Preparing teachers for teaching nature of science: a video-based approach

Abstract

In line with the international trend, recent development of science curricula in Hong Kong has seen a shift from the predominantly content-focused goal to a wider goal of promotion of scientific literacy in which understanding of nature of science (NOS) occupies a pivotal role. This poses a host of challenges in preparing teachers for teaching these new curricula. In particular, various studies consistently point to teachers’ inadequate understanding of NOS and their lack of pedagogical skills in teaching NOS. In this symposium, we report our experiences in preparing teachers for teaching NOS, in particular, those involving video as a mediating artifact. In the first presentation, we report a teacher’s story of his journey of professional development from learning of NOS to effective teaching of NOS. With an in-depth reflection of his journey with a science teacher educator, they have come to identify several critical events and processes which have prompted considerable advancement in his pedagogical skills in teaching NOS. His classroom video episodes have been used as exemplars to develop and motivate other teachers in building their repertoire of teaching NOS. The second and third presentations are based on our experiences in working collaboratively with teachers in study group meetings where they learned how to teach NOS through critical reflection on videos of their own teaching. In the second presentation, we provide empirical evidence to support our claim that in order to bring out the desired learning, the videos should be compiled and organized around themes that are meaningful to the teachers. In the third presentation, we explore the nature of discussions that were taking place in the study group meetings. Our aim is to delineate features of the study group meetings that can help generate productive discussions in a video-mediated learning environment. Special attention will be paid to teachers’ affective and social learning in the course of their participation in discussion. In the fourth presentation, we shift our focus to helping preservice teachers to teach NOS. To supplement the lack of opportunities to observe NOS instruction in action, our student teachers were provided with two videos of exemplary NOS teaching: one using an implicit approach and an explicit reflective approach in another. They were asked to review and comment on the videos at three stages of the program (at the beginning of the program, before the main teaching practicum, and just before the program ended). In this presentation, we report the effectiveness of this progressive video commenting task in developing effective NOS pedagogy among the pre-service teachers. We conclude the symposium by presenting a model of effective use of video for teacher professional development based on findings from the above presentations.