Teachers' beliefs and instructional strategies in science: Pushing analysis further

✍ Scribed by Bernard Laplante

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 95 KB
• Volume: 81
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0097-0352
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-237x(199706)81:3<277::aid-sce2>3.0.co;2-a

✦ Synopsis

This article explores ways in which teachers' views of themselves and their students as knowers in science have a profound influence on classroom practice. It focuses on two grade 1 French immersion teachers who practice what is labeled "school science." In their classrooms, they present science-related knowledge directly to the students, while reading and interpreting information found in books. This knowledge is mostly descriptive and anecdotal in nature. Students engage in few discovery-oriented activities. These two teachers seem to view themselves as consumers of science rather than inquirers in science. They admit that scientific knowledge often surpasses their own understanding. When describing the epistemological status given to their students as knowers in science, these teachers call on ideas similar to those they use to describe themselves. Given the nature of their own rapport with scientific knowledge, these teachers promote in their classrooms, between their students and "school science," a rapport with knowledge similar to that which they themselves experience.