Abstract
The aim of this article is to make a close case study of one teacher’s teaching in relation to established traditions within science education in Sweden. The teacher’s manner of teaching is analysed with the help of an epistemological move analysis. The moves made by the teacher are then compared in a context of educational philosophy and selective tradition. In the analyses the focus is to study the process of teaching and learning in action in institutionalised and socially shared practices. The empirical material consists of video recordings of four lessons with the same group of students and the same teacher. The students are all in Year 7 in a Swedish 9-year compulsory school. During these lessons the students work with a subject area called “Properties of materials”. The results show that the teacher makes a number of different moves with regard to how to proceed and come to a conclusion about what the substances are. Many of these moves are special in that they indicate that the students need to be able to handle the procedural level of school science. These moves do not deal directly with the knowledge production process, but with methodological aspects. The function of the moves turns the students’ attention from one source of knowledge to another. The moves are aimed at helping the students to help themselves, since it is through their own activity and their own thinking that learning takes place. This is characteristic in the teacher’s manner of teaching. When compared in a context of educational philosophy, this manner of teaching has similarities with progressentialism; a mixture of essentialism and progressivism. This educational philosophy is a central aspect of what is called the academic tradition—a selective tradition common in science education in Sweden between 1960 and 1990.
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Notes
Mercer (1995, p. 25) has categorised teachers’ actions concerning different “techniques”, as a description of the particular ways that teachers talk when trying to guide their students’ construction of knowledge.
An important prerequisite in the approach presented is the analysis of epistemology in action. Traditionally, epistemology is perceived as dealing with general questions about the nature of knowledge and the knowledge process. Inspired by a pragmatist perspective on knowledge and truth, we make a re-consideration about epistemology. In this reconsideration we do not necessarily need to see epistemology, knowledge and truth in universal terms as Richard Rorty (1991) and William James (1907, pp. 197–236) stated. Instead we regard epistemology as an integral part of our everyday practice. John Dewey’s (1929/1984) pragmatism and Ludvig Wittgenstein’s (1953/1992; 1969/1992) perspective on language also remind us about how thought and action often appears as an entity.
The classification of the selective tradition derives from analyses of textbooks, in-service training literature and syllabuses and a curriculum-historical analysis from 1960 to 1990.
(Tape 71–72, 77–78, 79–80, 90–91). The empirical material for this article was collected within the “Lärnot-project” (Lärande i naturvetenskap och teknik/Learning in science and technology), financed by a grant from Björn Svedberg’s Foundation for Science and Technology.
The intention is to closely study one teacher´s manner of teaching over time. This approach is not to be compared with studies about examining one teacher´s journey including reflections on teaching, classroom interaction and the connection between them (se further Jennifer Goldberg and Kate Welsh 2009).
Brass is Mässing in Swedish, it is also made a connection to in line 57.
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Lundqvist, E., Almqvist, J. & Östman, L. Institutional traditions in teachers’ manners of teaching. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 7, 111–127 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-011-9375-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-011-9375-x