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A new lens for supporting and studying science teacher reflections: situating the self in the [activity] system

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Abstract

This paper presents a new lens for analyzing written reflections on the teaching experiences of pre-service [science] teachers. The lens, which borrows heavily from Activity Theory, allows science education researchers and teacher educators to identify tensions, disturbances, conflicts, and contradictions within teachers’ written reflections as a means to help the participants situate their successes and challenges within the activity systems in which they operate. This paper describes the process through which the lens was crafted, defines the key constructs comprising the lens, applies the lens to the analysis of two purposefully selected reflection documents, and then considers the affordances of the lens. It also discusses how the insights gained from this lens have lead to new ways of facilitating reflection in pre-service science teachers, including the use of Kenneth Snelson’s tensegrity sculptures as a metaphor for the goal of reflection. Finally, it connects the tensions identified in the individual reflections of two pre-service science teachers to broader issues being addressed in science education.

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Notes

  1. Given that educational thinkers like Dewey (1997a, b) have explicitly discussed the meaning of experience in relation to reflection, we believed it necessary to address this notion as well. However, our search of the Activity Theory literature did not yield any detailed treatment of experience, particularly as it is associated with other AT constructs (e.g. activity). Thus, we will simply define experience as the comprehension and internalization of the outcomes of engaging in activity, or the accumulation of such understandings as a given activity occurs in repeated episodes over time. It is important to distinguish this general usage from our use of ‘micro-teaching experiences’ or ‘field experiences’, which are specific labels that have been historically attached to certain activities within the MAT program. Further, it should be noted that we will treat the relationship between reflection and experience later in this paper.

  2. Yrjö Engeström and Annalisa Sannino (2011) also created a set of terms for analyzing the discourse in intervention sessions related to organizational change efforts. We have noted a couple of difficulties with their approach that made it necessary to develop our own framework. First, two of their four terms—dilemmas and double binds—had meanings that did not seem suitable for the context of our work. Second, the relationships between their terms were not clearly articulated. Finally, their use of a limited set of discourse markers to identify when an instance of a particular construct occurred did not allow for the same depth of analysis we wanted to achieve in examining our data.

  3. We recognize that, given the complexity of the educational system and the number of thinkers who influenced its local and more national development in the U.S., the concept ‘prepared citizen’ has actually expanded into a multitude of different conceptions that are in various relationships to each other. We have limited the discussion to the two that are linked to the data under examination and can be seen to represent a genuine contradiction in this activity system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Brett Criswell

  2. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Brendan Calandra, Anton Puvirajah & Laurie Brantley-Dias

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  1. Brett Criswell
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Correspondence to Brett Criswell.

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Criswell, B., Calandra, B., Puvirajah, A. et al. A new lens for supporting and studying science teacher reflections: situating the self in the [activity] system. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 10, 891–919 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-014-9654-4

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