TEACHING PHYSICS INVESTIGATIONS: AN
EXPLORATION OF FIVE PRE-SERVICE PHYSICS
TEACHERS’ FIRST ATTEMPTS TO TEACH PHYSICS
INVESTIGATION SKILLS
Olga Gioka
ABSTRACT
This paper explores five students’ attempts to teach physics investigations in the real world classroom during their
initial student teaching practicum, including their struggles and successes. Physics investigations are not a
common element of the Greek school physics curriculum. Instead, much emphasis is given to teach scientific
concepts, laws and theories. During this initiative, the study reports on the dilemmas faced by the participant
teachers as they struggle to find time to teach investigations and investigation skills. We report on their
achievements and how they found time to teach investigation skills. Secondly, the five case studies show the
participants as both learners and teachers (Kelly, 2000). Our goal as physics teacher educators is to help preservice teachers create a ‘learning community’ (Dufour, 2004) and support them over a period of a nine-month
period in exploring and planning their approach to laboratory work and putting these plans into action with their
classes. The importance of collaboration has become an increasingly central theme and we recognize the need to
build professional learning communities, which are necessary to sustain the program (Garet et al., 2001). This
work adds to and helps guide physics teacher educators in identifying the difficulties that pre-service teachers
experience in the implementation of teaching physics investigations and investigation skills. More importantly, it
gives information on the pressure and frustrations that teachers face when struggling with high-stakes examination
preparation and demands. Data from individual interviews, classroom observations and discussions of the
‘learning community’ have explored teachers’ thinking and the purpose of practical work in the context of the
secondary physics curriculum in Greece.
KEY WORDS
pre-service physics teacher education, transition from school to classroom, teaching investigations, professional
‘learning communities’.
INTRODUCTION
Traditional models of student teaching practicum form a natural bridge for students to make the
transition from student to teacher. This practice provides students with opportunities to experience
what they have learnt in classrooms regarding teaching. Unfortunately, just learning the methodology
behind teaching a subject does not necessarily guarantee transfer of successful teaching of that subject
into the classroom. Specifically, this work investigates the transition from university courses to
practical experiences in the classroom by exploring five students’ attempts to teach physics
investigations in the real world classroom during their initial student teaching practicum, including their
struggles and successes.
Practical work in secondary physics teaching is not common in Greece. Since experimental work is not
included in the science curriculum, teaching of practical work is not included in pre-service training. In
other words, prospective teachers do not receive formal training about how to teach practical work. The
project involved five physics teachers to see how they could incorporate physics investigations and the
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teaching of investigation skills. It is a nine-months project, which started in April 2008; hence, it is still
under development. During the first three months, several aspects of the teaching and learning process
were changed. As well as improving teaching methods to help students make a plan of the investigation
and preliminary work, the teachers tried out a number of strategies to help students carry out
investigations. These strategies mainly aimed to help students with ‘concepts of evidence’, a term
introduced to include understandings related to the evaluation of the quality of empirical data (Millar et
al, 1994; Gott and Duggan, 1995).
This fact presents a need for greater understanding and familiarity with how to teach investigations and
related guided practice within the pre-service experience (Beck, Czerniak and Lumpe, 2000). Through
providing prior experience in exploring an investigation classroom, appropriate instructional and
assessment strategies related to investigations, and establishing trusting relationships between mentor
teachers and science experts, pre-service physics teachers can experience a more interconnected and
valuable experience in the classroom (Crawford, 1999). However, just incorporating good teaching into
a science investigation course does not guarantee transfer into the secondary classroom.
EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT PRACTICES IN INVESTIGATIONS
Research on practical work attached much importance to a good understanding of empirical evidence in
students. Driver and her team argued that pupils would need to develop a good understanding of the
relationship between empirical data and scientific theory (Driver et al, 1996). It was stressed that pupils
have to develop a good understanding of the ways in which knowledge has been established and
validated.
In engaging students in appropriate laboratory activities, the teacher has many challenging roles to play.
The teacher may model problem-solving strategies, facilitate discussion of scientific practices, concepts
and theories, assist and support students. Moreover, a holistic approach to teaching and assessing
laboratory work places many demands on the teacher. The teacher has to make decisions among
carefully sequenced and teacher-directed investigation tasks where s/he models the intended learning
process and outcomes. Simple holistic investigations where students are given more freedom and
perform independently of the teacher may be included. The implication, therefore, is that a key task for
student teachers is to communicate effectively to pupils what the teaching goals of the investigation are,
to differentiate between the aim of answering the question being investigated and the teaching goals of
the activity and give ‘good’ quality feedback. In the actual laboratory situation the teacher has a dual
role to play: s/he has to facilitate and support the learning process, whilst for summative assessment
purposes, the teacher has to assess, examine and award a grade to each of the students.
In conclusion, research studies in the literature suggest that teachers need to develop and implement
appropriate teaching strategies that will facilitate more meaningful and holistic science learning when
they do science in the school laboratory. Secondly, teachers should develop appropriate assessment
strategies in order to be able to find out what students learn and understand in doing science. Teachers
have to set out clear goals for students’ learning outcomes which have to be consistent with the
assessment goals. The holistic approach to teaching and assessing practical work places much
importance on the role of the teacher and makes her role very demanding. Towards this direction,
teacher professional development is crucial in helping teachers to become more effective in developing
and implementing appropriate teaching and assessment strategies.
For understanding to become meaningful in science investigations, three types of knowledge are needed
(Krajcik et al, 1998): content knowledge, enquiry and problem-solving knowledge and thirdly,
epistemic knowledge. Content knowledge refers to the central concepts, scientific ideas and principles
in a domain. It is the subject matter of the topic to be taught. Content knowledge is only one type of
knowledge essential for students’ understanding.
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Enquiry and problem-solving knowledge is a second type of knowledge and a third one is epistemic
knowledge. Enquiry and problem-solving knowledge enables the learner to solve problems and find
answers to questions by either carrying out experimental investigations or seeking and using relevant
information. The ability to formulate good questions, to design and carry out the enquiry, obtain and
analyze data, and develop explanations are important aspects of enquiry and problem-solving
knowledge. Enquiry and problem-solving knowledge also includes meta-cognitive strategies (strategies
that learners use to think about their own learning) that help monitor a learner’s progress. A student
with strong meta-cognitive strategies will be able to track how well she is performing a task from the
very first section of planning and predicting, obtaining evidence, analysing and explaining evidence.
For example, how well she uses the plotted graph to support an explanation and conclusion.
Thirdly, another component is epistemic knowledge, which is knowledge about the ‘rules of the game’ the knowledge of what ‘counts’ as evidence. For example, there are ‘rules’ in science that help to
understand what ‘counts’ as evidence and lay the foundation for ‘good’ quality evaluations.
Important issues related to the teaching and assessment of investigations are in close connection with
each of the components of an investigation. In each investigation, students progress through four
phases: prediction and planning, data collection, analysis of evidence and conclusions, evaluation of the
whole task. Consequently, we are interested in:
• what ‘counts’ as good quality of prediction and planning,
• what ‘counts’ as good quality of obtaining evidence,
• what ‘counts’ as good quality of analysis,
• what ‘counts’ as good quality of explanation and,
• what ‘counts’ as good quality of evaluation.
One argument developed in this study is that a view of quality based on the task analysis should serve
as a principal basis of the criteria on which teachers and learners set out goals and design, select and use
tasks for teaching. A clear view of quality based on task analysis can also serve as the most important
basis for the assessment of students’ attainment. Secondly, a view of what constitutes ‘good’ quality
work informs teachers about what feedback they should give, which has to be related to the nature and
the demands of the task. It enables the teacher to develop good questioning strategies based on the
demands, in order to guide students towards clear goals and most importantly, to communicate the
intended quality of work in the classroom.
With particular reference to investigative skills, teachers need to:
• explicitly teach students investigative science and how to write the report. Investigative science
needs teaching and practicing just as the teaching of physics theory. Students should not just be
expected to use investigative science by themselves but they should have opportunities to develop
them in situations where they are fully supported by their teacher. This argument was already made
by other research studies (i.e. Gott and Duggan, 2003; Watson et al, 1999). Millar and his
colleagues argued in favour of an ‘explicit teaching’ of procedural understanding with particular
emphasis on the concepts of evidence: “Understanding of empirical evidence and of criteria for
evaluating the quality of evidence need to be explicitly addressed through the curriculum” (Millar et
al, 1994).
• generate a sequence of learning goals and objectives informing the development of instruction in
the area of investigations in secondary physics teaching. The teaching goals have been put in an
order in terms of the difficulty and the demands they place on teachers and students. The purpose is
firstly, to give inexperienced teachers some suggestions about what learning goals to set out and in
what order. Secondly, to give them ideas about the instructional and assessment tasks to be devised
so that teachers ‘diagnose’ and promote students’ development in investigation skills.
• It is a matter of professional judgment for the teacher to increase the demands/complexity of the
task or reducing the support/assistance provided.
• There has to be variation in the level of and the difficulty of theoretical understanding and the
process skills - analysis of experimental evidence and graphing skills. The teacher has to consider
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•
the complexity of the interaction between theoretical understandings and investigative skills. For
example, the level of scientific ideas might be kept low so that the teacher may teach higher level
investigative skills. And vice versa, low-level investigative skills can be appropriate for exercises
involving a higher level of scientific ideas.
It is in the teacher’s judgment to select from a range of teaching strategies: teacher-directed or
explicit instruction, modeling the process of drawing and interpreting a graph, guiding,
‘scaffolding’ students’ thinking, giving personal attention to students, asking questions and giving
oral feedback, and finally withdrawing his/her assistance for students to be more independent and
perform tasks on their own.
Moreover, we wanted to underline that for teachers to achieve the goal of communicating and being
explicit about the quality of performance in investigations and in the lab report, they need to attend to
the following issues:
• Firstly, teachers need to become fully conscious of what is involved in each of the four sections of
an investigation activity (prediction and planning, set of experimental results, analysis and
conclusions, evaluation) informed by the task analysis of each task.
• Secondly, teachers need to become fully conscious of how the different sections relate to one
another, in order to develop meaningful understandings of what makes a ‘good’ piece of
coursework in students. For example, the quality of evidence is closely related to the quality of
graphs and subsequently, the quality of graphs is important, since the graph is a source of evidence
for analysis/explanation and evaluation purposes. Meaningful understandings enhance the
development of self-monitoring and meta-cognitive skills in students.
• Thirdly, instruction has to clearly show the ‘common’ themes among investigation tasks and how
learning builds upon already taught aspects and skills. This will help with issues of transfer of
investigative skills between different contexts and topics.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION – TEACHER LEARNING COMMUNITIES
It was decided to design the program around the following three components:
• Introducing and developing student teachers’ understanding about the quality of investigations,
• Creating an environment of collegiality and collaboration among teachers, an environment that
encourages reflection and their work in classroom and,
• Providing teachers with opportunities to develop professionally.
Based on the notion of “community of practice” (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1996) we have tried to establish
a collaborative community environment, where the discourse is focused around issues of ‘quality’
related to investigation tasks. The aim is for the participant teachers to coach their peers in order to
develop and implement the intended practices. In addition, we will help them improve their teaching by
introducing a variety of activities and by providing them with feedback regarding their classroom
teaching. The learning community is to support the development of an environment that enables
student teachers to share ideas, critically evaluate new notions, openly discuss new concepts and reach
conclusions that eventually lead to their ability to make valid and effective decisions and to take
responsibility.
Teachers will bring artefacts (videotapes of teaching, plans, assessment of teaching) (DarlingHammond and Snyder, 2000) from their lessons that they could use as evidence to justify their current
level of accomplished practice within the particular area of science that they are developing. They will
exemplify good teaching in their own class. They observe each others’ classrooms – a good example of
combining the study group and coaching strategies. We want student teachers to learn in a way that
models how they need to teach; they learn together; and they apply their learning to their own teaching.
The course was designed around developing concepts of quality of different parts of investigations:
planning, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation and evaluation. Eylon and Bagno (2006)
argued that since learning is a slow process, it is essential to allow time for teachers to learn in a
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meaningful way. Eylon and Bagno carried on to underlining that the real context of teaching and ongoing guidance are important ingredients in programs that would allow teachers to change existing
practices.
Our study is a collaborative research project attempting to transform conclusions and implications from
research into practice. The importance of collaboration has become an increasingly central theme and
we recognize the need to build professional learning communities, which are necessary to sustain the
program (Dufour, 2004). Our aim is to make an explicit attempt to ‘grow informed communities of
practice’ in the teaching of science in the particular area of physics investigations.
Teachers face many competing pressures on a daily basis. Without support and special opportunities to
test innovative approaches, it is difficult for them to take on new and more demanding approaches to
teaching by introducing investigations. At a minimum, teachers need support from colleagues and
school leaders as they make changes to their practice.
We want to emphasize the importance of teachers’ subject and pedagogical content knowledge, but also
to describe ideal conditions for challenging teacher development:
• a committed and supportive professional development,
• a school culture of reflective practice and collaboration and,
• a partnership of trust between the teachers and the researchers’ group (Garet et al, 2001).
The program has made provision for student teachers to learn new strategies and try new approaches in
the classroom with regard to teaching investigations. Particular attention has been given to the
development of good questioning strategies so that teachers support pupils with ‘good’ questions. The
teacher should ask and support pupils to make their own plans and explain them, s/he should provide
feedback so that pupils improve their plans before they start the actual investigation task, identifying
clear learning outcomes and criteria of good quality and criteria of assessment.
Our goal as physics teacher educators is to help pre-service teachers have an easy transfer from personal
university experiences to teaching physics in the “real” classroom school environment while
maintaining the integrity of newly learned teaching strategies (Segall, 2001). In addition, practice
teaching methods provides opportunities for students to make judgments about their effectiveness in a
classroom based on their content knowledge and application of pedagogical skills (Kelly, 2000).
Within this situation, pre-service teachers struggle to find their own style of teaching science and to
learn to reflect as both learners and teachers (Kelly, 2000) in order to build their own practice.
RESEARCH DESIGN
The descriptive case study approach used here seeks to identify patterns and themes emerging from five
student teacher experiences with teaching physics investigations in the classroom. This work fits with
Huberman and Miles (1994) iterative research model by examining data collected through an analytic
inductive approach. This study attempts to identify patterns and themes by examining one major
question: What barriers affected student teachers performance when they tried to develop methods to
teach physics investigations?
According to Shulman, “case knowledge is knowledge of specific, well-documented, and richly
described events. Whereas cases themselves are reports of events or sequences of events, the
knowledge they represent is what makes them cases. The cases may be examples of specific instances
of practice- detailed descriptions of how an instructional event occurred- complete with particulars of
contexts, thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, they may be exemplars of principles, exemplifying
in their detail a more abstract proposition or theoretical claim” (Shulman, 1995, p 128).
Teachers observed in this study were physics students in their fourth and fifth year of study in an
undergraduate physics program at a Greek University.
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To form a complete picture of struggles and problems of student teachers five forms of data were used.
These included student teachers’ self-reports collected several times throughout the program,
observations of study groups, interviews with the student teachers throughout the experience,
observation of the meetings of teacher learning communities’ and lesson observations. The researcher
combined all forms of data and identified patterns and themes emerging from each individual case, then
compared and contrasted each case to further explore the findings. To further strengthen the case study
approach, a second researcher analyzed the data and offered suggestions for interpretation. Each
student teacher’s experiences along with combined observations are given as individual case studies.
However, for reasons of limited space, in this paper, we report on common themes and patterns
emerging from the data.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Since the project is still under development, we report here some preliminary results. Most of the
observed lessons were teacher-centered and lecture-oriented, relying heavily on handouts and overhead
lecture notes. Student teachers taught investigations too traditionally and did not use enough inquiry
based learning activities. They reported that they were “constrained by time” and felt they “could not
teach investigations the way they would’ve liked to”. Time constraints forced them to teach by using a
more traditional approach because they did not have time to ask pupils for their plans and discuss their
plans with them for modifications.
From the five students, only two had a clear lesson structure and encouraged active participation and
learning on the part of the pupil. Each lesson engaged students throughout, students were excited to
share their findings, and interested to see what the ‘next step’ might be. Each of their lessons included
clear criteria for assessment and matched learning outcomes. However, most of them through this first
practicum experience until their final experience demonstrated a solid development of progress and
application of teaching methods into successful student teaching practice.
Each of the student teachers found that the course provided a stable foundation for their planning and
classroom teaching even though they all noticed a change in them upon entering classroom. Some felt
that the university courses did not adequately prepare them for the actual dynamic of the classroom and
pupil behaviours, which is in line with Kelly’s (2000) and Segall’s (2001) assumptions that many
strategies are lost when pedagogy and content do not connect.
In addition, the participant student teachers felt constrained by school policies on assessment and
pupils’ preparation for exams. They referred to the school policy and constraints to innovation.
In spite of the reality of the school classroom versus the theoretical aspects of the university classroom,
each student effectively integrated teaching and assessment methods for investigations into their
classroom (Kelly, 2000). Each of them felt they accomplished their goals and that students learned
what was intended. Despite limitations of time and the curriculum, student teachers came away with a
belief that practical work and physics investigations are an important and integral part of the
curriculum. Each student teacher noted that they were well prepared and able to teach physics
investigations in their classroom as they were taught in the university course.
Although the school experiments are relatively easy compared to the ones that students are involved
during their overall study in physics, our students have difficulties in planning an experiment/
investigation without having received detailed instructions. It may be the case that they carry out
experiments in the lab in full detail.
The experience of these five student teachers offers an interesting guide for physics educators in
identifying pre-service teachers experience in the transfer from university courses to classroom practice.
Each student has appropriately incorporated their university classroom learning into their student
teaching experience even while adjusting to the differing conditions of the schools. Each student has
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planned extensively before entering the classroom and found this had demonstrated both positive and
negative aspects. Positive in that they felt they have been prepared upon entering the classroom, and
negative in that often major changes needed to occur before instruction was completely successful.
Perhaps the greatest barriers students experienced were the lack of time to complete activities during
practical work. Each student developed a solid definition of investigations and practical work and its
consequent application in the secondary classroom.
This study has offered helpful insights into the transfer and combination of university instruction,
student teaching planning and delivery of science instruction by student teachers, has identified the
barriers affecting student teachers during their practicum. This work provides positive feedback that
there have been areas that are working well within our student teaching model of practice and signal
that we are definitely moving in the appropriate direction (Sullivan et al, 2000) in our efforts to train
physics teachers to teach science and in particular, physics investigations effectively in the secondary
classroom.
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Olga Gioka
Physics Department
University of Ioannina
GR- 45110 Dourouti, Ioannina
Email: ogioka@cc.uoi.gr
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