Development and Application of the Measuring Instrument for the Analysis of Science Classroom Culture from the Perspective of 'Community of Practice'

The purposes of this study are to investigate elementary students' perception of science classroom through an analysis of students ' answer to an open-ended question and to suggest a framework for the analysis of science classroom culture, as the first step to develop an analysis tool for qualitative exploration of science classroom culture. We analyzed 571 responses and developed an analysis framework with six categories (i.e. major factors; power structure of a classroom community; focused domains of the science classroom; student concerns; atmosphere of science classroom; participation form). The details of the six categories can be summarized as follows: (1) major factors were revealed to be practical work, fun, teacher, community and others; (2) the power structure of classroom community was in the order of peer students, teacher, and individual student himself/herself; (3) the focused domains of the science classroom perceived by students were more about affective and behavioral domains than cognitive one; (4) major student concerns were teachers' teaching, having practical work, and the understanding of and the sharing of knowledge and opinions (5) science classroom atmosphere was noisy and pranky but fun and interesting; (6) the students participation forms were to be total participation or voluntary participation or cooperative practice. Through this study, not only suggesting the framework, but we could also get implications for the cultural aspects of science classroom based on the results of data analysis in this study.

show abstract