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Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 525–541

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From beginning teacher education to professional teaching:A study of the thinking of Hong Kong primary science teachers

Winnie W.M. Soa,�, David A. Watkinsb

aDepartment of Science, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10, Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories,

Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong, ChinabFaculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Rm 415 Runme Shaw Building, Pokfulam Road,

Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong, China

Abstract

This is a longitudinal study of the thinking about teaching science of beginning Hong Kong primary teachers. The

research explores how their thinking changed from pre-service teacher education through to their first year as classroom

teachers. It takes a more holistic view of teacher thinking than typical in the literature considering the nature,

interrelationships, and changes over time of four major aspects: conceptions, planning, teaching, and reflection. Positive

findings were that the majority of participants became more constructivist in terms of their conceptions and practice of

teaching, but they also tended to become more simplistic in planning and less coherent in thinking as they progressed

from pre-service teacher education to beginning teachers in schools.

r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Teacher thinking; Conceptions; Science teaching; Planning; Constructivist teaching; Reflection

1. Introduction

The area of teacher thinking has been a majorfocus of research for about 20 years now.However, most of this previous research hastended to focus narrowly on discrete and isolatedcomponents of teacher thinking processes (Calder-head, 1987, 1996; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Clark &

e front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserv

te.2005.03.003

ng author. Tel.: +852 2948 7656;

7676.

sses: [email protected] (W.W.M. So),

.hku.hk (D.A. Watkins).

Yinger, 1987; Halkes & Olson, 1984; Moallem &Earle, 1998; Pope, 1993). There is also evidencethat the emphasis of earlier studies on teachers’thought processes had little reference to subjectmatter knowledge (Fischler, 1999). Shulman(1986, p. 6) referred to this as the ‘‘missingparadigm’’ in the study of teaching. Moreover,there has been little research in a non-Westerncontext although research has indicated significantcultural influences in teaching and learning (Ste-venson & Stigler, 1992; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999;Watkins & Biggs, 1996, 2001). The presentresearch intends to fill the gaps identified in

ed.

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previous studies by having a subject-focus, byconsidering mutually interactive aspects of think-ing, and by studying Hong Kong Chinese teachereducation students.

To accomplish the goal of having a more holisticview of teacher thinking, this research focuses onfour aspects embedded in the study of teacherthinking: (1) conceptions of teaching and learningscience; (2) planning; (3) teaching; and (4) reflec-tions. The possible change in each aspect, theinterrelationships of the four aspects and changesin these interrelationships from pre-service teachereducation to beginning teaching are the mainfocuses of this longitudinal study.

2. Teacher thinking

Recently, research on teaching and learning hasshifted from a unidirectional emphasis on correlatesof observable teacher behaviour with studentachievement to a focus on teachers’ thinking,beliefs, planning and decision-making processes(Calderhead, 1996; Fang, 1996). Clark and Peterson(1986) argued that these latter four aspects con-stitute a large part of the psychological context ofteaching. An understanding of the characteristics ofteachers’ professional thinking is thus an essentialcomponent in providing a more complete accountof teachers’ actions, their antecedents and theirconsequences (Floden & Klinzing, 1990). With anemerging image of teachers as ‘‘thoughtful profes-sionals’’ who inspire and facilitate higher orderlearning in students (Peterson, 1988), many Wes-tern studies now focus on teachers’ cognition andthinking as well as their behaviour. A systematicstudy of teachers’ thinking is a move towards abetter understanding of teaching and learning.

Halkes and Olson (1984, p. 1) spelt out thefundamental aim of many researchers of teacherthinking: ‘‘Looking from a teacher thinkingperspective at teaching and learning, one is notso much striving for the disclosure of the effectiveteacher, but for the explanation and understandingof the teaching processes as they are’’. The modelof teachers’ thought and action developed byClark and Peterson (1986) helps to visualize howresearch on teacher thought processes comple-

ments the larger body of research on teaching.Their model depicted and differentiated twodomains in the process of teaching: (a) unobser-vable teachers’ thought processes, and (b) tea-chers’ actions and their observable effects. Thismodel was elaborated by Clark and Yinger (1987)who stated that the beliefs, values and norms thatteachers come to have faith in and use mostfrequently to guide their practice are thoseconsistent with predictions that have ‘‘worked’’in the complex and demanding classroom arena.According to Calderhead (1987), the contribu-

tions of research on teacher thinking at that timeincluded the recognition of the complexity of theprofessional domain in which teachers work, therole of teacher thinking in curriculum innovationsand the conceptualization of the process ofprofessional development and how pre-serviceand in-service education could enhance it. Calder-head then edited a collection of work by research-ers relating teacher thinking to the understandingof teacher professional development in 1993.These later studies showed a shift of the researchfrom mainly focusing on descriptions of teacherthinking to a focus on improving teaching. Webelieve that research on teacher thinking canindeed generate valuable findings that will providepractical implications for improving teaching andteacher education.

2.1. Conceptions of teaching and learning

‘‘Investigations of teachers’ and student tea-chers’ conceptions about teaching and learning areembedded in a research paradigm, that, under thenotion of teachers’ thinking aims at identifyingteachers’ cognition in the context of teaching’’(Fischler, 1999, p. 174). In a review of researchinto cross-cultural perspectives of good teaching,Watkins (1997) attempted to compare conceptionsof teaching in the Western and non-Westerncultures. He found that some conceptions ofteaching, such as the knowledge transmissionconception, were found in both Western andEastern cultures. However, some other concep-tions of teaching, like the fostering of good moralconduct were common in Eastern but not ascommon in Western cultures. Since conceptions of

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teaching are commonly accepted as contextdependent (Marton & Booth, 1997) and a sub-stantial body of conceptions of teaching has beenexplored in Western culture, it is valuable to havestudies with local Hong Kong teachers on theirconceptions of teaching, in order to have a betterunderstanding of how Hong Kong Chinese tea-chers conceptualize teaching and learning.

There has been a growing interest in scienceteachers’ thoughts, especially teachers’ subjectmatter knowledge and their conceptions of teach-ing and learning science (de Jong, Korthagen, &Wubbels, 1998). There are different theories thatportray different epistemologies of science (Fleer& Hardy, 1996). For instance, the transmissionview mainly rests upon the perception of science tobe a well-established body of knowledge, facts andtruths of the natural world; the interaction viewrests upon the conceptual understanding of sciencewhile the inquiry view is based on the perceivedneed for investigation and discovery.

2.2. Teacher planning

The authors consider that the planning ofteaching is a crucial component in the study ofteacher thinking. Shulman (1987) describes plan-ning as passing on the wisdom of practice.Implementation in teaching means acting on thatwisdom (Reinhartz & Beach, 1997). Decisionsmade by teachers while planning instruction havea profound influence on their classroom behaviour(Shavelson, 1987). To understand teacher planningmeans to understand how teachers interpretsubject knowledge and prepare the presentationof their teaching prior to the presence of pupils (So& Watkins, 1997). As Frieberg and Driscoll (1996)describe the relationship between planning andimplementation, planning provides the frameworkfor teaching: ‘‘the execution of the plan mayrequire several adjustments along the way y Thechanging dynamics of the classroom reduce thecertainties of the lesson plan’’ (p. 41). Moreover,Calderhead (1993) stated that planning involvesissues of values and beliefs. Research into teacherthinking regarding the relationship between plan-ning and conceptions of teaching and learning mayindicate how this pattern is established.

2.3. The practice of teaching

Learners are now commonly viewed as activeparticipants in the learning process, activelyconstructing meaning through experience. For thisreason Solomon (1997) believed that how teachersteach children is at least as important as whatteachers teach. Since learning involves the activeconstruction of meaning by the student, and is notsomething that is imparted by the teacher (Driver& Oldham, 1986), and the didactic approach toteaching has been shown to be ineffective indeveloping students’ conceptual understanding(Carin, 1993), there has been call for a shift inthe focus of instruction from mechanical drill andpractice towards teaching for understanding. Anemphasis on constructivism and hands-on inquiry-oriented instructions to promote children’s con-ceptual knowledge by building on prior under-standing, active engagement with the subjectcontent, and applications to real world situationhas been advocated in science lessons (Stofflett &Stoddart, 1994).Tobin (1993) remarked that as ‘‘constructivism

has become increasingly populary. in the past tenyearsy. it represents a paradigm change in scienceeducation’’ (p. ix). Scott, Asoko, Driver, andEmberton (1994) ‘‘science learning, viewed froma constructivist perspective, involves epistemolo-gical as well as conceptual development’’ (p. 219).The collaborative effort among researchers andteachers on constructivist teaching is designed toencourage teaching which takes account of theprior ideas and understanding of children in thedevelopment of specific concepts in science, and tostress the need to provide prospective scienceteachers with a model for constructivist learningsituations. In light of the advantages of construc-tivist views in enhancing pupils’ learning, suchviews are taken as a referent of the better practiceof teaching in this research.

2.4. Teacher reflection

There is general agreement that the goal ofpreparing reflective practitioners is a major aim ofteacher education around the world today. Thisemphasis on reflection has its roots in the writing

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of John Dewey but the current impetus stemmedfrom the work of Schon (1983). Schon argued thatthe ‘reflective practitioner’ needs to reflect criti-cally on the meaning of his or her thoughts andactions as a route to the enhancement of profes-sional practice. The process of reflection is definedas reviewing, reconstructing, re-enacting andcritically analyzing one’s own and the class’sperformance, and grounding explanation in evi-dence (Shulman, 1987).

There have been a number of different frame-works proposed for the analysis of teachers’reflective thinking. For example, Sparks-Langer,Simmons, Pasch, Colton, and Starko (1990)developed a framework to distinguish seven levelsof language and thinking. Smyth (1989) suggesteda useful reflective model consisting of stagesdefined by a series of questions. Pang’s (1996)PIC model of reflective practice suggested that anyreflection can be analysed in terms of threedimensions to provide a clearer picture of thevarious aspects of the reflective process. Grossmanand Stodolsky (1994) cautioned that ‘‘contexts canact, in their various ways, to either enable orconstrain the enactment of teacher theories inpractice’’ (p. 180). It is hoped that an analysis ofteachers’ reflection would help to bring out thecontextual constraints that mediate their thoughtsand practice.

3. Method

3.1. Research questions

The focus of this study was on the fouridentified salient aspects of teacher thinking:conceptions, planning, teaching and reflection,the relations between them and changes acrosstime. In particular answers to the following weresought:

1.
What was the nature and changes in these fouraspects of teacher thinking over time, fromteacher education to first teaching year?
2.
To what extent were the four aspects of teacherthinking related to each other?
Although in-depth qualitative methods wereadopted here to identify and explore the thinkingof participants, transformation of the collectedand examined qualitative protocol, observationsand interview data into numbers, and statisticaltechnique were then used to examine relationshipsand changes over time.

3.2. Participants

The participants were pre-service teachers, whohad a science background in their senior secondaryeducation and were enrolled in the Certificate inPrimary Education Course at the Hong KongInstitute of Education. Twenty-five student tea-chers, the entire class taking the Science Curricu-lum Studies module, were invited to be theparticipants, and were followed over 3 years: their2 years of teacher education and their first year asbeginning teachers. Their first year of teachereducation included micro-teaching and the secondyear 8 weeks of teaching practice in schools. Thereason for inviting all the class to participate wasto allow for the possibility of drop-out of subjectsfrom the research due to unforeseeable factorssuch as opportunities to be involved in teachingscience topics during teaching practice and begin-ning teaching. It turned out that nine of theoriginal subjects were actually involved in teachingscience in their first year of teaching.

3.3. Measures

Different research techniques were employed inorder to explore each of the four aspects of teacherthinking. These were: (1) interviews to captureteachers’ conception; (2) drawing concept mapsthat describe planning; (3) lesson observations toassess practice; and (4) analyzing reflection ofteaching.The interviews were designed to explore student

teachers’ conceptions which includes ideas aboutchildren’s prior conceptions; choice of effectiveteaching strategies; teachers’ role in science classes;children’s learning of science in classroom; and thedifficulties children encounter in learning science.Extra questions were included in later stages of thestudy to allow exploration of changes and factors

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influencing the changes. Teachers were asked todraw concept maps depicting their views and ideasof the important and key concepts of thecomponents and process of planning lessons. Theirteaching was observed once every year, in totalthree times, throughout the longitudinal study tocapture their extent of constructivist teaching.Data was recorded in different ways that includedobservational field notes, video and tape record-ings. After each lesson observation, the studentteachers were asked to keep a written record toreflect on what they thought and did in the processof planning to actual classroom teaching, as wellas the factors that influenced their teaching.

3.4. Data analysis

Teachers’ views from the interviews wereidentified through re-examining, re-defining andre-classifying until there was strong consensusbetween the first author and the second analyst,who is a knowledgeable practitioner with knowl-edge of both science education and teachereducation. After several attempts, categories con-trasting and distinguishing different characteristicsin teachers’ conceptions were proposed.

Respondents who had more than half of theirresponses classified in one particular category weredefined as possessing a predominant view of thatcategory. However, it was common for studentteachers to have responses with other views duringthe interviews, and those were considered assecondary views. A scoring system was establishedto help further analysis of the correlation betweenaspects of teaching thinking and comparison overtime, the numeric values of 6 to 1 were used torepresent the extent of teachers adopting a high toa low constructivist view.

The hierarchy, complexity and diversity of theconcept maps drawn by student teachers provideda measure of the nature of their thoughts duringplanning. Similar measures were used in Morine-Dershimer (1993) in tracing pre-service teachers’conceptions of planning. The number of levelspresented in the concept maps determines thehierarchy of teachers’ thoughts in planning. Thisalso represented the organization of teachers’thought from a general to a more specialized

perspective. A measure of diversity with conceptsthat are most proximal to the central theme wasrecorded to show teachers’ range and varieties ofthoughts during planning. The complexity ofteachers’ thoughts in planning were consideredby observing the links and connections betweenthe items, as well as the emergence of linkingwords in the concept map drawn, which indicates ameasure of synthesis and connectedness ofthoughts between sets of related concepts orpropositions (Markham, Mintzes, & Jones,1994). These components of the concept maps,were each given a score to facilitate comparisonand analysis of correlation with the other aspectsof teacher thinking.A coding scheme was needed to compare

teachers’ practice of teaching from a constructivistperspective. The following researchers’ workwhich advocated constructivist learning werestudied for a more systematic and objectiveobservation: The five characteristics of constructi-vist teaching outlined by Appleton and Asoko(1996); Kober’s (1993) picture of an emergingconsensus about the knowledge and skills thatscience teachers should possess when enacting aconstructivist approach; Novodvorsky’s (1997)nine components which describe the teacher’s rolein guiding the students construction of knowledge;Yager’s (1991) Constructivist Learning Model(CLM); and Novak’s (1998) comparison of teach-ing practices with contemporary constructivistviews.To make the evaluation of lesson more compre-

hensive, a set of characteristics of constructivistteaching was developed in six domains with 22items. The six domains are: using pupils’ existingknowledge to guide teaching; guiding pupils togenerate explanations and alternative interpreta-tions; devising incisive questions; choosing materi-als and activities for pupils to test ideas; providinga classroom atmosphere conducive to discussionand providing opportunities for pupils to utilisenew ideas. Teaching performance on each itemwas rated on a 4-point scale ranging from stronglyagree (3), agree (2), slightly agree (1) to notobserved (0).Smyth’s approach (1989) was adapted with

consideration of the local context to try and make

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sense of teachers’ written reflections. Smyth’smodel consists of four stages which are definedby a series of questions, and provides a way tosynthesize the reflections into a ‘picture’ to identifypatterns of student teachers’ reflection. Theanalysis of teachers’ reflection after the lessonwas undertaken paragraph by paragraph. Eachparagraph was marked with the identified stage ofreflection, hence the frequencies of occurrence ofeach reflection stage in the whole reflection couldbe obtained. It was found that most teachersshowed more than one stage of reflection. Ascoring system similar to the other three aspects ofteacher thinking was adopted for ranking teacherreflection in order to facilitate analysis of theirinterrelationships. A score of 4: ‘Reconstructingreflection’, 3: ‘Confronting reflection’, 2: ‘Inform-ing reflection’ and 1: ‘Describing reflection’.

The scoring indices described above were treatedas rank order data and interrelationships betweenthe variables were evaluated using the Spearmanrho correlation. A directional hypothesis wasproposed to test the contentions that teachers inthe interview expressed more constructivist viewswere also more thoughtful in their planning, moreconstructivist in their teaching and utilized ahigher stage of reflection. So one-tailed tests wereused to test the direction as well as the existence ofa relationship. Detailed analysis both qualitativelyand quantitatively provided more informationabout the kind of correlation and associationsbetween the different aspects of teacher thinking(see So (2001), for details).

4. Results

The findings are first presented for each aspectof teacher thinking, then the relationships amongthe different aspects and changes over time arereported.

4.1. Teachers’ conception of teaching and learning

science

Respondents’ views were classified into fourcategories: Learner-centered Constructivist View;Learner-centered Experimental-Inductive View;

Teacher Exposition View and Teacher Transmission

View. The following is typical of responsesclassified as a Learner-centered ConstructivistView:

I won’t tell students the findings directlyyy..After doing the experiment, they have to tellwhat their ideas are. They can change theirideas when they find any differences with theirprevious understanding. They have to makejudgment by themselves (Teacher H_Inter-view_Stage2).

The views in this category included teachers asguides and facilitators of learning, which consid-ered as prominent in the learning process, theopportunities for pupils to observe, explore, dis-cover, and create, to express themselves and topropose explanations and solutions. Included alsowere views that teachers generally behave in aninteractive manner (Brooks & Brooks, 1993) anduse learners’ prior knowledge as a starting pointfor teaching (Smith, Blakeslee, & Anderson, 1993).The following is an example of responses

classified as an Experimental-Inductive view:

An experiment is used for proving and verify-ing, to arouse pupils’ interest and to deepenmemory. y The challenge pupils encounter inscience lessons is the ability to handle experi-ments (Teacher S_ Interview_Stage1).

This category of views included the use ofexperiments to introduce, illustrate and to demon-strate the phenomena with an expectation to makepupils understand. However, Bettencourt (1993)stated that if students manipulate things physicallywithout questioning, reflecting, and re-question-ing, not much would be learned. Therefore, usingexperiments to induce and introduce the phenom-ena was categorized separately from the previousview. Though this response had similar connota-tions of learner-oriented learning, the view showeda preference for using experiments only in lessonsto introduce concepts. Hence it was considered asan instance of the learner-centered Experimental-Inductive view.The following teacher gave a response that was

classified as a Teacher Exposition View, which

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Table 1

The overall scores of teachers’ conception

Teachers Score of teachers’ conceptiona

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

B 3 1 5

F 5 2 2

I 2 6 6

L 5 6 5

N 6 6 2

P 3 5 5

S 3 5 5

X 2 3 6

Y 3 5 5

Mean 3.56 4.33 4.56

aThe score ranges from 6 to 1 with 6 ¼ high learner-centered

constructivist view to 1 ¼ low learner-centered constructivist

view.


places emphasis on teachers’ explanation of ideas,facts and concepts of science:

Teachers need to explain again to the classabout the wrong conceptionsy (Teacher I_Interview_Stage1).

The views in this category concerned teachersexplaining and expositing knowledge and conceptsto pupils by various means. The teacher is thelocus of control during the learning process.Underlying this view is the belief that knowledgecan be passed on to another person by using goodexplanations and demonstrations of scientificprinciples (Hewson et al., 1999). Teachers’ expla-nations have long been denoted as a pedagogicalconcept under the rubric of reception learning(Hudgins, 1974).

An example of a response was classified ashaving a Teacher Transmission View was thefollowing:

No matter what teaching strategies you use, allshould go together with lecturing (Teacher J_Interview_Stage1).

The views in this category involved teacherstelling and transmitting knowledge and ideas tolearners by lecturing, giving instructions, demon-strating and talking during a lesson. Teachers’dominance is high while the learners are relativelypassive. Teachers having this view, tend not to givemuch consideration to pupils’ interest and ability,but have a strong sense of responsibility intransmitting knowledge to pupils with little or noconcern on whether pupils are actually learning,and they usually see teachers as the final authorityof what counts as an acceptable idea in theclassroom (Hewson et al., 1999).

However, it was found that most teachers didnot have one conception only but possessed both apredominant conception and secondary concep-tions. Besides, it was evident that there wasobvious advancement in the constructivist concep-tions of teachers who remained to the final stage ofthe study from the increase of the mean score ofconceptions from 3.56 (Stage 1) to 4.33 (Stage 2) to4.56 (Stage 3). Table 1 shows the change in scoresof conception of the nine teachers. In addition toTeacher L who maintained a high learner-centered

constructivist view, five more teachers (Teachers I,P, S, X and Y) changed in the expected directionfrom a low to a high learner-centered constructi-vist view.The participants also talked about factors

affecting their conceptions of teaching, planningand teaching, during the interviews at the laterstages of the study when they were actual teachers.Constraints related mainly to practical issues oftime and resources, but also to the culture of

discourse operating within the schools.Regarding practical issues one teacher talked

about the influence of class discipline and manage-ment: ‘‘The other consideration was the classroommanagement. yThe class would be out of order.That’s why I had never tried the ideal teachingstrategy’’ (Teacher F). He said that it was lessimportant to have planning in the beginning yearas in the previous years: ‘‘I need not prepareteaching aids and lesson plans now because thetextbook publisher has prepared teaching aids forus. And I don’t have enough time to use teachingaids apart from using the textbook and theteaching materials at hand’’ (Teacher F). Anotherteacher argued that the heavy workload in thebeginning teaching year was the main reason fortheir insufficient thinking about teaching. He alsotalked of time constraints: ‘‘Due to the timeconstraints, we could hardly do experiments,

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which took at least one lesson each. It would be abig problem if the teaching progress is behindschedule and the syllabus could not be finished bythe time of the examination’’.

An obstacle related to the culture of discoursereported by one teacher was that it was uncommonfor academic sharing between teachers to occur inthe school. He said he was not aware of the viewsof his colleagues because they seldom discussedteaching and learning; they only talked aboutwhether the textbook had any mistakes in word-ing, never mentioning the teaching approaches foran area of science. Similarly, another teachercommented that she did not know what othersteachers were doing because they did not engage inany academic talk concerning science teaching andlearning.

4.2. Teachers’ thinking during planning

The analysis of the concept maps of the ninerespondents at Stages 1–3 are shown in Table 2.The hierarchy of the concept maps drawn by mostbeginning teachers was two to three levels,indicating teachers were thinking some detailduring planning. The diversity of the conceptmaps was around four, and this showed thatbeginning teachers were normally considering four

Table 2

A summary table showing the scores of hierarchy, diversity and compl

stages of study

Teachers Hierarchya Complexityb

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 1

B 4 3 3 4

F 3 4 2 3

I 3 3 2 5

L 4 3 3 4

N 2 2 3 3

P 2 3 4 3

S 4 2 2 3

X 2 3 3 3

Y 3 2 2 2

Mean 3.00 2.78 2.67 3.33

aHierarchy ranges from 6 to 1indicating the number of levels of thbComplexity ranges from 6 to 1 indicating thoughts of high complcDiversity ranges from 6 to 1 indicating the number of thoughts th

central categories or concepts in their planning.These measures of hierarchy and diversity weresimilar to teachers’ thoughts in the earlier stages.However, most concept maps drawn by beginningteachers were of low complexity and with no linkwords between thoughts. This was very differentfrom those in the earlier teacher education stages.It was evident that beginning teachers thought lessabout the interrelationships between the differentitems during their planning.

4.3. Teaching practice: The extent of constructivist

teaching

The observational analysis of teachers’ teachingshowed that teachers were more able to use pupils’existing knowledge to guide teaching, deviseincisive questions and provide opportunities forpupils to utilize new idea; but were less able toguide pupils to generate explanations and alter-natives and to choose materials and activities forpupils to test ideas. The nine beginning teachers’teaching performance in different areas of theconstructivist domain was compared with theirperformance in the two previous stages (seeTable 3) for an analysis of teachers’ change intheir enactment of constructivist teaching. It canbe seen that there was no obvious change in all

exity of the concept maps drawn by student teachers in the three

Diversityc

Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

3 3 4 4 4

4 1 5 4 4

3 1 5 8 5

4 4 6 5 5

6 2 4 5 6

5 4 4 3 2

3 2 3 3 4

6 3 5 4 4

3 1 4 7 4

4.11 2.33 4.44 4.78 4.22

oughts.

exity to low complexity.

at were most proximal to the central concept.

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Table 3

Constructivist teaching of nine teachers in the three stages of study

The six domains of constructivist teaching Rating of teaching performance (mean) Changes in stages

1–2

Changes in stages

2–3


1. Use pupils’ existing knowledge to

guide teaching

1.36 1.36 1.92 a a

2. Guide pupils to generate

explanations and alternative

0.98 1.16 1.47 a a

3. Devise incisive questions 1.14 1.39 1.75 a b �

4. Choose materials and activities for

pupils to test ideas

0.51 0.4 0.80 a b �

5. Provide classroom atmosphere

conducive to discussion

0.89 0.84 0.78 a a

6 Provide opportunities for pupils to

utilize new ideas

1.11 1.00 1.56 a b �

Mean 1.00 1.17 1.39

aNot much change in performance.bChange in performance with 0.05 level of significance.�Po:05.


areas from Stage 1 to Stage 2. And the mainchanges from Stage 2 to Stage 3 were in terms ofdevising incisive questions, choose materials andactivities for pupils to test ideas and provideopportunities for pupils to utilize new ideas.Besides, there was a highly statistically significantcorrelation between performance of constructivistteaching at each of the different stages of study:Stage 1 with Stage 3 ðr ¼ :64nÞ and Stage 2 withStage 3 ðr ¼ :76nÞ. This indicated that teacherswho were more likely to use constructivist methodsat the early stage of teacher education andteaching practice were also more likely to use suchapproaches in their beginning teaching year.

4.4. Reflections

Paragraphs were classified as the ‘‘Describing’’stage of reflection when respondents only de-scribed actual teaching events without explainingthe underlying reasons or discussing the effectsand consequences of the events. The following isan example of a ‘Describing Reflection’:

I have sufficient lesson preparation. I haveprepared many teaching aids in planning mylesson (Teacher G_Reflection_Stage1).

Paragraphs were classified as ‘Informing Reflec-tion’ when the respondents were able to explainthe broader principles involved in their classroomactions. The responses also showed engagement inthe activity of unpacking descriptions of theirteaching with statements of the type ‘‘it looks asify.’’. In doing so, the student teachers were reallyrecapturing the pedagogical principles of whatthey did:

I used OHTs to guide pupils on the structure ofthe brain and nervous system, and the processof the brain to receive and transmit messages.Pupils could get hold of the knowledge (TeacherS_ Reflection_Stage3).

The following paragraph of reflection wasconsidered as ‘‘Confronting’’ mainly because therespondent was able to use theories to examine herteaching and planning and was able to considercontextual factors:

This lesson I taught was the appearance of somecommon plants. First, I started with theobservation of plants that pupils could find inthe school garden rather than using the exampleprovided in the textbooky. This is basedon teaching theories which emphasized the

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Table 4

Score of individual teachers’ stage of reflection at the three

different stages of study

Teacher Stages of reflection


B 3.0 3.00 2.83

F 3.71 2.25 3.25

I 2.57 2.31 2.25

L 3.80 3.00 3.50

N 3.25 3.40 3.80

P 3.20 2.71 3.50

S 3.00 2.43 2.40

X 3.13 3.00 2.88

Y 2.40 2.80 2.50

Mean 3.12 2.77 2.99

Score of 4: Reconstructing reflection, 3: Confronting reflection,

2: Informing reflection, 1: Describing reflection.


arousing of pupils’ previous knowledge andinterest to learn with things around themyy

(Teacher L_ Reflection_Stage3).

The following transcription illustrates that therespondent was able to construct portrayals of herown teaching that was embedded in the specifics ofthat teaching, and was able to make explicit thequalities of good teaching. Typical instance of the‘‘reconstructing’’ reflection was:

Pupils were quite active in answering questions.I thought if there were group discussions (e.g.the importance of air to us? Why we need tobreathe?) before making consolidation andconclusion, pupils’ learning would be strength-enedy (Teacher N_ Reflection_Stage3).

Table 4 showed the score of teachers’ stages ofreflection. Though it was observed that five amongthe nine beginning teachers dropped in their stagesof reflection, the drop was slight. However, theother four beginning teachers showed an obviousincrease in their stages of reflection.

4.5. Relationships between the different aspects of

teacher thinking and the change over time

The ranking and score of the four differentaspects of teacher thinking are displayed in Table 5

and the Spearman’s rho correlation are shown inTable 6.As it was mentioned in the data analysis that it

was proposed that a better coherence, as shown byhigher inter-correlation, between each of the fouraspects from one stage to the next stage of thestudy and the strength of the relations wouldincrease over the 3 years time. An increase in themean correlation from the first year ðr ¼ :02Þ tosecond year ðr ¼ :23Þ of teacher education con-firmed the research hypothesis. However, a meancorrelation of .14 at the beginning teaching yearindicated a decline in the coherence of the differentaspects of teacher thinking at beginning teachingyear. Besides, several other negative correlations inbeginning teaching year were different from themany positive correlations in the teaching practice(e.g. in conception with planning, conception withreflection, and planning with reflection).With regard to changes in the relationships

between the individual aspects of teacher thinkingover time, there was evidence of increasingrelationships between conceptions of teachingand learning and practice of teaching (correlationchanges from �.26 to statistically significant .39and .63), as well as planning (hierarchy) andreflection (correlation changes from �.05 to .05and statistically significant .59). The relationshipsbetween planning and practice, practice andreflection across time were minor. However, therelationships between conceptions of scienceteaching and learning with reflection, as well asconception of science teaching and learning withplanning were inconsistent.

5. Discussion

Teaching and learning about teaching areconsidered demanding tasks because they centreon complex, interrelated sets of thoughts andactions (Loughran, 1996). Previous research onteacher thinking has mainly focused on specificaspects of teacher’s work and thoughts, and eachgives a partial picture of the whole process.Attempting to draw conclusions of a generalnature about teachers’ thinking in their teachereducation and beginning teaching is not easy.

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Table 5

A summary table of ranks and scores for the four different aspects embedded in teacher thinking in beginning teaching year (Stage 3)

Student teacher Conception Planning Teaching Reflection

Teachers’ conception Hierarchy Complexity Diversity Teaching performance Stages of reflection

Rank Scorea Rank Scoreb Rank Scorec Rank Scored Rank Scoree Rank Scoref

B 6 5 3.5 3 3.5 3 6 4 7 1.45 6 2.83

F 8.5 2 7.5 2 8 1 6 4 9 .41 4 3.25

I 1.5 6 7.5 2 8 1 2.5 5 5 1.55 9 2.25

L 3.5 5 3.5 3 1.5 4 2.5 5 5 1.55 2.5 3.50

N 8.5 2 3.5 3 5.5 2 1 6 8 .77 1 3.80

P 6 5 1 4 1.5 4 9 2 1 1.80 2.5 3.50

S 3.5 5 7.5 2 5.5 2 6 4 2.5 1.73 8 2.40

X 1.5 6 3.5 3 3.5 3 6 4 2.5 1.73 5 2.88

Y 6 5 7.5 2 8 1 6 4 5 1.55 7 2.5

Mean 4.56 2.67 2.33 4.22 1.39 2.99

aThe score ranges from 6 to 1 with 6 ¼ more learner-centered constructivist view and 1 ¼ less learner-centered constructivist view.bHierarchy ranges from 6 to 1indicating the number of levels of thoughts.cComplexity ranges from 6 to 1 indicating thoughts of high complexity to low complexity.dNumber of thoughts identified in the concept maps.eTeaching performance ranges from 3, strongly agree of constructivist teaching to 0, constructivist teaching not observed.fStage of reflection ranges from 4 to 1 from a high ‘‘reconstructing’’ stage of reflection to a low ‘‘describing’’ stage of reflection.


However, this research provides alternative waysof understanding the nature of teacher thinking:the different elements that interrelate and changewith circumstance and time. The following para-graphs summarize the investigation of teacherthinking of this group of teachers in the initialstages of becoming teaching professionals.

5.1. Complex and multiple conceptions of teaching

The beginning teachers studied in the presentresearch were classified as espousing a combina-tion of conceptions with a predominant concep-tion and/or with one or more secondaryconceptions, viz. learner-centered constructivist,experimental-inductive, teacher exposition andteacher transmission views. The classification ofconceptions is more similar to previous study onHong Kong teachers (Tang, 2001) and Westernstudies like Trigwell, Prosser, and Taylor (1994)rather than the one conducted with mainlandChinese students (Gao & Watkins, 2001). Thisimplies that though Hong Kong is an Asian

economy, teachers’ conception of teaching is quiteoccidental in nature.Some teachers in the present study appeared to

believe that it was important for learners to learnby observing and interpreting natural phenomena.At the same time, they also believed that teachingshould focus mainly on the discipline of scienceitself and that efficient learning was realized whenteachers transmit knowledge in a direct way. Suchseemingly contradictory thoughts were commonlyfound among teachers in the current investigation.Huibregtse, Korthagen, and Wubbels (1994) ar-gued that this ambivalence in teacher thinkingcould be explained by the hypothesis that therewas a contradiction between teachers’ consciousways of thinking about teaching and learning anda less conscious way of information processing.However, we do see this not as a contradiction, butrather as teachers espousing complex and multipleviews, which are described as predominant viewsand secondary views. Gao and Watkins (2001)have also suggested that Chinese teachers are lesslikely to see problems with holding what mayseem contradictory viewpoints than are Western

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Table 6

Correlation between the ranking of the four different aspects of teacher thinking in the three stages of study

Aspects of teacher

thinking

Conception of

science teaching

and learning

Hierarchy of

thoughts during

planning

Complexity of

thoughts during

planning

Diversity of

thoughts during

planning

Extent of

Constructivist

Teaching

Stages of

reflection

Conception of science

teaching and learning

1.00a .32 .15 �.04 �.26 .19

1.00b .00 .30 .47� .39� .33

1.00c .00 .13 �.11 .63� �.58

Hierarchy of thoughts

during planning

.32 1.00 .11 �4.9 �.07 �.05

.00 1.00 .32 .14 .04 .05

.00 1.00 .70� �.29 .34 .59�

Complexity of thoughts

during planning

.15 .11 1.00 .02 .17 .07

.30 .32 1.00 .30 .29 .46�

.13 .70� 1.00 �.21 .47 .53

Diversity of thoughts

during planning

�.04 �4.9 .02 1.00 .08 �.03

.47� .14 .30 1.00 .04 .04

�.11 �.29 �.21 1.00 �.51 .13

Extent of constructivist

teaching

�.26 �.07 .17 .08 1.00 .12

.39� .04 .29 .04 1.00 .29

.63� .34 .47 �.51 1.00 �.20

Stages of reflection .19 �.05 .07 �.03 .12 1.00

.33 .05 .46� .04 .29 1.00

�.58� .59� .53 .13 �.20 1.00

Correlation coefficients of .20 to .30 were considered to be indicators of a minor relationship, .30 to .49 of a moderate correlation and

coefficients of over .50 of a strong correlation.�o0.05 of significance level.aStage 1bStage 2cStage 3


teachers. This claim would need further research toverify.

Some changes in teachers’ conception werefound between different stages of the study, mostteachers appeared to switch between a predomi-nant constructivist view and a secondary con-structivist view throughout the 3 years of thisresearch. Hence, it could be concluded that mostof these teachers espoused a constructivist view oflearning to some degree in their initial stage of theteaching profession.

The differentiation of teachers’ conceptions andsign of change observed provide useful informa-tion to teacher education: teachers in their initialstage of the profession are common to evincedifferent conceptions at the same time andteachers’ conceptions are not resistant to change.

These findings were not obvious in previousresearch.

5.2. Simplistic planning of teaching

Teachers’ pre-lesson planning as presented inconcept maps provided a perspective of howteachers thought during planning in this investiga-tion, viz. the specificity, hierarchy, diversity andcomplexity of thoughts. The experience of theanalysis provided further evidence that conceptmapping is a suitable technique of graphicallyrepresenting concepts and their hierarchical inter-relationships, for the study of teachers as stated byNovak (1998). Teachers in the present study wereplanning in a more complex way and consideringthe links and relationships in the early stages.

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Their thoughts became less interdependent espe-cially when teachers entered the beginning teach-ing year. Perhaps the beginning teachers were toobusy coping with the reality of being a professionalclassroom teacher for the first time. This warrantsattention and effort to provide continuous profes-sional development of beginning teachers aftergraduation. The lack of academic talk in theschool environment also needs to be addressed.

5.3. Constructivist teaching practice

The teachers who were at the initial stage of theteaching profession showed evidence of a learner-centered approach to teaching. This finding wasconsistent with desired changes in teaching profes-sion in the recent reform proposal of the educationsystem in Hong Kong (Education Commission,2000) that the focus of the curriculum reform aimsat making students the masters of learning, in thetrue spirit of the ‘‘student-focused’’ principle. It isbecause in a knowledge-based society, studentswould no longer receive knowledge passively.Through the process of learning, they alsocontinuously construct and create knowledge.

From the lesson observations, there was evi-dence that the teachers were becoming morelearner-centered in their teaching. They wereimproving in using existing knowledge to guideteaching; more able to provide a question-richteaching environment; more inclined to acceptpupils’ responses; provide more opportunities forpupils to work with materials and activities, and toutilize new ideas learned. Compared with whenteaching in a micro-teaching and during teachingpractice, a higher percentage of beginning teachers(two-thirds) were approaching performance criter-ia for constructivist teaching. However, there wasstill room for these beginning teachers to becomeeven more constructivist in their teaching. And thisrequired mentoring support when teachers enterthe teaching profession.

5.4. Confronting and reconstructing reflections

Participants at the early stage of teachereducation had almost half of their reflections atthe confronting stage, approximately a quarter

each with the reconstructing stage and describingstage, respectively. Many teachers began to lookupon teaching in a self-evaluating way right fromtheir first year of teacher education. They startedout with views that focused substantially onproviding reasons for their actions in teaching,with reference to the environment, or theories ofteaching and learning. This was in contrast toCalderhead and Shorrock’s (1997) words thatstudent teachers at the beginning of the courseoften had difficulty interpreting and making senseof classroom practice. However, over the 3-yearperiod of this investigation, there seemed to besome shift, only in the case of a few teachers,towards a reconstructing view of reflection, inwhich they began to recognize the alternatives toimprove their teaching. This is regarded byLoughran (1996) as the great value of reflectionin teaching and learning that it encourages one toview teaching and learning problems from differ-ent perspectives.Teachers continued confronting reflection and a

few of them were approaching restructuringreflection. The analysis of beginning teachers’reflection showed that they concerned more on‘‘Pupils’’, ‘‘Teaching’’, ‘‘Activities’’ and ‘‘Content’’during reflection. It was apparent that beginningteachers were able to maintain reflective thinkingas they did in the previous two stages of study, andeven with more reflective thinking was observedwith some teachers. This reflected the importanceof the nurturing of reflection in the early stage ofteacher education programme.

5.5. Incoherence teacher thinking

It was not easy to identify patterns or regula-rities in the data that could help to understandhow the different aspects were related using apurely qualitative approach. Hence, transforma-tions of the collected and examined qualitativeprotocol, observations and interview data intonumbers, and statistical techniques were used tomake the relationships and changes more explicit.An increasing coherence of the different aspects

of teacher thinking was observed from the earlystage of teacher education to the teaching practiceperiod. During teaching practice, student teachers

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were more able to translate their conception ofscience teaching and learning moderately into theirpractice of teaching and planning, as well asslightly to their reflection. Student teachers’thoughts during planning were moderately relatedto their reflection and slightly to teaching. Lastly,the extent of constructivist teaching was alsorelated to the stages of reflection. It seems thatthe support from the supervisors were effective inbringing coherence of teacher thinking.

There was a slight drop in the overall coherenceduring the beginning of teaching year. An obviousdrop in the correlation was found betweenconception and planning, as well conception andreflection. Nevertheless, there was a positiveassociation between conception of teaching andlearning with teachers’ extent of constructivistteaching over time. This implies that theories andbeliefs that advocate learner-centered, learners’active participation and construction of ideas arefundamental to good practice of teaching. Besides,the correlations of planning with reflection, teach-ing with reflection, and planning with teaching inbeginning teaching year differed only slightly fromthat in the teaching practice period. Such findingswere not surprising, and in agreement withprevious studies. Levin and Ammon (1992) alsowondered why some teachers in their studyappeared to have mismatches between their think-ing as expressed in their interview and their actualpractice, while few others have thoughts andaction seemed more consistent with one another.

The issue of the change of the coherence of thedifferent aspects of teacher thinking at differentstages suggests that teacher education should notbe regarded as static, but as on-going in sharingthinking and practice (Bennett & Carre, 1993;Bramald, Hardman, & Leat, 1995) and there isneed for more support from teacher education forstudent teachers to bring the different aspects ofthinking into harmony. Also this lack of coherenceindicates that earlier studies which focus on justone aspect of teacher thinking may be misleading.

6. Conclusions

There seems to have been some factors whatcame from the participants than relate to literature

during the teaching practice and beginning teach-ing stages which contribute to changes in thecoherence of teacher thinking processes. One ofthe possible reasons would likely be due to the‘‘situative perspective’’ addressed by Putnam andBorko (2000). Putnam and Borko suggest ‘‘learn-ing and knowing are situated’’ (p. 4) in discussingthe nature of knowledge, thinking and learning ofstudent teachers. It is suggested that the contextsin which student teachers learn and in which theyare practicing are inextricable aspects of theirknowledge. Also it seems that the interactionbetween student teachers’ learning in teachereducation and their actual experience in classroomenhanced their thinking about teaching. More-over, student teachers were supported by theirsupervisors from both the Institute and the schoolduring the teaching practice stage, but not with thebeginning teaching year. It could be postulatedthat, during the teaching practice, the feedbackfrom the institute lecturers and the supervisingteachers in the school may have helped studentteachers redefine their teaching strategies, contrastthem with their beliefs and again put them intopractice (Mellado, 1998). Calderhead and Shor-rock (1997) also reported that from the studentteachers’ perspective, the most influential actors toshape their developing practices are the collegetutor and the mentor of supervising teacher. Itcould also be postulated that teachers, though theyunderstood well what was expected of them duringthe teaching practice, could not sustain this highcoherence into the beginning teaching year. Theabove views suggest that the context, and supportfrom institute lecturers and the school during theteaching practice might have influenced the teacherthinking process. Such postulations, especially theone on the possible influence from the supervisorsfrom the teacher education institutions and school,warrant detailed analysis in future studies. As theeducational context is likely to be significant,studies need to be conducted in further non-Western settings.To sum up, this longitudinal study of beginn-

ing teachers was one of the few such studiesin a non-Western context. The results showed thatthe majority of the primary teachers underinvestigation became more constructivist in their

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conceptions and practice of science teaching asthey progressed from initial teacher education totheir first year in the classroom as professionalteachers. They also showed increasing ability toreflect in depth about their teaching. These resultsare consistent with the aims of both the teachereducation institute in which they studied, and ofthe proposed changes to the teaching profession inHong Kong, and are also consistent with the aimsof teacher education in the current Westernliterature.

The less desirable findings were that on enteringthe classroom the beginning teachers became moresimplistic in their planning and less integrated(‘coherent’ in our terminology) in the differentaspects of teacher thinking which were the focusesof the study. Further longitudinal research isnecessary to see if these were just initial setbacksor if the realities of teaching may lead to furtherdeterioration of their thinking and practices. Thesefindings also suggest the importance of mentoringfor those in their early years of teaching so that theinitial use of constructivist teaching fostered inteacher education can become even more widelyused in the classroom.

Acknowledgements

This research is based on a Ph.D. Thesissubmitted to the University of Hong Kong bythe first author under the supervision of the secondauthor. The authors would like to thank CarolCHAN and Greg P. THOMAS, and Mang SHEfor assistance at various stages of this research.Correspondence about this paper should beaddressed to the first author at Department ofScience, Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10, LoPing Road, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, China(email: [email protected]).

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