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Article Excerpt
Introduction
To improve the implementation of educational innovations, it is necessary to gain an insight into the ways teachers' learning can be stimulated (Verloop, 1999). To this end, analytical research is needed on teachers' learning processes in their natural settings. In research on in-service teachers, the question to be answered is how they keep up their knowledge or adapt to changing professional circumstances (cf. Boulton-Lewis, Wills, & Mutch, 1996). Theories and models of teacher learning already exist, but many of these prescribe how teachers should learn, neglecting how the process actually takes place. Furthermore, most of the educational literature available on this topic deals with student teacher learning (e.g., Oosterheert & Vermunt, 2003). The field encompassing the learning of experienced teachers is a relatively under-researched area: The studies in which in-service teacher learning was investigated mostly focused on professional development initiatives for collegial learning, such as classroom visitation and peer coaching (e.g., Showers & Joyce, 1996). Research on learning from experiences at work is of recent date (e.g., Lohman & Woolf, 2001). Up to now, few empirical investigations have been conducted into teacher learning in the workplace in the context of a specific educational innovation.
This study concerns the learning of experienced teachers in the context of the implementation of a new science syllabus in Dutch upper secondary education. Science education in the Netherlands has traditionally been discipline oriented and compartmentalized. The subject contents (physics, chemistry, and biology) could well be described as diluted forms of academic contents with little practical relevance and few possibilities for students to relate school knowledge to real-life experiences (De Vos & Reiding, 1999). Current educational innovations, in the Netherlands and abroad, show an orientation of science toward relevant life-world contexts (Westbroek, 2005). In these approaches, subject matter is introduced and practiced in the framework of real-life issues. In many cases, these issues are taken from what students know from their own everyday lives, but social or professional science and technology contexts are also used this way. The "context-based approach" is inspired, among other things, by the need to raise students' attention and motivation for science (Bennett & Holman, 2002).
The introduction of a new syllabus on public understanding of science (PUSc.) in the Netherlands is an example of the aforementioned innovations in science education. The new syllabus has a strong science-technology-society (STS) flavor (cf. J. Solomon & Aikenhead, 1994; Yager, 1996). In this regard, it bears similarities to science programs in other countries, such as Canada (LORST; Aikenhead, 1991) and the United Kingdom (SATIS; Hunt, 1990). The introduction of PUSc. coincides with a general move toward (social) constructivist teaching strategies in Dutch secondary education. Science teachers in the Netherlands, therefore, are not only challenged with a new syllabus and real-life contexts, but they are also invited to implement activities in science classrooms that support students' active construction of knowledge and understanding.
Aim of the Study
In the present study, we aimed to contribute to the development of knowledge about teachers' learning in the workplace in the context of educational innovation, and with that, about teachers' learning in the workplace in general. To this end, we examined the learning in the workplace of a small number of teachers of physics, chemistry, and biology in their first few years of teaching a new science syllabus. We intended to investigate the teachers' learning from the perspectives of the teachers themselves. Assessment or professional qualification was not part of the context of this study. The general research question was the following: In what ways did experienced teachers of physics, chemistry, and biology learn in the workplace, in the context of the implementation of a new syllabus on public understanding of science?
Workplace Learning
From a situative view on cognition, knowing and learning is assumed to be situated in specific physical and social contexts (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996). As learning is "an integral part of generative social practices in the lived-in world" (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 31), teacher learning in the workplace takes place as a result of teachers' participation in everyday activities in the working context (Darling-Hammond, 1998; McLaughlin, 1997; Putnam & Borko, 2000). This context can be seen as broader than classrooms and schools, also including various communities such as cross-school professional groups of people or networks. This learning is considered to be not only individual but also social in nature (cf. G. Solomon & Perkins, 1998; Jarvis, 1987), as for example Bruner (1996) stated: "Human mental activity is neither solo nor conducted unassisted, even when it goes 'inside the head'; mental life is lived with others, is shaped to be communicated, and unfolds with the aid of cultural codes, tradition, and the like" (p. xi). During the process of learning, individuals as well as their communities acquire knowledge and skills. As teachers' learning in the context of innovation is strongly connected with professional goals, this learning is referred to as professional learning. To specify teachers' professional learning in the workplace in the context of innovation, we focused on teachers' engagement in those individual and collaborative activities (i.e., professional learning activities) in the working context that helped them in their professional development (cf. Kwakman, 2003).
To explore factors affecting Dutch teachers' participation in professional learning activities, Kwakman (2003), using interviews, identified a range of activities of secondary teachers from which learning could evolve. Most of these activities could be categorized within the predefined learning categories of reading, experimenting, reflecting, and collaborating, which Kwakman had drawn from the professional development literature.
In a study on how teachers learn, and their willingness to do so, Van Eekelen, Boshuizen, and Vermunt (2005) investigated work-related learning events of Dutch secondary teachers, using interviews and an electronic diary. Applying a phenomenographic method to analyze the data, they defined four categories of learning strategies in relation to the activities of the teachers (cf. Van Eekelen et al., 2005, p. 457), that is, learning by doing (the teacher learned by doing a task on his or her own), learning in interaction (the teacher learned in interaction with students, colleagues, or external experts), learning by reading (the teacher learned by self-study), and learning by thinking (the teacher took time to reflect and think about school matters).
In an interview study on self-initiated learning activities of experienced American public school teachers (and the organizational characteristics that influenced their participation in those activities), Lohman and Woolf (2001) found that experienced teachers engaged in three main types of self-initiated learning activities. In knowledge exchanging, teachers shared and reflected on others' practices and experiences by talking, collaborating, observing, and sharing resources. Through experimentation, they tried out new instructional tools and techniques. Through environmental scanning, teachers individually scanned and gathered information from sources outside the school (Lohman & Woolf, 2001, p. 65).
The empirically defined categories, or types, of learning events (Van Eekelen et al., 2005) or self-initiated learning activities (Lohman & Woolf, 2001) in the workplace did not appear to differ greatly from the categories of professional learning activities Kwakman (2003) derived from professional development theories.
In the present study, we explored science teachers' professional learning activities in the workplace, in the context of the implementation of a new syllabus on public understanding of science. To find out empirically how the teachers' learning occurred, we examined the combinations of professional learning activities the teachers engaged in, the changes in frequencies and combinations of these activities over a number of years, and the ways their professional competences, that is, their professional knowledge and skills with respect to subject matter and teaching methods, changed over time.
To answer the general research question (In what ways did experienced teachers in physics, chemistry, and biology learn in the workplace, in the context of the implementation of a new syllabus on public understanding of science?), we formulated three specific research questions to be answered first:
Research Question 1: From what combinations of professional learning activities did teachers of public understanding of science learn in the workplace in their first 5 or 6 years of teaching PUSc.?
Research Question 2: How can the course of teachers' development be typified, that is, how did the combination of activities, and the frequency with which these activities occurred, change over this period of time?
Research Question 3: How can the changes in teachers' competences (i.e., professional knowledge and teaching skills) be described, that is, how did competences with respect to the new syllabus of public understanding of science change over this period of time?
Context of the Study
In 1999, public understanding of science was introduced as a new science subject for all students aged 15 to 17 in upper secondary education in the Netherlands. PUSc. intends to help students to put science and technology into a wider cultural perspective and to gain insight into the relations between scientific knowledge and other important aspects of our civilization. PUSc. requires students to become able, among other things, to explain how scientists obtain a specific kind of knowledge that (by its very nature) is always limited and context bound and how observation, theory formation, and technology are influenced by each other, as well as by cultural, economic, and political factors (SLO, 1996). In this respect, the introduction of PUSc. is quite similar to the vision on science education reform in many other countries, such as Canada (Aikenhead & Ryan, 1992), the United States (American Association for Advancement of Science, 1994), and the United Kingdom (NEAB, 1998), which...
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