Abstract. One of the most important topics on the international agenda in educational research is to gain an understanding of the processes of educational change in teachers and of the factors that favour or hinder it. Such understanding is, for instance, an essential element in planning and putting into practice initial and ongoing teacher education programs. This article reviews the research on science teachers' educational change. To organize the information, an analogy is made with the process of scientific change, analyzing and evaluating the contributions of the different models taken from the philosophy of science --positivism, Popper's principle of falsifiability, Lakatos' scientific research programs, Laudan's research traditions, Toulmin's evolutionism, and Kuhn's relativism. We conclude the article with the implications for science teacher education.
ABSTRACT:We describe a longitudinal study of a secondary education biology teacher at two moments in her career (1993 -2002), determining the changes in her conceptions of the nature of science and its teaching and learning, and the factors that favored or hindered such changes. The changes were analyzed using cognitive maps, constructed on the basis of the Inventory of Teachers' Pedagogical & Scientific Beliefs (INPECIP) questionnaire, designed and validated by R. Porlán, A. Rivero, and R. Martín del Pozo (1997), and a semistructured interview. The results showed the process of change in conceptions to be complex and gradual, with different conceptions being out of phase with each other. During her first 4 years of teaching, until 1993, her conceptions of science teaching and learning began to evolve from a teacher and content-centered model to one that was more student
We describe research carried out with a prospective secondary biology teacher, whom we shall call Miguel. The teacher_s conceptions of the nature of science and of learning and teaching science were analyzed and compared with his classroom practice when teaching science lessons. The data gathering procedures were interviews analyzed by means of cognitive maps and classroom observations. The results reflected Miguel_s relativist conceptions of the nature of science that were consistent with his constructivist orientation in learning and teaching. In the classroom, however, he followed a strategy of transmission of external knowledge based exclusively on teacher explanations, the students being regarded as mere passive receptors of that knowledge. Miguel_s classroom behavior was completely contrary to his conceptions, which were to reinforce the students_ alternative ideas through debate, and not by means of teacher explanation.
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