The Different Worlds of Science Teachers and Their Students

Abstract

There were five science teachers at the high school where the study was conducted. Three were in the life sciences and two in the physical sciences. For this study, I interviewed four of the teachers: two biology teachers and two physical science teachers. The fifth teacher was a teacher/researcher on the project, involved with the interpretation of data, and thus was not interviewed for the study. The teachers all had several or more of the 16 ninth graders of this study in a least one science course. All the teachers share the teaching of several sections of a ninth grader “introduction to science” course, and this is where all of the students in the study first met at least one of the four science teachers interviewed. The teachers individually sat for the same interview protocols used with the ninth graders. As with the students, the research wanted to know to what extent teachers enjoin scientific knowledge vis-à-vis other domains of knowledge in a discussion about Nature, given that science is unarguably relevant to the topic of Nature; and yet, Nature is a topic that most people do not explicitly associate with science? What are the concepts that appear to have scope and force in the thinking on this topic? And, how do teachers and students compare?