Abstract
An urgent goal for science teacher educators is to prepare teachers to teach science in meaningful ways to youth from nondominant backgrounds. This preparation is challenging, for it asks teachers to critically examine how their pedagogical practices might adaptively respond to students and to science. It asks, essentially, for new teachers to become researchers of their own beginning practice. This study explores the story of Ben as he coauthored a transformative action research project in an urban middle school as part of a teacher education program and, later, over his first year of teaching at that same school. We describe how Ben and his partner teacher created innovative spaces for science learning. This offered Ben an opportunity to make some of his deeply engrained pedagogical beliefs come alive within a context of distributed expertise, which provided for him a space of moderate risk where he could afford the chances of failure without undermining how he felt about his own capacity as a teacher. Our study highlights the importance of creating reform opportunities within the context of teacher education programs that may help beginner teachers construct positive images of teaching that they can hold on to in their future practice.
Executive Summary (Spanish)
Una demanda urgente para los formadores de maestros y profesores de ciencias es la de preparar docentes que puedan enseñar ciencia de modos significativos para los jóvenes de contextos no-dominantes, especialmente de escuelas urbanas. Este tipo de formación es desafiante, en tanto va “contra la corriente” de los discursos y prácticas habituales en muchas escuelas urbanas y demanda que los docentes examinen críticamente los modos en que sus estudiantes se involucran en el aprendizaje de la ciencia, piensen acerca de cómo y por qué ese modo de involucrarse difiere de su propio modo de conectarse con la ciencia o del modo sancionado por la escuela en general, y analicen de qué manera adaptar su enseñanza respondiendo tanto a sus estudiantes como a la naturaleza de la disciplina que enseñan. Este desafío implica, en suma, que los docentes nóveles se conviertan en investigadores de su propia práctica principiante. En este trabajo exploramos la trayectoria de Ben, un estudiante de profesorado de ciencias, desde su participación en un programa de formación docente hasta sus primeros años como docente principiante. Analizamos el recorrido de Ben como coautor de un proyecto de investigación-acción transformativa en una escuela media que atiende a una población urbana vulnerable y, más tarde, como docente nóvel en esa misma institución educativa. En nuestro trabajo describimos de qué manera llevar a cabo un proyecto de investigación de este tipo le permitió a Ben, junto con el maestro con quien colaboró, crear espacios de innovación para el aprendizaje de las ciencias dentro del aula. Nuestros resultados muestran que la creación conjunta de estos espacios de innovación fue importante para la formación de Ben porque le ofreció una oportunidad mediada de sacar a la luz algunas de sus creencias pedagógicas más arraigadas en el contexto de un aula urbana real. Participar en un contexto de experticia distribuida le dio a Ben un espacio de riesgo moderado, en el que pudo afrontar las chances de “fallar” sin comprometer su identidad docente. En el proceso de llevar a la práctica las innovaciones planificadas en el marco de su proyecto de investigación-acción transformativa, vimos cómo las creencias pedagógicas de Ben fueron haciéndose más adecuadas a las necesidades del contexto, y cómo su mirada sobre los alumnos fue evolucionando, a medida que fue comenzando a ver a los alumnos como informantes clave de su propia práctica docente y a verse a sí mismo como alguien que tiene cosas importantes para aprender de los estudiantes. Nuestro trabajo, por lo tanto, apunta a los formadores de docentes, en tanto enfatiza la importancia de crear espacios de innovación y reforma en el contexto de los programas de formación docente en ciencias que ayuden a los estudiantes del profesorado y docentes nóveles a vislumbrar escenarios de buena enseñanza sobre los que puedan construir su propia práctica en el futuro.
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Furman, M., Calabrese Barton, A. & Muir, B. Learning to teach science in urban schools by becoming a researcher of one’s own beginning practice. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 7, 153–174 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-011-9347-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-011-9347-1