Abstract
The STaL (Science Teaching and Learning) project is a year-long Professional Learning project that has been continuously conducted in the state of Victoria (Australia) since 2005. STaL is designed to purposely place teachers in the position of learners of science in ways intended to lead them to reconsider their existing practice and to begin to reconceptualize their teaching through a serious focus on student learning. The final day of STaL is a case-writing day and, over the years, more than 200 cases have been written by teachers in the program. This chapter uses these cases as a data source for secondary analysis of insights into learning about science. The analysis illustrates how teachers’ understanding of their changes in their practice has led to recognizable shifts in the manner in which they conceptualise the ways their students learn about and understand science. With student learning as the cohering theme for analysis, data about passive learning, conditions for learning, and changes in the nature of learning stand out as major issues for the science teacher authors. This analysis is used to illustrate how teachers’ knowledge of practice is shaped when a clear and strong focus on student learning is at the heart of their professional learning.
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Notes
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Slowmation is a simple form of digital animation used to create a ‘slow-animation’ (hence Slowmation) of a particular, theme, issue, concept or process which has great value in science teaching. For further details see Hoban et al. (2011).
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Loughran, J., Smith, K. (2015). Facilitating Change in Science Teachers’ Perceptions About Learning and Teaching. In: Corrigan, D., Buntting, C., Dillon, J., Jones, A., Gunstone, R. (eds) The Future in Learning Science: What’s in it for the Learner?. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16543-1_15
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