Teachers' Competence and Professional Development in Early Science Education

Research Collection Doctoral Thesis Teachers' Competence and Professional Development in Early Science Education Author(s): Studhalter, Ueli Thomas Publication Date: 2017 Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000244751 Rights / License: In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use. ETH Library DISS. ETH NO. 24725 TEACHERS’ COMPETENCE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY SCIENCE EDUCATION A thesis submitted to attain the degree of DOCTOR OF SCIENCES of ETH ZURICH (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich) presented by UELI THOMAS STUDHALTER MSc ETH Environ. Sc., ETH Zurich born on 01.01.1983 citizen of Horw LU, Switzerland accepted on the recommendation of Prof. Dr. Elsbeth Stern Prof. Dr. Henrik Saalbach Prof. Dr. Thilo Kleickmann 2017 Teachers’ Competence and Professional Development in Early Science Education Abstract Abstract There is common understanding that today’s global challenges (climate change, loss of biodiversity, limited availability of energy/resources, poverty, etc.) call for a scientifically literate society. Scientific literacy competence is acquired primarily through science instruction offered in institutions of the public education systems. Research in the field of developmental psychology has clearly demonstrated in the last decades that young children have a remarkable and frequently underestimated potential for domain-specific learning in science. Though, primary science teachers are reported to often lack of knowledge and confidence for science teaching. Therefore, teachers’ professional competence and their professional development in early science education were under investigation in this thesis. The term early science education was used to refer to domain-specific education directed at children at the age from four to eight years, which, in Switzerland, relates to kindergarten and the first two grades of elementary school. This thesis builds on the assumption that high quality early science education depends upon knowledgeable and competent teachers and, more specifically, upon their acknowledgement of the constructivist nature of learning. Here, pedagogical content knowledge, understood as knowledge of how children learn and how learning can be facilitated, was of central interest. This thesis consists of three papers highlighting different aspects of professional development effectiveness: In the first paper, teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge was compared between kindergarten and lower grade elementary school teachers. In the second paper, the effects of teacher talk on children’s conceptual learning were examined. Finally, the effects of a professional development intervention on teachers’ competence and children’s learning were researched in the third paper. The first paper concentrates on comparing kindergarten and lower grade elementary school teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning in early science education. Knowledge and beliefs relevant for facilitating effective science learning are theorized in pedagogical content knowledge. Differences in pedagogical content knowledge between kindergarten (KG) and lower grade elementary school teachers (LGES) were expected to be based upon group-specific professional socialization related to a differing work environment and professional education. Pedagogical content knowledge was assessed based on three aspects (classification of children’s statements, assessment of the importance of learning goals, and beliefs about teaching and learning). Further, teachers’ science- specific interest, self-concept of ability, and teaching time was measured. Data was gathered by means of a questionnaire in a sample of N = 181 teachers (NKG = 93; NLGES = 88). The results revealed no marked differences between KG- and LGES-teachers with respect to most of the analyzed measures of the pedagogical content knowledge: These groups of teachers did not differ in their classification of children’s statements, neither in their assessment of domain-specific learning goals, nor in their I Teachers’ Competence and Professional Development in Early Science Education Abstract science-specific interest and self-concept of ability. However, KG- and LGES-teachers differed with respect to their beliefs about teaching and learning in science: KG-teachers showed greater agreement with play-based beliefs, whereas LGES-teachers showed greater agreement with an understanding of learning as situated construction of knowledge. Surprisingly, KG-teachers reported devoting substantially more teaching time for science education compared to LGES-teachers. Regression analyses further revealed that the type of professional education teachers received (either in teacher training seminars, which ceased to exist or in universities of teacher education, currently in place) was related to teachers’ understanding of the constructivist nature of learning: Being educated at a university of teacher education (compared to being educated at a teacher training seminar) could explain higher agreements in understanding science learning as restructuring and co-constructing knowledge. In the second paper addresses the relation between teacher talk and children’s conceptual learning in early science instruction. The role of teacher talk was examined in N = 32 kindergarten classes (Nteachers = 32, Nchildren = 468). The teachers were videotaped during a regular kindergarten day at the beginning of a four-week instruction phase, while assisting a group of children working on learning materials about the topic floating and sinking. Teacher talk was coded as vocabulary specific to the content (content-specific vocabulary) and as talk having an underlying scaffolding function for children’s learning (scaffolding utterances) in an inter-rater agreement procedure. In a newly developed framework, teachers’ scaffolding utterances included the following types: (A) Clarification of phenomenon, task, and procedure, (B) Focus of attention, (C) Activation of prior knowledge, and (D) Challenging conceptual change. Children’s conceptual understanding about floating and sinking was measured in individual sessions in a pre-post-design. Latent regression modelling revealed that teachers’ content-specific language and their scaffolding utterances of type C (Activation of prior knowledge) could positively predict children’s learning outcomes, and their scaffolding utterances of type D (Challenging conceptual change) could do so negatively. The surprising negative effects of challenging conceptual change on children’s learning were analyzed in more depth in post-hoc analyses, which suggest that this scaffolding strategy has a situation-specific function. The third paper examines the effects of a professional development intervention on teachers’ professional competence and on children’s learning in early science education. A sample of N = 50 kindergarten teachers (including N = 684 children) was randomly allocated to one of the following three groups: an experimental group attending one meeting as an introduction to learning materials and two meetings concentrating on effective teacher-child interactions, a control group participating only in the introduction to the learning materials, and a baseline group, where teachers did not participate in any professional development meeting. The teachers of both the experimental and the control group received the identical learning materials about the topic floating and sinking, which they implemented in their instruction directly after the first professional development meeting for the following four II Teachers’ Competence and Professional Development in Early Science Education Abstract weeks. The additional two meetings offered to the experimental group were designed according to the Intentional Teaching approach, which includes the aspects of knowing, seeing, doing, and reflecting about effective teacher-child interactions. Further, both interventions were designed to cohere to typical features named in literature of professional development effectiveness, i.e. content focus, active learning, coherence, and collective participation. Importantly, the interventions covered only a short duration (three meetings of a total of 12 contact hours for the experimental group and one meeting of four hours for the control group). The design of this study aimed at investigating whether programs of even short duration turns out to be effective. Data was gathered in a pre-post-design and included both dispositional (pedagogical content knowledge) and performance-related aspects of teachers’ professional competence (their talk during instruction) and children’s conceptual understanding of the topic floating and sinking. Results demonstrated that the intervention based on the Intentional Teaching approach (experimental group) led to partly substantial changes in teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and instructional practices, but not with respect to children’s learning. The findings of these studies have important implications for early science education. In a general discussion, the most important findings will be summarized to derive directions about how to design meaningful and effective professional development in future. III Teachers’ Competence and Professional Development in Early Science Education Zusammenfassung Zusammenfassung Es gibt eine breite Übereinstimmung darüber, dass aktuelle globale Herausforderungen (Klimawandel, Verlust

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