DISCUSSION All the beginning teachers interviewed had made efforts towards teaching science using the Interactive Teachin_g approach which they had learnt while at Teachers College. Implementing the I.T. approach in their first year of teaching had not been easy for any of them. By the end of their first year, these beginning teachers were aware of a number of difficulties constraining their implementation of I.T., and had modified the Interactive Teaching approach that they had learnt at Teachers College. The changes these teachers made in their approach to teaching science can be interpreted as their adaptations to the difficulties.

As well as the usual difficulties of beginning teachers these teachers had other difficulties associated with pioneering an alternative science pedagogy in the school, and they grappled with these difficulties in various ways. For example, Teacher A overcame lack of feedback about her teaching by comparing her experiences with those of other beginning teachers in a social group; Teacher B relied on the feedback of a progressive Deputy Principal. The difficulty of isolation was overcome by Teacher C through initially teaching according to the advice of her tutor teacher; Teacher A on the other hand, began teaching interactively, but without telling her principal. The teachers' response to the assessment difficulty was to ensure that some content was learnt in their science sessions, and in those schools which did not dictate the assessment scheme, the beginning teachers utilised qualitative assessment approaches. The issues of time and resources needed to teach interactively, were responded to by Teacher B by putting in long hours to develop interactive science units; Teacher A reduced preparation time through contact with the Teachers College for resources.

It appears that in the first year of teaching these beginning teachers were actively reconstructing their roles as science teachers. Three aspects of their reconstruction are apparent. Firstly, the beginning teachers moved towards more conventional practices in science teaching. Secondly, the beginning teachers felt ownership and control of their modified approach. Both of these trends are in line with the findings of previous research into beginning teachers (e.g. Olgers & Reisenkamp, 1979; Baird et al., 1987). A third aspect of their reconstruction of teaching was that there appears to have been no fundamental shift in the ideas guiding the development of their teaching practice. In reconstructing their role as inmwative teachers, these teachers retained their commitment to the ideas taught when they attended Teachers College. This outcome differs from the findings of previous research (c.f. Munro, 1988). It is possible that the reason for their retention of their ideas about science teaching is that their experience of science as an enjoyable, open-ended activity at Teachers College had a profound effect on their thinking about science and science teaching. This suggestion is supported by the evidence of other sections of the transcripts not included in this paper (c.f. Fernandez, 1991).

In terms of professional development as teachers, their pioneering an alternative pedagogy had both positive and negative impacts. Because they were aware that they were pioneering an alternative way of teaching, they were critical of established practices to a level beyond that of most beginning teachers. Not accepting established practices meant that they took responsibility for the development of innovative lessons, rather than relying

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on existing resources. They developed skills in curriculum development and in terms of Interactive Teaching all had made big steps towards becoming competent practitioners.

On the negative side, it appears that some of these beginning teachers were plunged into taking so much responsibility for learning outcomes that they never felt sure that their efforts were good enough. Other beginning teachers have to grapple more with the concern of whether they are behaving like the experienced teachers, than the concern of what the impact of the teacher's role is on learners. Not so for these beginning teachers. In a sense they bypassed the survival stage of teacher development (c.f. Fuller, 1969; Adams, 1982), and went straight into grappling with concerns about the effects of their teaching model on their pupils. The impact on the beginning teachers of this added issue is exemplified in the following comment of one of the teachers:

I felt like I was just suspended in mid-air, there's nothing supporting me or holding me up; I sort of blundered along doing what I thought was right. I was hoping, crossing my fingers that it was the right thing. That is honestly how I felt all the way through. (Teacher B, Interview II)

In terms of science curriculum change, the significance of this research is that it demonstrates the need for ongoing involvement in school by those promoting curriculum change. Just training teachers in an alternative pedagogy and then sending them into schools will not necessarily hasten curriculum change. The difficulties of the beginning teachers show that there are institutional pressures within the school for beginning teachers to abandon alternative ways of teaching science (c.f. Martinez, 1987). Because beginning teachers have considerable need for support and feedback from their teaching colleagues, they are vulnerable to these pressures. Thus, while an alternative science pedagogy can be pioneered by beginning teachers, critical to the ongoing commitment of these teachers to the alternative pedagogy is support by others informed by the pedagogy. Teacher educators have a crucial role to play in developing ongoing programmes to support teachers pioneering innovative ways of science teaching.

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AUTHORS

TERESA FERNANDEZ, Teacher, Lynfield College, White Swan Rd, Auckland, New Zealand. Specializations: physics education, beginning teachers.

DR GARTH RITCHIE, Lecturcr, Department of Education, University of Auckland, Private Bag, Auckland, New Zealand. Specializations: misconceptions, assessment.