Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2007, Page 98

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Tímarit um menntarannsóknir, 4. árgangur 2007
pressure on teachers. On the one hand the
curriculum seems to call for a discipline-based
approach focusing on concepts, principles
and the transmission of knowledge and on
the other hand for a constructivist approach
in which students’ personal understanding
of phenomena and events are taken into
consideration, stressing hands-on inquiry,
socially relevant learning, and cultural context.
The traditional view of curriculum, sometimes
called “subject-centered curriculum“, is more
likely to correspond to the discipline-based
approach, while the latter has been considered
as more progressive and labeled “child-
centered curriculum“. The two positions differ
in their views about the relationship between
the learner and the educator and of what
should be learned or taught and how it should
be learned or taught and assessed. A fruitful
concept in teacher education and research
has been pedagogical content knowledge
(also known as PCK) which skilled science
teachers are thought to possess. A related
concept is that of subject-specific Pedagogy
(Lederman, 2001, Soares and Lock 2007).
PCK was introduced by Shulman (1986), but
even when this concept is employed teachers
may still experience conflicts in decisions to
be made about the balance between content
and process.
Ethical issues are also a source of concern
to teachers. The ethics of teaching (Strike
and Soltis, 1985/2004) call for teachers to be
committed to their profession and to the needs
of students. The teaching profession calls
for considerable commitment by members to
maintaining standards and being accountable
to others and requires a continuous renewal
of knowledge. At the same time teachers are
committed to their students and wish to meet
the diverse needs of individuals. Teachers
are expected to keep students interested and
to develop learning contexts which lead to
meaningful learning.
The authors employed two conceptions in
analysing the data collected in interviews and
observations. Firstly they used a so-called
seven-frame-model of teaching and learning
in which commonplace curricular concepts
like goals, content, methods and assessment
are taken into account. In order to more fully
understand teachers’ decisions, students’ own
ideas, experiences and attainments must also
be taken into account (Allyson Macdonald,
2002).
Secondly the analysis was based on a defi-
nition of three types of teacher professionalism,
“the dependent professional“, “the independent
professional“ and “the collaborative
professional“ (Trausti Þorsteinsson, 2003).
Dependent professionals follow curriculum
guidelines and other regulations closely and
build their work on experience rather than
theory. Those who are independent rate success
according to the extent to which they evaluate
and determine the needs of learners but do not
take the attitudes of learners into account. Such
a professional prefers to work alone and make
his or her own decisions about development.
The third type of professionalism is found when
teachers work together, not only with each
other but also recognising the contributions of
parents and learners. Such teachers accept joint
responsibility for learners and are willing to
undertake self-evaluation.
The results indicate that all of the five
teachers experience the pressure for curriculum
coverage as a constraint on their decision
making and they are well aware of their students’
different needs and diverse learning styles. The
teachers talk about taking the differences of
students into account and feel that the learning
context is a crucial factor for learning. They
respect the need for collaboration, though
they are more likely to be found somewhere
between “dependent professionalism“ and
“independent professionalism“. Their teaching
decisions reflect to a considerable extent what
John Dewey called traditional education and
they admit, albeit reluctantly, that the current
system assumes that teaching science is mostly
about transmitting a finished product from
books and other sources of information into
student’s minds. These teachers indicate that
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