The Effective Classroom Practice project aimed to identify key factors that contribute to effective teaching in primary and secondary phases of schooling in different socioeconomic contexts. This article addresses the ways in which qualitative and quantitative approaches were combined within an integrated design to provide a comprehensive methodology for the research purposes. Strategies for the study are discussed, followed by the challenges of combining complex statistics with individual stories, particularly in relation to the ongoing iteration between these different data sets, and issues of validity and reliability. The findings shed new light on the meanings and measurement of teachers’ effective classroom practice and the complex nature of, and relationships with, professional life phase, teacher identities, and school context.
Across the globe, governments, industry and educationalists are in agreement that more needs to be done to increase and broaden participation in post-16 science. Schools, and teachers, are seen as key in this effort. Previous research has found that engagement with science, inclination to study science, and understanding of the value of science strongly relates to a student's science capital. This paper reports on findings from the pilot year of a one-year professional development (PD) programme designed to work with secondary school teachers to build students' science capital. The PD programme introduced teachers to the nature and importance of science capital and thereafter supported them to develop ways of implementing science capital-building pedagogy in their practice.The data comprises interviews with the participating teachers (n=10), observations of classroom practices, and analyses of the teachers' accounts of their practice. Our findings suggest that teachers found the concept of science capital to be compelling and to resonate with their own intuitive understandings and experiences. However, the ways in which the concept was operationalised in terms of the implementation of pedagogical practices varied. The difficulties inherent in the operationalisation are examined and recommendations for future work with teachers around the concept of science capital are developed.
This article reports on students' perspectives of an in-school promotional intervention aimed at challenging traditional methods of teaching science in schools in an effort to inspire interest in school science and increase enrolments. First, the context for the research is discussed before briefly describing the intervention strategy employed and finally, exploring the potential of this innovative pedagogy as a vehicle for addressing participation in science at the classroom level. It is argued that participation depends on engagement with a subject, and the author posits that providing innovative, motivating and fun approaches to learning within the classroom that interest and engage pupils will lead to better connections with school science and to science in society. This article gives some insights into the use of a chemical magic show through the qualitatively different views and attitudes towards the chemical magic show of a sample of Irish students (n = 328). Implications for participation and inclusive and motivational classroom pedagogy are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.