I have chosen to use impressionistic tales of the field (van Maanen, 1988) to explore some of the constraints and successes my colleagues and I encountered while implementing a number of innovative teaching approaches in five middle school classrooms in an Australian city during 1996. I have also explored some of the issues of relationship, reflexivity and mutual respect that arose in the course of the study.
I had two purposes in beginning this teaching/research project. Firstly, I wanted to continue the process, begun in an earlier action research study (Geelan, 1994, 1996), of exploring my own teaching practice, and my attempts to more fully embody my educational and ethical values in my practice. Because of the necessarily immersed and reflexive (Steier, 1995) nature of my knowing, and the team-teaching context of the research, this exploration came to include a broad interest in the teaching/learning/research practices of myself and my colleagues. Secondly, I hoped to communicate the understandings1 I developed from this exploration in a way that was clear, relevant and accessible to classroom teachers and other researchers, so that their reading of my text might be an occasion for reflection on their own values and practices.
This research into my 'lived experience' (van Manen, 1990) as a team teacher in Arcadia High School2 grew out of my earlier critical action research study (Geelan, 1994, 1996) on my attempts to support my students in becoming 'active learners'. On that occasion I found that my teaching innovation was largely unsuccessful, and that students and teachers became frustrated by the challenges to their existing school roles and expectations. The pressures placed on students by expectations - their own and their parents' - placed a low value on greater quality of understanding and the development of transferable learning skills, and a high value on good grades. The students felt that by attempting to change their learning roles from passive to active (and my teaching role from 'dispenser of information' to 'facilitator of learning') I was abdicating from my key responsibility - helping them to memorise the information they would need for success in their examinations.
I continue to value active learning and students' development of skills and attitudes to learning that will better fit them for a world in which they will need to continue to learn at a rapid rate in order to survive. I suspect that if such changes to the expectations of students are to occur, however, it will not be because teachers have unilaterally chosen to change their own roles; rather, it will be through a process of negotiation and role redefinition that includes all stakeholders, including parents. The results of my earlier research (Geelan, 1994, 1996) supported this view, and the commitments, approaches and perspectives of those who planned Arcadia High School suggested that such an approach to educational innovation would be attempted at the school.
Arcadia High School opened in 1995 with 600 students in Years Seven and Eight (about ages 13 and 14). The school is in the rapidly growing western corridor of an Australian state capital, and was needed because an expanding population meant that the two local secondary schools and five primary schools were overflowing. A visionary team of educators, led by the foundation principal, Terry Jenner, chose to make this school something fairly new for this state - a middle school. In the state where Arcadia was developed, Year Seven is the final year of primary school, and Year Eight the first year of secondary school. The change in culture and approach between the two levels of schooling is quite dramatic: in primary school, students spend their day largely with a single teacher, in one classroom, whereas in secondary school they may have up to six different teachers and move to a new room for each subject. Primary schools are generally smaller, around 300 students, while suburban secondary schools can have up to 2000 students.
The team involved in the development of the Arcadia program decided that Arcadia would be a middle school, relieving stresses on both the local primary and secondary schools and, more importantly, easing the transition for students. The programme developed was similar to that in primary schools - students had a home room and a home room teacher who taught them all learning areas (subjects) except Arts, Technology, Sport and Languages Other Than English (LOTE). It was felt that such a structure had significant potential to support students in developing transferable learning skills and a high level of literacy. Other innovations introduced to support this approach included portfolio assessment, which was intended to de-emphasise grades as a motivator and to value work the students did outside exam conditions, and teacher collaborative planning, which was intended to support teachers in providing a genuine integrated curriculum.
My role within the school during its inaugural year, 1995, was as a teacher educator involved in professional development courses with some teachers in the school. Because there were several teachers who were interested, the university course was run on the school site, rather than at a university campus. This gave me a strong feeling for both the exhilarating successes and the frustrating challenges of attempting to bring together a mixed community of primary and secondary teachers (because there were no middle schools in the area there were no trained and experienced middle school teachers), and to blend and balance the two cultures in ways that would best support students' learning and personal growth. Naturally, there were clashes of style and approach between the two groups of teachers - at one point in May these became so severe that it appeared the school community might just fly apart from the 'centrifugal force' of conflicting expectations. By the end of 1995, however, a synthesis had been reached that had many teachers raving over the new freedom they felt to teach in innovative and creative ways.
In 1996, the school added Year Nine (that is, the previous year's Year Eight students moved into the new grade), which meant that the student population increased by a third, to more than 900 students. This meant that the teaching staff also increased by a third, from 35 to almost 50. I chose to conduct my doctoral research in the school because I felt that what was happening there was exciting, and that it related strongly to my own educational commitments and values. The teaching/research activities I undertook at Arcadia offered an opportunity to put into practice the new understandings gained from the earlier research. I also wanted to take advantage of a PhD scholarship to conduct some long-term, close-up, intensive study of teaching and learning in classrooms - I knew that in the full life of an academic I may never again have such an opportunity.
For this reason, I volunteered to team teach at Arcadia for two and a half days each week throughout the 1996 school year. The teachers had been either primary or secondary teachers, and most of the secondary teachers had specialised in areas such as English and Social Science. For this reason, many of the teachers expressed their unease about teaching science. As an experienced science educator, I offered to help out in this area. While teaching, I would observe my own teaching practices and those of my colleagues, and the reactions and interactions of the students. I would attempt to record the happenings, emotions and implications of the classrooms by writing 'impressionistic tales' (Van Maanen, 1988). I taught in five different classrooms, with five very different teachers. Only one had been at the school in 1995, so in their various ways, each had to experience for herself the process of a dramatic change of educational culture and expectations.
The current study focuses on my own experience in working as a team teacher supporting nonspecialists (elementary teachers and secondary teachers from other learning areas) who were attempting to teach science in this context for the first time. My own teaching practice was intended to embody a critical constructivist (Taylor, 1996; Taylor and Campbell-Williams, 1993) perspective, and to introduce new teaching strategies and epistemological perspectives through negotiation (Corbett & Wilson, 1995).
The three linked 'impressionistic tales' (Van Maanen, 1988) I have chosen to include here address the pentagonal tensions between (1) the aspirations and theoretical perspectives I brought to the school, (2) those of the planners of the school's program, those of individual (3) teachers and (4) students, and those of (5) the Science Curriculum Coordinator mentioned in the first tale. Each of these vertices (see Figure One) was in turn effected by other extra-school influences and pressures - me by my academic work and reading, students by parents and peers, the school planners by recent research and perspectives, the teachers by their training and history, the Curriculum Coordinator by the demands of upper secondary education and looming public examinations.
Figure One - Representing the complexity of the teaching/research relationships
The first tale I want to present here represents a discussion with my research supervisor, Dr Peter Taylor, that occurred after I had been teaching in the school for about two months.
"I didn't think there'd be much dissonance between what I'm trying to do - you know, integrated curriculum, student centred learning and negotiation - and what the rest of the teachers at Arcadia are doing."
In Peter's office, Thursday morning, we're reflecting - or at least, I'm reflecting, and he's listening - on my expectations of the school, and some of the frustrations I'm already starting to feel with the progress of my research.
"I expected a fair bit of freedom in developing curricula for my classes. Listening to the discussion within the school last year, I expected the curriculum to be much more fully integrated than it is: the various learning areas inform one another more than they would in a traditional high school, but there are still separate sections of the day dedicated to particular disciplines in many classes. You know, it's like 'Put away your maths books now, it's time for science'."
"Why is that, do you think?" asks Peter. "Is it because of constraints on the timetable, or demands from the Education Department?"
"I think one reason there's not much integration of science with other subjects is that Fred Simmons, the Head of Department for science, has a really strong content-based view about what's important in junior secondary science. He's had years of experience in traditional science teaching, and he talks about 'non-negotiables'. These are supposed to be the things students need for upper secondary science, and he defines them in terms of particular facts and pieces of 'content', rather than skills and attitudes. Because these content lumps are usually pretty scientistic and abstract, it's almost impossible to integrate them with the particular integrated module the students are studying."
Peter listens and nods. "What will that mean for your teaching, and your work with the team and the other teachers?"
"My role in the school gets tricky: I want to improve students' learning opportunities, and I think one important facet of that has to be discarding most of this 'non-negotiable' stuff. I mean, (1) students don't retain it anyway, and we re-teach it in upper school, (2) it wrecks their positive attitudes toward science, (3) it gives them a very positivistic view of science...do I have to go on? I'd far prefer to concentrate on the integrated modules, and draw in scientific ideas and ways of working and experiences when they're relevant and when they'll fit."
"Can you go ahead and do that? Surely you've got a fair bit of autonomy within the five classrooms, and even in the whole team?"
"Yeah, I guess I can do some of it, although not as much as I'd like to. I guess I feel like I'm a guest in the school, and it wouldn't be appropriate or fair for me to attack Fred's approach or subvert it. I need to talk to him and try to broaden his approach, but my own teaching will still be constrained by his influence."
"That is a bit frustrating," agrees Peter. "How will that impact on your research? Does it make it impossible to do what you wanted to do?"
"No, not really - well, maybe. But I think it can also be seen as a positive thing. If one important 'use' of this study is to explore what it means and how it feels for a teacher to innovate in the classroom, to improve students' learning opportunities, then it's realistic that there be some constraints and opposition. The interest comes in trying to develop ethical, effective, creative solutions."
In hindsight, although I continue to be personally committed to an approach to science education that is more strongly integrated with students' out-of-school experiences and with their other school subjects, I am disturbed by the arrogance toward Fred that is evident in the comments recorded here. I have a particular understanding of the nature of science and school science, which I think is defensible (otherwise why would I hold it?), but my readiness to dismiss Fred's knowledge and experience in his professional area now strikes me as deeply lacking in the very qualities of tactfulness and thoughtfulness (Van Manen, 1991) that I was trying to incorporate in my teaching practice. That is to say, perhaps my educational concern about my students and the image of science that the school represented to them were appropriate (that's another argument), but it remains incumbent on me to extend the same concern toward colleagues with whom I disagree. While I (self)righteously conceded that I would not undermine Fred's work in the school, I was also very convinced that he was one of the obstacles to reform, and I was the cure!
This is ironic, given that I entered the school with a theoretical perspective called 'critical constructivism' (Taylor, 1996; Taylor and Campbell-Williams, 1993), which combines personal constructivism's emphasis on the constructed nature of knowledge (Glasersfeld, 1993, 1989) with social constructivism's understandings of the collaborative nature of learning (Solomon, 1987; Tobin, 1990). It adds elements of Jurgen Habermas' critical theory, yielding a perspective on the nature of education as a socio-political process. Habermas (1971, 1978) identifies three forms of 'human interests'. The technical interest has been the dominant paradigm in Western culture. It is concerned with understanding for control, with predictability and uniformity. It is the rationality of the physical sciences. The practical interest embodies a concern for understanding and relationship, and for communication. The emancipatory interest is concerned with power - with challenging reified structures of power and institutional control. My practical interest in developing rich communicative relationships seems, in retrospect, to have been confined to the students and to the teachers who agreed with my way of thinking.
The teaching innovations I attempted and my research methodology were both underpinned by my critical constructivist perspective. This meant realising that, like those of my students, my own knowledge and understandings were constructed. Steier (1995) refers to this understanding as 'reflexivity'. From a reflexive perspective, it is no longer possible (if it ever was) for the researcher to stand off from the life in classrooms and observe 'objectively'. As I've said elsewhere:
If constructivism is to mean anything, it must mean that the theorist is irrevocably involved in life, in social interaction, in learning - in the very things the theory purports to explain. This being so, there is no meta-theoretical perspective, no 'outside' from which to understand the activities of teaching, learning and research. They must be understood from 'inside' through social relationships which define both the mode and the content of our discourse. (Geelan, 1997).
Steier suggests that if a concern for reflexivity is taken seriously, then teaching, learning and research merge to become 'collaborative social learning'. This was my experience - I was teacher and researcher, teacher and learner, learner and researcher. I, like my students and colleagues, was seeking to understand, and to shape my behaviour and practices on the basis of my new understandings, in an iterative process that never ceases while we breathe.
I felt that my research would be much more relevant to classroom teachers if I were able to experience and represent the life of a classroom teacher in an authentic way, rather than from the perspective of an external university researcher.
Therese looks from Carolyn to me, and back again. Most of the other students in the room have missed the inconsistency - frankly, most of them stopped listening ten minutes ago. But Therese is bright, and even though she considers science "a waste of time", she's almost always listening and thinking, even when I think she's just adding another layer of intricate doodling to the inside of her folder.
"That's not what Mr Geelan says science is about", she murmurs, without bothering to raise her hand. Carolyn - the class teacher - has just come out with the statement that "science is true facts about the world", and Therese remembers that a few weeks ago, in one of my fairly frequent digressions into the nature of science, I claimed that science is a way of understanding the world that doesn't necessarily yield truth.
Now Carolyn's looking at me too, and I try to explain again what I understand the nature of science to be. My perspective owes something to Paul Feyerabend's 'anything goes' approach, something to postmodernism and constructivism and something to the sociology of science. It's eclectic and rather complex, and I'm trying to describe it as clearly and simply as I can, without using any of those terms.
But even as I'm explaining, I'm thinking "Do the students really need this? Is it appropriate for their age and stage of development to try to grapple with epistemological and ontological questions that I came to much later? Or would it be more comfortable and productive for them to believe in the sacredness of scientific knowledge for a little longer?" I can't decide what is most appropriate, and the situation has arisen in the classroom right now, so I try to make the best of it.
"Well, I think about it this way," I begin.
How do I do this without openly disagreeing with Carolyn?
"Science is a word that's used to talk about two things, and they're both important. Science is a body of knowledge - ideas and theories. These are really ways that people have found to think about what they see in the world. But science is also an activity - it's something people do, as well as something they know. In our school science lessons, we try to introduce you to some of those scientific ways of thinking about the world, and we also try to let you do what scientists do - explore the world in thoughtful, careful ways."
"I don't want you to think that science is just about memorising a heap of facts - that, number one, isn't very useful, and number two, doesn't make you a scientist, or even scientifically literate. Science is about learning a special set of ways of working and thinking. They're related to ways we work and think in other learning areas, but also a bit different. For example, in English, we look at a novel or a poem or a story and try to understand what it's about, and how it makes us feel."
Carolyn breaks in, "But in English there's really no one right answer, where in science there is...isn't there?" I don't want to deal with that right now, so I turn from the class to her and say "I'm getting to that, but I want to do this a particular way", then continue.
"What Ms Young was talking about was the first of those two things about science - scientific knowledge..."
I continue with my explanation, in a lecturing mode that's unusual for me, and I'm very aware that, fascinating and important as this stuff is to me, and although I think I'm explaining it pretty clearly, most of the students' eyes have glazed over. Some are staring out the window at the gentle grey drizzle, one or two have their heads down on their desks, and Tony is flicking bent staples at Jules when neither teacher is looking. I've been seeing the staples appear, but I want to try to catch Tony in the act - perhaps then the inevitable visit from his mother will be at least marginally less unpleasant. Unless I have some pretty direct evidence, it'll just be "You're picking on him" again. I'm not, but Carolyn is, and that makes my position morally difficult when I'm talking to Tony's Mum.
Carolyn says, "So, you're saying scientific facts aren't really true?" While I'm trying to get my thoughts together, Therese blessedly breaks in. "No, Ms Young, it's more like they're true at one place and time, but not always. They're sort of like fashion..." Carolyn completely ignores her and keeps looking toward me, and I try to explain the ideas Therese has just put together so cogently. I also try to acknowledge Therese and her contribution, by alluding back to them in my comments, and earn a grudging smile before she drops her head forward and hides behind her long dark fringe - a frequent refuge.
Carolyn says, "Oh, OK, I think I understand", but her expression makes it clear that she doesn't, and doesn't really believe me anyway. Therese has a better understanding of this stuff than Carolyn ever will - but she still thinks science is a waste of time.
During the teaching year at Arcadia, I wrote a large number of impressionistic tales (van Maanen, 1988), usually immediately after some 'critical incident' in my teaching or in the school. The tales consist of short narrative pieces in a variety of literary genres - journalistic reportage, reflective analyses, fictionalised incidents or pieces of fiction. They were intended to capture not only the incidents that occurred, but - by analogy with impressionist paintings (Taylor, 1997) - the feelings and ideas which these incidents aroused in me, and the ways in which they affected my construction and understanding of my teaching and my students' learning.
Many of the tales took the form of stories of classroom incidents and interactions, or of conversations in staffrooms and offices. Some, though, were based on entries in my personal reflective journal, and represent my attempts to impose some order on my experiences and observations.
I presented a paper at a local science education conference this month - it was called 'Anyone can teach science'. I was trying to organise for myself, and hopefully for the teachers and researchers at the conference, how I felt about the teachers with whom I was working at Arcadia, as science teachers. None of them have any formal training in either science or science teaching, and in talking to them I found that several expressed misgivings about the Arcadia middle schooling model that required them to teach science. That's one of the reasons the study took the shape it did - I was responding to these teachers' perceived inadequacy in teaching science.
Most research that has looked at this issue - what a teacher needs in order to be a science teacher - has concentrated on knowledge of science: science content, 'facts' and information and skills. I certainly observed any number of howling factual errors from the teachers I worked with, and if I hadn't been in the room these would have been 'transmitted' to the students.
They frequently were anyway - there are only so many times you can correct a person publicly without undermining them totally.
But there are at least two other ways to look at what science teachers need. One is provided by Lee Shulman's handy scheme, dividing what teachers know into 'content knowledge' - the scientific information to be taught, 'pedagogical knowledge' - generic knowledge and skill about teaching in general, and 'pedagogical content knowledge' - specific skills, strategies, ideas and information required to teach particular content, in this case science. I would argue that all the teachers I worked with possessed adequate, and in some cases excellent, pedagogical knowledge. Teachers often rely on books and CD-ROMs and on discussion with colleagues to expand their understandings of science content. But several of the teachers expressed their own lack of pedagogical content knowledge in the area of science.
The second way of looking at what teachers need is really what got me into trouble in the school. Recent theories in science education, particularly those that take constructivism as a referent, have tended to devalue the memorisation of science 'facts', and to value students' individual and social construction of knowledge and sense-making schemes, based on their laboratory and out of school experiences. At Arcadia, too, teachers were encouraged to integrate science with the other learning areas. Because having a large body of 'content knowledge' is devalued, this perspective has tended to encourage the idea that 'anyone can teach science' - you don't need to be a science specialist. But I'd argue that this kind of teaching requires, not less knowledge of science, but more: social constructivist learning approaches and curricular integration go well beyond the knowledge of facts, to a really quite sophisticated understanding of the nature of science and science education. I know that I really only developed such an understanding (if indeed I have it!) during my M.Ed. studies, after completing a science degree and then spending several years teaching science. I tried to support and encourage the teachers I was working with to teach and understand science in these ways, but their own perception of their need - and therefore of my role - was in content knowledge. They saw me as a provider of 'facts' and 'resources', whereas I saw myself as a model for more constructivist modes of science education. The conflict was fundamental.
I chose a narrative method (Connelly and Clandinin, 1996), incorporating impressionistic tales of the field (van Maanen, 1988), for the study, because I felt that it was most able to capture the full richness, complexity and human quality of school life. Theories, however complex, must simplify life by abstracting some facets and ignoring others. Stories, too, highlight some facets and hide others - a process of selection is involved. I believe, however, that stories, through allusion and shading and other fictional techniques, can capture facets, faces and voices in classrooms that are missed by theories and the practices of theory-building. I argue that stories and impressionistic tales are valuable as planks of a research methodology for what they show us, but that their use must be accompanied by a critical consciousness of what it is they hide.
That's part of the role of the surrounding text and interpretation that embeds and reflects on the tales. Impressionistic tales are usually told from 'inside' my own perspective, and therefore don't challenge my own assumptions and readings of events. By deconstructing the tales - applying Habermas' emancipatory interest to exploring my own reified notions - another layer of richness is added to the representation. And perhaps at least some of my personal biases are laid bare before the reader, in order that they might be taken into account when reading the tales.
This, too, is reflective action. My experiences in the school incorporated what Griffiths and Tann (1992) characterise as 'reflection-in-action', and writing the original impressionistic tales constitutes one level of 'reflection-on-action'. Interpreting and commenting on the tales in writing this paper constitutes a second level of 'reflection-on-action', and the pedagogically-focussed reflection that this text provokes within the reader is yet another layer of reflection. John van Maanen (1995) characterises this last layer as 'the third moment of ethnography' (the first two being the fieldwork and the writing). Lest we become lost together in a hall of mirrors, however, I wish to conclude with a quote from Max van Manen (1991) on the central purpose of educational reflection: he says what I wish to say, so much better!
...pedagogy requires a reflective orientation to life... By thoughtfully reflecting on what I should have done, I decide in effect how I want to be. In other words, I infuse my being and my readiness to act with a certain thoughtfulness. And yet, how I am now as a teacher will not be clear until I have had further opportunities to act in more appropriate ways. How I am as a teacher depends on what I do, on my possibilities for acting thoughtfully. But my possible actions do not magically arise, they depend on the thoughtfulness that I have been able to acquire in recollective reflection. (pp. 115, 116)
I hope that these recollections and reflections of mine have provided evidence of a developing pedagogical thoughtfulness on my own part, and an occasion for reflection on your own pedagogical beliefs and practices.
Corbett, D. & Wilson, B. (1995). Make a difference with, not for, students. Educational Researcher 24(5): 12-17.
Geelan, D.R. (1994). Learning to communicate: perspective transformations of a developing science teacher. Unpublished M.Ed. thesis, University of Melbourne.
Geelan, D.R. (1996). Learning to communicate: developing as a science teacher. Australian Science Teachers Journal 42(1): 30-34.
Geelan, D.R. (1997). Epistemological anarchy and the many forms of constructivism. Science & Education, 6(1-2).
Glasersfeld, E. (1993). Questions and answers about radical constructivism. In K. Tobin (Ed.), The practice of constructivism in science education. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science Press.
Glasersfeld, E. (1989). Cognition, construction of knowledge and teaching. Synthese, 80: 121-140.
Griffiths, M. & Tann, S. (1992). Using reflective practice to link personal and public theories. Journal of Education for Teaching, 18(1): 69-84.
Habermas, J. (1978). Legitimation crisis. Translated by T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.
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Steier, F. (1995). From universing to conversing: An ecological constructivist approach to learning and multiple description. In L.P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.) Constructivism in education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Taylor, P.C. (1997, March). 'Telling tales that show the brushstrokes'. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Chicago, IL.
Taylor, P.C. (1996). Mythmaking and mythbreaking in the mathematics classroom. Educational Studies in Mathematics 31: 151-173.
Taylor, P.C.S. & Campbell-Williams, M. (1993). Critical constructivism: Towards a balanced rationality in the high school mathematics classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.
Tobin. K. (1990). Social constructivist perspectives on the reform of science education. Australian Science Teachers Journal. 36(4): 29-35.
van Maanen, J. (Ed.) (1995). Representation in ethnography. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. New York: State University of New York.
van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching: The meaning of pedagogical thoughtfulness. New York: State University of New York Press.
Wolcott, H.F. (1990). On seeking - and rejecting - validity in qualitative research. In E.W. Eisner & A. Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education: the continuing debate. New York: Teachers College Press.
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