A study of changes in middle school teachers' understanding of selected ideas in science as a function of an in‐service program focusing on student preconceptions

Abstract

This article examines the impact of a specially designed in‐service model on teacher understanding of selected science concepts. The underlying idea of the model is to get teachers to restructure their own understanding of a selected science topic by having them study the structure and evolution of their students' ideas on the same topic. Concepts on topics from the life, earth, and physical sciences served as the content focus and middle school Grades 4–9 served as the context for this study. The in‐service experience constituting the main treatment in the study occurred in three distinct phases. In the initial phase, participating teachers interviewed several of their own students to find out what kinds of preconceptions students had about a particular topic. The teachers used concept mapping strategies learned in the in‐service to facilitate the interviews. Next the teachers teamed with other teachers with similar topic interests and a science expert to evaluate and explore the scientific merit of the student conceptual frameworks and to develop instructional units, including a summative assessment during a summer workshop. Finally, the student ideas were further evaluated and explored as the teachers taught the topics in their classrooms during the fall term. Concept maps were used to study changes in teacher understanding across the phases of the in‐service in a repeated‐measures design. Analysis of the maps showed significant growth in the number of valid propositions expressed by teachers between the initial and final mappings in all topic groups. But in half of the groups, this long‐term growth was interrupted by a noticeable decline in the number of valid propositions expressed. In addition, analysis of individual teacher maps showed distinctive patterns of initial invalid conceptions being replaced by new invalid conceptions in later mappings. The combination of net growth of valid propositions and the patterns of evolving invalid conceptions is discussed in constructivist terms.

The Classroom Practice of a Prospective Secondary Biology Teacher and His Conceptions of the Nature of Science and of Teaching and Learning Science

“…Tsai (2002b) use concept maps as a way of exploring teacher_s pedagogical view and her knowledge growth about STS instruction. Concept maps were also used by Shymansky, Woodworth, Norman, Dunkhase, Matthews & Liu (1993) to study changes in middle school teachers_ understanding of a selected science topic, although, as those authors recognize, maps are difficult to evaluate, for which reason particular attention has to be paid to the validity of the study. In our case, the process of validation of maps was carried out by researchers of the Universities of Seville and Extremadura, comparing teachers_ cognitive maps from the INPECIP questionnaire with cognitive maps from interviews, both about nature of science (Mellado, 1997) and teaching and learning science (Mellado, 1998a;1998b).…”

The classroom practice of preservice teachers and their conceptions of teaching and learning science

“…In our case, the questionnaire and the initial interview were analyzed by means of cognitive maps (Mellado, 1996). These are an extension of the conceptual maps developed by Novak and Gowin (1988) for graphical scientific representation of concepts and extensively convalidated (Ontoria et al, 1992) and used in research of science teachers (Gess-Newsome & Lederman, 1993;Hoz, Tomer, & Tamir, 1990;Markham, Mintzes, & Jones, 1994;Shymansky et al, 1993). Llinares (1992) gave the maps a different orientation, using them to display prospective teachers' belief structures on mathematics teaching.…”

Reflection-Oriented Qualitative Approach in Beliefs Research

“…Concept maps have also been used in research on science teachers (Hoz, Tomer, & Tamir, 1990;Mellado, 1997;Shymansky, Woodworth, Norman, Dunkhase, Matthews, & Liu, 1993).…”