Pragmatism, Pedagogy and Philosophy

A Model of Thought and Action in Action in Primary Technology and Science Teacher Education

DAN DAVIES

Bath Spa University College, Bath BA2 9BN, England; E-mail: d.davies@bathspa.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: This article reports on one outcome from a three-year study with pre-serviceprimary teachers at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. The purpose of the study wasto evaluate the influence of participants’ prior educational experience and beliefs about therelationship between design & technology (D&T) and science on their lesson planning forthese subjects during school placements. Data from the study support a three-domain modelof pre-service teachers’ thinking and action. When operating within the pragmatic domain,participants are primarily concerned with survival in the classroom, resulting in short-termplanning which may contradict their epistemological and curricular beliefs. In the pedagog-ical domain, the focus shifts from the pre-service teacher themselves and their immediatesurvival to the learning potential of the activities they plan. There is evidence that someparticipants have progressed to operating within a philosophical domain, leading to clasroompractice which reflects and re-conceptualises pre-service teachers’ core beliefs about the natureof, and relationship between, D&T and science.

Keywords: beliefs, design & technology, planning, pre-service teachers, primary, science

INTRODUCTION

Before the introduction of a national training curriculum (DfEE Circular4/98, TTA 2002), institutions of teacher education (ITEs) in England hada degree of flexibility in presenting the relationships between subjects inthe primary curriculum. This had particular implications for the relationshipperceived by pre-service teachers between the subject areas of design &technology (D&T) and science,1 reflecting wider uncertainty about therelationship between science and technology in society, concerning whichthere has been considerable debate (Gardner 1994). For example, there issome support in the literature for a widely-held view that technology andscience are virtually indistinguishable (Ziman 1968; Lauda 1985; Lelas1993), reflected in classroom practice in which they are treated as onesubject, or within which their differences are blurred. However, as currentlyrepresented in the National Curriculum for England (DfEE/QCA 1999)the differences between science and D&T are more clearly accentuatedthan their similarities; an example of what Gardner (1994) describes as ademarcationist model of their relationship, also with considerable support(Mitcham 1980, Cross & McCormick 1986, Wolpert 1992, Layton 1993).Another influential model, termed by Gardner technology as applied science(TAS), is associated with practice in which scientific knowledge is trans-ferred to D&T contexts (McCulloch, Jenkins & Layton 1985, Giere 1993)

International Journal of Technology and Design Education 13, 207–221, 2003. 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

but has come under criticism for making unrealistic assumptions aboutpupils’ transfer of knowledge from one context to another (McCormick &Murphy 1994).

Another implication of the TAS model is for a hierarchical relationshipin which science is seen as more important since it provides much of thecognitive content for D&T, a perception reinforced by the difference in statusof these subjects in school and training curricula (DfEE 1998). It is perhapsunsurprising therefore that several studies have found the TAS viewprevalent amongst pre-service and serving primary teachers (Aikenhead& Ryan 1992; Zoller & Ben-Chaim 1994; Johnston & Hayed 1995; Jarvis& Rennie 1996). It was concern that this belief, if left unchallenged, wouldlead to impoverished classroom practice in which the mutually supportiveconceptual and procedural links between D&T and science (Baynes 1992)would remain undeveloped, that prompted the author, a teacher educator,to undertake the study described below.

In considering how to challenge pre-service teachers’ beliefs, the stronginfluence of pre-course educational experience needs to be taken intoaccount. Britzman (1986, p. 443) asserts that:

“Prospective teachers . . . bring their implicit institutional biographies – the cumulativeexperience of school lives – which, in turn inform their knowledge of . . . curriculum.”

Tillema (1997) notes that on entry to courses such beliefs are ‘stable’ orembedded in relatively fixed patterns. Pre-service teachers’ ‘personaltheories’ about knowledge and teaching (Tann 1993), affect their attitudestowards university and school-based elements of their courses. Attemptsto shift these personal theories are often unsuccessful (Kennedy 1991;Haggerty 1995; Hauglustiane-Charlier 1997). It was therefore decided thata better understanding was needed of the ways in which pre-service teachers’beliefs concerning the relationship between D&T and science influence theirthinking about their planning for these subjects in the classroom. Byfocussing upon the interface between theories about the world and class-room practice it was hoped that an understanding of pre-service teachers’emerging professionalism in this area could be developed that might informteacher educators’ interventions to challenge beliefs.

Much has been written about the complex interactions between dif-ferent types of knowledge in the development of pre-service teachers. Forexample, Schulman (1987) refers to ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ –an understanding of how to plan and teach particular subject matter – whichbuilds upon teachers’ understanding of content, curriculum, pupils andpedagogy. Banks, Leach and Moon (1999) have refined Shulman’s modelto include a central role for ‘personal subject construct’: “. . . a complexamalgam of past knowledge, experiences of learning, a personal view ofwhat constitutes ‘good’ teaching and belief in the purposes of the subject.”John (1991a) found that student teacher’s lesson and activity planning wasinfluenced by their perceptions of the subject matter, and notes the impor-

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tance of ‘practical school-based factors’ on their practice. These and otherfactors can result in a situation in which:

“. . . serious mis-matches occur between the professed ‘philosophical stance’ of the teacherand the curriculum experiences provided.” (Hodson 1993, p. 26)

This observation draws upon the work of Schon (1983) who identifies thedistinction between ‘espoused theory’ (what we say we do) and ‘theoryin action’ (what we actually do) in relation to the work of professionals.Lacey (1977) found that pre-service teachers expressed different pedagog-ical beliefs in different settings (e.g. university seminar, staff-room). Thisstudy set out to explore the beliefs about technology and science espousedby pre-service teachers in a college setting at the beginning of their course,when pre-course influences might be expected to be strongest. These werethen compared with ‘beliefs-in-action’ evidenced through participants’planning for teaching science and D&T together in primary classrooms.Participants’ subsequent commentary on the reasons underlying theirplanning decisions, and later their reflections in the final (third) year ofthe course upon the changes in their beliefs and practice provided furtherevidence for constructing a model of professional development in this areathat could inform teacher educators’ interventions.

THE STUDY

As part of a research project at Goldsmiths’ College, London, a sampleof 126 pre-service primary teachers over three successive cohorts were givenquestionnaires to elicit their beliefs concerning the relationship betweenscience, design and technology in society and in the curriculum. Theywere each then asked to teach a short unit of work to a group of childrenin their first practice schools involving elements of D&T and science, forwhich they submitted their planning with a written rationale. The resultsof analysis of these data are presented elsewhere (Davies & Rogers 2000)and reveal significant mis-matches between espoused beliefs and planningapproaches for many of the 126 participants. In order to probe the reasonsunderlying these mis-matches the author analysed qualitative data from avolunteer sub-sample of 16 pre-service teachers who were interviewedfollowing the classroom experience and again in the final year of the course.They were asked to reflect upon their beliefs about the relationship betweentechnology and science, and the factors influencing the approaches they hadtaken to linking science and D&T in their planning. In the later interviewsthey were also asked to reflect upon the development of their beliefs andpractice in this area over the course. The theory developed from analysingthese data forms the substance of this article. The interview schedules,developed using a pilot sample, are in appendices 1 and 2.

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DATA ANALYSIS

The data from interview transcripts were analysed using a qualitative datamanagement package: ATLAS.ti – Visual Qualitative Data Analysis,Management and Model Building. This software can be used with the‘grounded theory’ approach of Glaser and Strauss (1967) allowing theresearcher to review each transcript several times, identifying portions oftext meaning to code in different ways (using a ‘free’ code to identify anunderlying issue, coding ‘in vivo’ using the text as a code name or codingaccording to a previously defined code). As the number of codes increases,they can be combined, re-defined or discarded, until those with the largestnumbers of attached quotations emerge as the set of issues most ‘grounded’in the data. These codes are then categorised into ‘families’ according totheir similarities and differences. The relationships between codes in familiescan also be mapped visually, enabling models to be constructed that canthen be related back to data. After generating 78 codes and experimentingwith a number of ways to group them within families (thus becoming‘immersed’ in the data), the author conceived of an organising principle thatgrouped the largest number of codes (56) under three headings: ‘prag-matic’ (14 codes relating to participants’ immediate classroom concerns),‘pedagogic’ (23 codes concerned with teaching and learning) and ‘philo-sophical’ (19 codes about beliefs and the relationship between technologyand science – see Table I). These family headings and their composite codesare well-represented in the data: a total of 104 coded utterances in 16transcripts, which were then reviewed to form the basis of the modelproposed below. In order to check the validity of this organising principle,the three families were presented to academic colleagues, who were alsoinvolved in conducting interviews, coding and analysing data to test thereliability of decisions made. In addition, findings were discussed withselected groups of participants to provide further validation.

TOWARDS A THEORETICAL MODEL

Figure 1 represents the pragmatic, pedagogic and philosophical concernsof the study participants. All three of these ‘domains’ of thought and action(which could also be conceived as different types of professional knowl-edge) are present to some extent in each of the 16 sub-sample participants,though each tended to favour a particular area, depending on their stageof development and ability to reflect upon their practice. Some individ-uals’ data suggest a progression from pragmatic through pedagogical tophilosophically-rooted practice, though this did not appear to be universaland the context appeared to greatly influence the type of response. Forexample, a pre-service teacher might be able to reflect philosophically uponthe relationship between science and technology in a low-pressure collegeenvironment, but then be forced into pragmatic ‘survival’ by a challenging

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Table I. Code Family ‘Philosophical’

Code Explanation of code

Academic credibility The extent to which science or D&T is perceived as having academic credibility within the curriculum

Belief not changed Student asserts that their beliefs about the nature of the subjects hadnot changed as a result of the course.

Confirmation Student confirms that judgements I have made about his/her beliefsand experience (elicited by questionnaire) are accurate.

Curriculum status Perceptions of the relative status which science and D&T enjoy in the current primary curriculum for England.

D&T revelation A radical shift in perception about the nature of D&T, largely owingto new experiences of the subject in college or school.

Influence – The influence of the Year 1 (or subsequent) college course on course content student’s perceptions of science and D&T.

Influence – course The influence of how the Year 1 college course has been taughtmethodology on student’s teaching and/or perceptions of science and D&T.

Influence – prior The influence of student’s prior experiences of learning science andexperience D&T on their approach to the college course and school assignment.

Ped/phil mismatch Student aware of a mismatch between their beliefs about science/D&T and the approach they adopted in the classroom for pedagogical reasons.

Philosophical Statement concerned with core beliefs about the essential nature of the two disciplines and their interrelationship.

Process/content Awareness of process and content issues in science and D&T, bothphilosophically and pedagogically.

Questionnaire effect The effect of eliciting student’s experience and beliefs through the questionnaire, both on their awareness of their own thinking andon their subsequent planning.

Science revelation Student’s new insights into science philosophy or pedagogy as a result of the course or school experience.

Shift – confusion A shift in belief or perception towards a point where science and D&T are no longer seen as distinct, but as two aspects of the sameentity (indistinguishable).

Shift from A shift in perception away from the belief that there are no linksdemarcationist between science and D&T.

Shift from A shift in perception away from the belief that science and D&T indistinguishable are indistinguishable.

Shift from TAS A shift in perception away from the belief that D&T is the application of scientific principles.

Shift to interactionist A shift in perception towards the belief that science and D&T, whilst each retaining its own distinct nature and purpose, are interdependent and interact in mutually beneficial ways.

Shift to overall A shift in perception towards the belief that D&T (or technology technologist generally) should be the principal context of a combined project,

with science elements introduced as and when necessary.

school placement. This would then account for a mis-match betweenespoused belief and classroom practice in that particular case.

Pragmatic concerns with survival on the course or in the school place-ment were understandably dominant for several respondents. The followingquote illustrates some of the anxieties created by the planning task:

“So my first thoughts were ‘how am I going to do that?’ because I was completelyunfamiliar with working with two (subjects).” (participant SI)

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Figure 1. Towards a model of pre-service teachers’ thought and action in considering therelationship between design & technology and science.

Thinking and behaviour in the pragmatic domain is characterised by ‘fittingin’ with the instructions of the supervising teacher, whose understandingof the curricular relationships involved may be different from the trainee’s:

“I think when you go into school you kind of get engulfed by the teacher’s attitudesand values, if they’ve been teaching for 10 years and have got stale and stagnant youget swallowed up by that attitude.” (participant AGS)

This meant for some participants that their planning reflected their classteachers’ beliefs about science and D&T, rather than their own. In thefollowing case, the pre-service teacher appears to have merely followedinstructions:

“I didn’t really choose because the teacher had already got her plans set up for the half-term so I explained to her what I had to do and she said – ‘This is what I’ve planned todo, would you mind doing that?’” (participant JK)

The allocation of timetable ‘slots’ for science and D&T also had prag-matic planning implications for some; the following situation in whichthe lower status subject did not receive timetable allocation during the periodin question was typical:

“. . . for this term there was no timetable D&T time but there was timetable for Scienceso it was much easier to say I was going to do a series of science lessons and mix inD&T than the other way round.” (participant SI)

Interviewees reported that it was often ‘easier’ to link work to a sciencetheme which may have many ‘threads’ capable of being drawn upon, ratherthan a pre-specified D&T project. Lack of time was often a spur towardssuperficial content-coverage in the classroom, since the process aspectsof both science and D&T needed to be curtailed, as in the followingexample:

Process is more difficult to manage often isn’t it, because you can’t give it so long, youhave to be flexible and give it that bit longer.” (participant MB)

The restriction of time available for the project therefore can be saidto have had potentially distorting effects upon the balance between scienceand D&T in the plans of students anxious to complete the assignment inthe time allotted. Restrictions on space also affected participants’ plans.In one case there was a corresponding restriction on time because of theconstant disruption caused by the position of the work table:

“. . . a lot of the things we were doing were physical and you had to stop and movewhen anybody wanted to walk past basically, so it was quite difficult.” (participant SI)

Moving the work space out of the classroom also had attendant behaviourproblems:

“and if you’re outside with them, away from the classroom, they’ll muck around justthat little bit more. Because they’re away from the teacher.” (participant JA)

Anxieties about perceived indiscipline constituted one of the major pre-occupations of participants in this early stage of their teacher education,

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prompting them to ‘play safe’ by producing plans for workable scienceand D&T activities with an implicit relationship ‘by default’ as it were,regardless of their deeper beliefs about the nature of the disciplines.

The model in Figure 1 places the pedagogical domain as a progressionfrom the pragmatic, since here the focus shifts from the pre-service teacherthemselves and their immediate survival to a more reflective role whichseeks to maximise the learning potential of the activities they plan. Inrelation to science and D&T, participants operating in the pedagogic zonetended to think carefully about contextualising learning experiences forchildren:

“. . . we’ve got a design and technology project coming up here; I could bring out theforces aspect of that again. This would put it in a different context that some of themwould pick it up, and it’ll certainly reinforce it.” (participant KA)

These decisions were sometimes independent of the set curriculum orinstructions of the teacher, so participants needed to exercise negotiationskills to teach a particular unit of work in the way they judged to be mosteffective pedagogically. One of the consequences of a more developedunderstanding of children’s learning was a rejection of the opportunistlinking of science and D&T – characteristic of ‘pragmatic’ practice – whichit was felt could lead to superficial D&T learning:

“. . . they didn’t explore the design and technology aspect as fully as they could becauseof the science connection. Perhaps they could have looked separately at packaging. . . .”(participant KA)

Pedagogical thinking involves identifying the significant technological andscientific learning outcomes from particular activities; for example thefollowing quotes show participant’s awareness of children’s learning aboutmaterials in both technological and scientific contexts:

“They’re making important decisions about using materials . . .” (participant AG)

“(You) have to have the science concepts clearly defined to enable them to understandthe making and designing of something.” (participant MF)

Reflecting upon the approach they had adopted was a significant featureof participants’ responses within this domain, even if it led to a certaindegree of self-justification, as in the following example:

“I do still feel that, in that particular instance they needed the knowledge first to underpinthe game they were making . . . the effect of friction, forces, which they could thenbring in when they were actually making the games, that stopped the cardboard orwhatever, shooting across the other side of the room.” (participant SI)

Although participants operating pedagogically expressed a well-developedunderstanding of the nature of primary science and D&T as expressed incurriculum documentation, they tended not to articulate a clear rationalefor the relationship between the subjects portrayed in their planning. Asidefrom their initial college sessions in science and D&T, which discussedthe nature of the subjects, much of the early part of their teacher educa-

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tion was focused upon pedagogy, helping them move from being ‘self-centred’ (pragmatic) to ‘learner-centred’. This emphasis upon the learner,whilst itself positive, may have over-ridden any conscious effort to maximisethe interaction between the scientific and designerly aspects of the plannedactivities, with the danger that unchallenged assumptions could later surface.

Those participants whose reflective comments moved beyond the ped-agogical zone began to deal with deeper aspects of thinking and learning,reflecting their core beliefs about the nature of science, design and tech-nology – statements coded in what the author chose to call the philosophicaldomain (see Table I). From the relative paucity of data in this zone itwould appear that participants’ personal subject constructs were rarelybrought to the surface when planning science and D&T experiences forchildren. Only when deliberately elicited by discussion were these personalphilosophies held up to the light of day and potentially challenged. Theinterviews provided an opportunity for participants to express their under-standing of the relationship between technology and science, e.g. thefollowing participant expressed an understanding of an interactionist modelof their relationship (Gardner 1994):

“. . . there is a, there is an interweaving, or a marriage of the two that you can’t separate.Because advances in science have come about because of the advances in design andtechnology. And vice versa.” (participant AG)

There was evidence of participants having their personal subject constructs(including images and beliefs) challenged by the science element of thecollege course:

“I think mine have changed in that now it’s a much broader concept – not just thescientist in the white coat and labs. I now see science as general and part of everyday life.”(participant DB)

Similarly, the content of the D&T module helped some to arrive at agreater appreciation of the functions of designer and technologist withinindustrial contexts:

“I think I see it in broader terms than I did. My ideas were originally based on myexperience, but I think I’ve come to appreciate more the process side of it, and how theclient aspect can influence the design of a product. These were things I wasn’t really awareof prior to the course.” (participant KA)

The course modules also raised awareness for some of the dimensions ofrelationship between science and D&T:

“I think in general I said that technology was the application of science, but there’s anawful lot of science which has got nothing to do with technology. . .” (participant JA)

These findings appear to challenge the general picture from the literaturethat pre-service teachers’ basic philosophies tend to be fairly stable andresistant to change.

Although there was less direct evidence than found by John (1991) thatparticipants’ subject constructs were directly influencing their classroom

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practice, some of the comments coded within the pedagogical domainacknowledged the influence of beliefs upon planning:

“. . . there is some part of me in the planning which obviously stems from my views. . . I’m sure that there would be subconscious ways that it’s had a major effect.”(participant DB)

“I think that because I see technology as applied science I’d look at building a founda-tion in the science aspect, so I’d have the concepts there.” (participant AG)

From the data presented here it would appear that most decisions aboutthe structuring of content in planning activities had been made on thebasis of pragmatic or pedagogical considerations. This would account formany of the mis-matches found between beliefs and planning from the largersample. However, when prompted to reflect more deeply, some partici-pants acknowledged the links between thought and action in thephilosophical domain, and it can be inferred that others had subconsciouslydrawn upon pre-existing subject constructs in their planning, even if in manycontexts these had been over-ridden by more immediate concerns.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The author’s three-part model of thought and action has been developedusing interview data from 16 pre-service teachers. This small sample sizesuggests caution in applying the model more widely, yet there are paral-lels with other models of professional knowledge in the teacher educationliterature (Lacey 1977; Schulman 1987; John 1991; Banks, Leach & Moon1999; Barlex et al. 1999). In particular it resonates with Lacey’s ‘action-idea systems (1977): “. . . (the) selection of ideas and actions and workingout their complex interrelationships in a given situation . . .” For the pre-service teachers in the study, their actions were undertaken in a particularsocial setting (the classroom) whilst their thoughts/ideas were elicited inanother (the university). It could be conjectured that the greater the per-ceived congruence between university and school expectations (for exampleif both were focused on pedagogical concerns), the more consistent mightbe the ‘idea-action systems’ in each situation. This context-dependentseparation between the ways pre-service teachers think and act in differentsituations is supported by John’s findings concerning lesson planning (1991)which clearly distinguish the ‘official’ university-based (philosophical)domain from that determined by practical (pragmatic) concerns.

The professional knowledge underpinning the three domains in the modelcan be related to Schulman’s categorisation (1987). For example the prag-matic domain appears to draw upon Schulman’s ‘curriculum knowledge’and ‘knowledge of educational contexts’, whereas participants operatingin the pedagogic domain were drawing upon ‘pedagogic content knowledge’and ‘knowledge of learners and their characteristics’. The philosophicaldomain in the model relates most closely to the pre-service teachers’

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‘personal subject construct’ defined by Banks et al. (1999) as lying at theintersection of school, subject and pedagogic knowledge. Barlex et al. (1999)piloted the use of this three-part subject construct model with pre-serviceteachers and their mentors in four different institutions across three coun-tries, with positive implications for trainees’ understanding of their ownpractice. However, the model proposed here differs from those of Bankset al. and others described above in that it suggests a progression fromsurface to deeper concerns, and that pre-service teachers tend to operatein each of the domains separately depending on context, rather than drawingupon them as overlapping spheres of professional knowledge. Pragmaticresponses appeared generally to address surface concerns – “what shall Ido with them?” – whereas philosophical utterances generally implied adeeper level of consideration:

“. . . when we go in we are conscious of other alternatives, other approaches we cantake . . . I feel that’s valuable because I’ve got a benchmark, some ultimate intention toaddress in my practice.” (participant MB)

It must be borne in mind that the model proposed here has been devel-oped with specific application to pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practicein the problematic relationship between science, technology and design inthe curriculum. A majority of those interviewed subscribed initially to a‘technology as applied science’ belief concerning this relationship, or haddifficulty articulating the differences between them (supporting findingsfrom Aikenhead & Ryan 1992; Zoller & Ben-Chaim 1994; Johnston &Hayed 1995; Jarvis & Rennie 1996). Although for most these positionshad not changed over the early part of their course (as suggested by Kennedy1991; Haggerty 1995; Tillema 1997) there is evidence of some shifts:

“I would see that the relationship extends in some way to the processes that you use. Thereare relationships there that I don’t think I recognised before.” (participant MB)

For teacher educators in primary technology and science this study suggeststhat pre-service teachers’ personal subject constructs, though in many casesincluding potentially distorted and unhelpful pictures of the relationshipbetween technology and science, may be less significant than pragmatic andpedagogical considerations in the classroom. Attempts to challenge orre-structure such beliefs therefore need to centre on the classroom context.For example, some interviewees in the study found that the inclusion of aschool-based assignment to explore the relationship between science andD&T in the classroom forced them to consider the nature of the subjectsin a new way, for example by appreciating the importance of technologyin relation to science:

“(I have gained) a gradual appreciation for the technology side of an activity. Because it’s,it’s getting children to think in a different way.” (participant AG)

The data relating to the pragmatic domain (above) emphasise the impor-tance of supervising teachers’ attitudes and beliefs in the professional actionof pre-service teachers. This suggests the need for closer partnership between

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ITEs and schools, sharing philosophy and pedagogy rather than focussingentirely on pragmatic concerns, enabling pre-service teachers to movebetween contexts without experiencing so profound a dissonance betweentheir espoused theories and practice.

Miles et al. (1994) refer to the ‘buffering’ effect of higher education insti-tutions between government diktat and classroom pedagogy, which theyperceive as in danger of erosion by the increasing involvement of schoolsin teacher training. This study suggests that, in the context of developingeffective links between technology and science in the primary classroom,this buffering process is not particularly effective. More engagementbetween ITEs and schools in the sharing of subject philosophy as sug-gested above may be a way forward in meeting this need.

APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE FOLLOWING FIRST EXPERIENCE OF

PLANNING FOR D&T AND SCIENCE

The purpose of this interview is to discuss the school-based assignment which you did foryour science and design and technology courses. I’m going to ask you about the factors whichinfluenced the things you did in the classroom, and what you have learned as a result.

1. What were your first thoughts when you were told about the assignment?– did you feel you knew what was required?– were you worried about any aspect of it?

2. When you came to plan for the activities in the classroom, did you choose design &technology or science as your starting point? – why?

3. Were you more or less free to do what you wanted, or were there lots of school-basedconstraints?– the attitude of the teacher?– the organisation and grouping of the classroom?– the ages and abilities of the children?– the curriculum?

4. What do you think was the overall balance in your classroom activity between scienceand design and technology?– was one more important than the other?– does that reflect your thinking about science and D&T in the curriculum?– does it reflect your thinking about technology and science in society?

5. Do you think the children knew whether they were doing science or design andtechnology?– did it matter?

6. Thinking back to your experiences of learning these subjects at school, how muchinfluence do you think that had on your approach to this assignment?– do you think it affected your attitude towards the Year 1 courses?– can you give me any examples?

7. Have there been aspects of your Year 1 courses which have changed your attitudes towardsscience or D&T? – again, can you think of examples?

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8. Do you think that this assignment, and the courses in general, have given you a clearerunderstanding of the relationship between science and D&T in the primary curriculum?– could you put that understanding into words?

APPENDIX 2. INTERVIEW SCHEDULE DURING FINAL (3RD) YEAR OF THE

BA(ED) COURSE

The purpose of this interview is to consider the ways in which your views may have changedover the course, and the extent to which this is reflected in your planning for science andD&T activities on school experience. With this in mind it would be helpful if you could reviewand reflect upon your planning from the most recent experience, and bring it with you tothe interview.

Consider the following questions:

1. In what ways (if at all) do you think your beliefs about the nature of science have changed?

2. In what ways (if at all) do you think your beliefs about the nature of D&T have changed?

3. In what ways (if at all) do you think your beliefs about the relationship between scienceand D&T have changed?

4. What have been the major influences on these changes?– from the college course– from school experience

5. How have your views on the ways in which science and D&T should be taught inschools changed during the course?

6. Again, can you identify the significant factors causing these changes?

7. To what extent do you now feel more confident in planning for science and D&Tactivities in the classroom?

8. To what extent do you feel the course has enabled you to be more reflective in planningand teaching science and D&T?

9. If you now had to plan a science and D&T unit of work in schools, what factors wouldinfluence your decision as to which subject to start with, and focus upon?

NOTE

1 ‘D&T’ refers to the subject taught in England and Wales under the more general, inter-nationally recognised heading of ‘technology education’. The use of the latter term (or‘technology’) in this article is to broaden the discussion for an international audience.‘Technology’ and ‘D&T’ are used to refer to the same aspect of the primary curriculum,although the author acknowledges that they are not synonymous.

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