The current Swedish curricula for compulsory school (Lgr11) emphasize inquiry-based science teaching to develop pupils’ critical thinking while the Swedish laboratory teaching tradition emphasize laboratory work to promote students’ conceptual understanding. The aim of this study is to illuminate how a group of teachers within the Swedish teaching tradition, based on the prevailing condition, met the external expectations of involving pupils in inquiry-based science teaching. During a teacher professional development program, the entire group of lower secondary science teachers within a school district, twelve in total, participated in group reflections about own inquiry activities. The results indicated that teachers, despite shortage of activities, wanted to involve pupils in inquiry-based science teaching to meet the curricula’s and national tests’ request for such activities. The teachers did this through hybridization, in which the teachers opened up and transformed existing laboratory activities; and by imitation, in which they imitated how investigative inquiry is carried out on national tests. Inquiry-based science teaching, as it emerges in this study, possessed several characteristics might limiting the potential for pupils to develop an understanding functional for critical thinking in private- and public lives.
Didaktiska modeller kan fungera som en resurs för att reflektera och kommunicera kring didaktiska frågeställningar som dyker upp i planering, genomförande och utvärdering av undervisning. De kan även tillhandahålla en begreppsapparat som kan synliggöra saker som man som lärare annars inte lika lätt skulle ha uppmärksammat. I forskarskolan NaNo har begreppet didaktiska modeller spelat en central roll. Den tillkom utifrån tanken att förena ämnesdidaktisk forskning med lärares kunnande till en vetenskap för lärare.
This study aims to illustrate how didactic models in science education can help in-service teachers to challenge selective traditions in a constructive way. The study was based on a teacher professional development program on inquiry-based science teaching in lower secondary school. Three didactic models were used in both lectures and group reflections to initiate reflections on different ways of interpreting the aims and content associated with inquiry-based science teaching and the consequences of these interpretations. Data was collected from a group of four teachers and consists of written documentation, recordings of group reflections and a group interview. The study shows that the three didactic models helped to make different ideas and underlying assumptions visible and that the teachers could reflect on their meaning and interpretations in a constructive way. Subsequently, the teachers could explicitly separate different ways to interpret the ideas associated with inquiry-based science teacher and make more conscious didactic choices as a result. The study shows that it can be fruitful to provide teachers with reflection tools in the form of didactic models to avoid that ideas introduced in continuing education are selectively adapted to current teaching without critical reflection.
När elever får engagera sig i diskussioner som berör naturvetenskapliga teman växlar de mellan vardagsspråk och ämnesspråk, visar en ny studie. Detta är ett sätt för eleven att skapa relationer mellan sitt vardagsspråk och naturvetenskapens språkbruk. Forskarna menar att det finns didaktiska möjligheter för lärare att utveckla elevernas ämnesspråk genom att arbeta medvetet med detta.
Det kan vara viktigt att synliggöra värderingarnas roll och inte enbart fokusera på kunskapernas roll i kontroversiella samhällsfrågor med naturvetenskapligt innehåll. Det kan hjälpa eleverna att bli mer medvetna om olika perspektiv och intressen som finns representerade i denna typ av frågor.
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