Science Teachers’
Truthful Narratives
Senior Lecturer Peer S. Daugbjerg (pd@viauc.dk) VIA University College, Teacher Education, Nørre Nissum, Denmark
PhD student , Learning and Philosophy, AAU, DK
Nørre Nissum
Copenhagen
VIA University College
Turnover: € 200,000,000
Students: 17,000 full-degree
Employees: 2,100 employees
Programmes: 35 professional bachelor
degree
programmes
Research: 19 research centres
and a range of continuing education
programmes
Agenda
– Context of my research
• Dialogue on your backgrounds
– Narrative inquiry
• Your experiences with steppingstones and pitfalls in working with narratives
– Truthfulness and Interest
• Does it make sense?
• Can it enrich our language on teaching?
Science teaching in DK
• In Denmark the pupils follow the same cohort of peers from year 0 (kindergarten class) until year 9. During these 10
years of schooling the pupils meet 4 different science subjects.
• From year 1 to 6 they meet a primary science subject called
‘Natur/teknik’ (Nature/Technique),
• From year 7 to 9 they study Biology, Geography and
Physics/Chemistry as three independent science subjects.
• Danish public school is meeting competing demands from
parents, curricular aims, political expectations, etc.
Teacher education in Denmark
- Revisions of the teacher education in 1991, 1997, 2001, 2006 and 2013 has led to
increasing academisation.
- The coming structure from summer 2013:
- Competencebased aim description - 4 year study (240 ects)
- Including 30 ects of teaching practice - 2 - 3 teaching subjects
- Bachelor in Education
- Modular organisation (10 ects pr. module)
The real problem in teacher education in DK
• Lack of practice
– The teacher students learn and know about
teaching, but they don’t have sufficient time to learn to know the gut-feeling of a good and a bad lesson.
• Lack of absorption,
– The teacher students are to learn biology subject matter and teaching of this subject
matter in ½ years effective study time (30 - 40
ects).
Biology in teacher
education - in practice
• An integrative approach:
– Studying teaching subject matter at the same time as subject matter didactics.
• Didactics – ’Didaktik’ in Danish teacher education covers – Educational philosophy
• A professional teacher language
– Planning, teaching (performing) and evaluation (and development)
• Aims
• Methods
Who enters teacher education in DK
• 65-69% Female
• 5 % Emigrants
• 70% has parents with tertiary graduation
• Average age at start: 25
• 87 % has high school degree as admittence
• 69 % has prior occupational experience
• Start is in average 5 years after high school graduation
• 4 % has a University degree (master)
• 11% has 2-4 years of higher education
• 10% has a vocational education
Year In- take 2003 4872 2004 4663 2005 3810 2006 2896 2007 2896 2008 2645 2009 2991 2010 3380 2011 3458 2012 3524 - DK has 5.5 mio. inhabitants,
- Approx. 75.000 teachers teach year 1 to 9 (10),
-1/3 of the teachers are close to retirement
Dialogue intermission
• How is teacher education in your country or region?
• How is the relation between school practice and teacher education?
• How is the recruitment to teacher education
at your institution?
Motivation for research
(at the start of my PhD education in 2008)
• Declining recruitment to Science teaching subject studies – (2004: approx. 550; 2007: 228; 2011: 298)
• Low retention
– Newly trained teachers (still a problem) – Science teacher (still a problem)
Such data are well known from 3 danish studies conducted by Lars Lindhardt, Martin Bayer, Danish Teachers’ Union.
• Nobody (to my knowledge) has asked active and experienced science teachers about their:
– Relation to nature and teaching prior to start as science teachers
– Interest in science, nature and teaching
Interviews and observations with 10 science teachers.
Teacher alias
Gender Birth year
High school or similar finished
Other training or employment prior to teacher training
Start of teacher education
Graduation as teacher
Jane ♀ 1954 1974 1974 1978
Erik ♂ 1957 1977 1977 1981
Lars ♂ 1956 1976 Clerk 1982 1986
Diana ♀ 1970 1990 Unskilled worker 1992 1996 Linda ♀ 1956 1994 China Painter, shop
owner
1994 1998
Simon ♂ 1971 1990 Laboratory worker 1997 2001
Tina ♀ 1975 1996 Unskilled worker 1997 2001
Frank ♂ 1973 1997 Farmer 1999 2004
Karen ♀ 1966 1985 Industrial worker 2001 2005 Ruth ♀ 1972 1992 Unskilled worker, Ergo-
therapist
2002 2009
Narrative studies
- Teacher interaction
• 1
stinterview (febr. 09 – sept. ‘10)
― Early years, birthplace and parents
― Youth and schooling
― Education and occupation prior to teaching
― Teacher education
― Spouse, children and spare time
― Teacher work and development
• Observation (oct. ‘10 – jan. ‘11)
– 2–4 whole workdays of each teacher including teaching, field trips, breaks, staff dialogue, etc.
• Collected teacher produced local curriculum, pupil worksheets, etc.
• 2
ndinterview (march ’09 – febr. ‘11) individually designed questions
based on analysis of above materials.
Research interest
• Why become a teacher, why teach science?
– Teaching is hard work according the public opinion
• Tell a positive story of spite and stamina in an era of teacher deprofessionalisation.
– Inspired by Susan Robertson
• White water Kayaking the everyday in the classroom
– According to Wolf-Michael Roth
• Supertankering the fundamental values and ideas of school and everyday life
– Rephrasing Knud E. Løgstrup, inspired by Kirsti Klette
Research question
• How is science teachers’ work related to their lives?
– Inspired by Ivor Goodson
• Teaching is a personal profession:
– “In understanding something so intensely personal as teaching, it is critical that we know about the
person the teacher is” (Goodson, 1981, p.69).
– “… socialization into teaching is largely self-
socialization; one’s personal predispositions are not only relevant but, in fact, stand at the core of
becoming a teacher” (Lortie, 1975, p.79).
Narrative inquiry
• Narratives: the told lived experiences in an interview.
• Life stories: chronological and contextual reordering of the narratives.
• Life histories: relations between essential historical events, lived experiences and social positioning.
• Research fictions: adding symbolic
equivalents to make emotions and inner
dialogue stand out clearer
What is found to have significance among my participants:
• Own childhood with many experiences in nature
• Hereditary illness in family
• Positive experience with teachers
• Conflicts with family life
• Desire for engaging in more specific subject matter teaching
• Development of local curriculum.
Dialogue intermission
What is your experience with narrative inquiry, are these following opportunities and weaknesses valid:
• Steppingstones
– Ask few open questions – Make the teacher write
– Make supplementary interviews and observations – Keep open for the personal voice of the teacher – Make detailed analysis of the utterances
– Analyse for what matters in teacher practice
• Pitfalls
– Beware of ideologism – Beware of psychologism – Beware of causalities
– Beware of excluding the teachers’ perspectives
– Remain critical towards practice
Adding nuances to life history research
• The relation between two signifcant
elements of life history research - lived
experiences and social positioning - can be
further qualified by adding reflections on
truthfulness and interest.
Lived experience accentuates the personal holistically
• Understanding experience is a recurring theme in life history research including personal as well as
professional experiences (Horsdal 2011; Goodson and Sikes 2001).
• Narrative studies is the closest we get to bringing forward experiences (Clandinin and Connelly 2000).
• In English ‘Experience’ is the immediate perception (oplevelse/erlebnis) as well as the seasoned gained experience (erfaring/erfahrung).
• Lived experience accentuates continuity, relation and setting of mentally and bodily gained experience
(Dewey 1938; Hwang & Roth 2011).
Social positioning embrace professional as well as local and global social factors (Goodson & Sikes, 2001)
• Teachers’ immediate social positioning is
constituted by their work at the local school.
• Teachers’ general societal positioning is
constituted by how the profession solves the task given to them in form of rules and
regulations.
• For the individual teacher there also is
elements of possibilities for choice between
other career options.
Social positioning through professional ethics
Educational International’s declaration on professional ethics of teacher commitment to:
• the profession: justify public trust and confidence and enhance the esteem
• students: respect the rights of all children
• colleagues: promote collegiality among colleagues
• management personel: be knowledgeable of their legal and administrative rights and responsibilities,
• parents: recognize the right of parents to information and consultation
• the teacher: recognize that teachers have a right to preserve their privacy
(http://download.ei-ie.org/docs/IRISDocuments/EI%20Publications/Declaration%20of%20Professional%20Ethics/2008- 00165-01-E.pdf)
Validity in communication
• Habermas (1987) develops validity claims about how you can understand
communication in different worlds.
– In the objective world you can apply and negotiate a validity claim of truth,
– in the social world you can apply and negotiate validity claims of rightness,
– and in the subjective world where the individual has exclusive access you can apply validity
claims of truthfulness.
Truthfulness
• Truthfulness integrates accuracy and sincerity (Williams 2002; Cooper 2008).
– Truthfulness bridges between the personal and the professional as can be seen in the professional ethics and ideals issued by international (Education
International) and national (Danmarks lærerforening) teachers organisations and unions.
– “Considering intrinsic and extrinsic forms of motivation, we should also look at the difference between
aspirations and obligations. Aspirations are ideals and virtues, in contrast to obligations or minimal ethics, which are duties.”
(http://old.ei-
ie.org/ethics/file/(2007)%20Professional%20Ethics%20in%20Teaching%20and%20Professional%20Teach ers%20Organisations%20by%20Eduard%20Dresscher.pdf)
Dispositions of Truthfulness
• Accuracy:
– Effort put into acquiring information – Authenticity addressing of audience
– Honest and objective in addressing the audience
• Sincerity: communicate what you believe
– Trustworthiness: do not mislead
• Fidelity: do not belie salient and important aspects
• Transparency: no hidden agenda
Human interest
Grundy (1987 ) elaborates Habermas’s 3
fundamental human interests into 3 analytical categories:
• Technical interest is characterised by interest in controlling the
environment through rule following actions based upon grounded laws.
• Practical interest is characterised by interest understanding the
environment through interaction based upon consensual interpretation of meaning
• Emancipatory interest is characterised by interest in emancipation and empowerment to engage in autonomous actions arising out of
authentic, critical insight into social constructions of human society.
Dialogue intermission
• Has any of you experiences with analysing
– Teacher interests
– Teacher truthfulness
• Diana: “During the last years I have read a lot on classroom
management (.) I think I exactly got some specific tools for what you do, and what works, and what does not work in relation to quieten things down; or in relation to conflicts, how can I de-escalate rather than escalate it. Because I felt that I kept running into, and couldn’t
understand, there was no experience that could solve that problem.”
• Interviewer: “When you say that it is during the last years that you primarily have read about this, and now you also have 10 years of experience, is it the experience that does that you now might have better use what you read or?”
• Diana: ”no actually I don’t think so (….) Because there some things (.) it is very obvious I think (.) I mean (...) It can’t help to issue a threat, like if you don’t do like this, then this and this will happen, if you haven’t
considered that threat and actually mean that there will happen or that this consequence it will come, and I think you in the beginning often made mistakes.”
Diana 39 years, teaching 13 years
Diana 39 years, teaching 13 years
• Lived experience
– Personal: Had her own horse as a child. Took high school at a boarding high school.
Worked two years at bakery.
– Professional: Wanted to work with finance and economy, but a visit to a teacher college changed her mind. Has been at the same school all her career.
• Social position
– Personal: Raised at a small farm, Married, has three children
– Professional: Teaches lower secondary school science subjects as well as mathematics.
• Interest: Her interest is technical and practical as her focus in the interview was on how to improve her classroom management.
• Truthfulness
– Accuracy: Diana reads with effort on how to perform classroom management and implements it with an honest wish to improve her relation to the pupils
– Sincerity: Diana is trustworthy as she follows up on recognised problem she has with relating to the pupils.
– Fidelity: Diana engages the observed problem instead of belying it.
– Transparency: Her actions are very transparent as her agenda is know the her pupils and colleagues.
• Ruth tells of an innovative approach to teaching physics:
• “... the pupils can’t relate to the things up there [in the physic laboratory], really they can’t relate to a tone generator, can they?
So, when we can use our mobile phone for real, if that was what we wanted, right, (...) we have things in our mobile phones, that can measure it equal well as the
instruments we have up there.”
Ruth (38 years, teaching 2 years)
Ruth (38 years, teaching 2 years)
• Lived experience:
– Personal: many early primary nature experiences from a market garden, many
different educations, is very interested in gardening and science as a subject matter;
– Professional: several teaching supply jobs while studying at teacher college, relates well with pupils in trouble but not as well with colleagues, not interested in everyday classroom management.
• Social position:
– Personal: grew up with parents being shop-owners, today she is assisting spouse in a machine pool business, has two teenage children;
– Professional: welcomes the details in the curriculum. End up teaching lower
secondary science and mathematics and quits after a few years, being unable to make ends of teaching and assisting spouse meet.
• Her interest is mostly technical in order to control her own understanding of science and to make the pupils being able to understand and control the influence of science
topics in their everyday life.
• Her truthfulness is exposed as:
– Accuracy in the effort she puts into studying science.
– Sincerity in relation to pupils in trouble and her own family life.
– Fidelity in the sense, that Ruth adresses pupils needs very directly.
– Transparency is somewhat blurred as it turns out that combining teaching and being an assisting spouse is not compatible.
• Simon acts as the local science resource person on his school and as such he heads the science teacher team:
• “... last year we said in our science teacher team that
Natur/teknik [primary science] was our focus and that did literally, that partly there was something related to the
curriculum and then, that was really it and then people
should help collect materials. I had taught something about it, that is me and a colleague, it was on how we used some of our teaching. And this year we really have thought that it would be Physics/chemistry that needs a boost.”
Simon (39 years, teaching 9 years)
Simon (39 years, teaching 9 years)
• Lived experience:
– Personal: angler as young, especially during high school,
– Professional: educated and worked as laboratory worker for a few years prior to starting at a local teacher college. Has taken two teacher in-service diplomas.
• Social position:
– Personal: grew up in a detached house neighbourhood, his parents were public employees within health and rehabilitation, married and has two young children, – Professional: has been working at the same school ever since graduation as teacher
Is science coordinator at his school and teacher at a nature school. Is moving slowly out of basic teaching into more specialised functions and teaching.
• His interest is emancipatory as he wants to help his colleagues in their teaching of science, but also practical in his analysis of the his colleagues need.
• His truthfulness is exposed as:
– Accuracy in relation to honestly developing a collective science curriculum.
– Sincerity in relation to following his interest in specialised work functions.
– Fidelity in the way he uses his two in-service courses to move into more teaching at a nature school.
– Transparency in the way he works with collecting and organising teaching material for primary science teaching at his school.
• Jane is pushing on the municipality to make them take responsibility for cleaning up the pond and maintaining the footpaths in the surrounding forest:
– “It is such a beautiful little place if only more would use it more. It is so full of opportunities. I even stayed overnight up there with a group of pupils once. We had wonderful evening, a clear sky and lots of stars. Children nowadays don’t see stars; they don’t sleep in the wild. It is a shame.”
• Jane’s passion for nature was founded when she was young:
– “We went swimming in the creek near my uncle’s farm when I was girl. I remember one evening we were going home and the sun was setting, this red evening sun and there came a bumblebee very quiet (.) and the smell of bugs, these leaf bugs, who were hanging up in the trees, this sharp smell, no really (...) such an experience stands very strong for me (..).”
Jane (56 years, teaching 32 years)
Jane (56 years, teaching 32 years)
• Lived experience:
– Personal: Went hunting, fishing and berrie-picking with her father as child, still active hunter, caring for wildlife in spare time.
– Professional: Had to show stamina in her early career due to her young age, was forced to change teaching subjects during a school merge, has recently been educated in primary science as a supplementary teaching subject.
• Social position:
– Personal: Her father died when she was 12 years old. Today she is married to a farmer, has three children.
– Professional: Is dedicated to perform and develop outdoor elements of science education near her school. She takes these initiatives on her own, without much support from her colleagues.
• Interest: Primarily technical as she is very dedicated to improving her capability and options for disseminating nature, experiences with nature and natural phenomena to the children.
• Truthfulness:
– Accuracy: She puts much effort in constantly developing her own understanding of biology and nature.
– Sincerity: She acts trustworthy as makes the pupils engage with nature in accordance with her understanding that more experience with nature will improve the pupils relations to and
understanding of nature and biology.
– Fidelity: She talks very enthuthiastic and openhearted about her teaching
– Transparency: She clearly demonstrates for the pupils what she finds important and good
• “... perhaps I had a sense of, so I could fairly quickly smell a rat that my mother was sick, and about that time you have to choose [high level study subject at high school], there was a lot of talk about some hereditary cancer. So I think that my motivation also was to learn some genetics, and try and see where the hell it all comes from, what it is and can it (...).”
• “I was tested and don’t have it, but all of a sudden, was my entire family
involved in it and they didn’t want to know anything (.) but I had a cousin who wanted to be tested, and she knew that if her showed up negative, then would her mother also have it and the mother didn’t want to know (.) and there she has walking around with a knowledge that the mother had it, then all of sudden we got, yes it became very messy; but the two aunts or the one aunt and my grandmother know nothing, and the other aunt and her daughter knows, the problem is however the aunt on the other side has two girls who each has two girls and they are all potential bearers of this gene. (.) So things have really been stirred up, but it is really my knowledge that over time has done it, no there really is trouble afoot.”
Tina (36 years, teaching 10 years)
• “I want to have a positive influence on the youth that they can go (...) go into the world and make some reasonable choices, because you have helped to make, not teach them, but made them able to think and go out. (.) So my approach is also that it is half subject matter half social work.”
• “But there is also pupils that when they leave school, then they don’t know how you get pregnant, really that I think that is also rather sad and they will never get a completely good grip of it.
• “Yes, yes also that it gets a societal perspective right (.) that it is okay to say no and stuff like that, that is what this course has set the scene for, that there has to be made a continuity where it starts from kindergarten class, where it
concerns much about me and then in year 3, 4 and 5 it is me and the class and then in year 7, 8 and 9 it is me and the society and then go that way out, right (.) and that they all places learn that choices has consequences (.) both the one and the other in relation to yourself, right (...) and that I think is bloody exciting because the continuity that I think can add something to it, their knowledge.”
Tina (36 years, teaching 10 years)
Tina (36 years, teaching 10 years)
• Lived experience
– Personal: Was a skilled medium distance runner as young. Her mother dies of cancer when she is 21 years old.
– Professional: Has early a notion about that she will become a teacher. Meets a very inspiring biology teacher at high school. Has recently changed to her present school in order to teach primarily lower secondary pupils. Has recently participated in devlepoing a curriculum within health and sex education for all public schools in the municipality.
• Social positioning
– Personal: Grew up in an area with blocks of flats. Moved away from home early. Married has two children.
– Professional: Is well integrated at her new school, has been trained and acted as a youth coach.
• Interest: Her interest is primarily emancipatory on behalf of her pupils, as she wants them to become whole humans.
• Truthfulness:
– Accuracy: She put most effort into teaching topics closest associated with health and sex education.
– Sincerity: She clearly states that not all topics has her interest.
– Fidelity: She covers the entire biology curriculum in a decent manner.
– Transparency: Her commitment towards the pupils in trouble is very evident in her relating to the pupils.
