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Making PracticeProblematic: Listeningto student interviewsas a catalyst for teacherreflectionGarry HobanPublished online: 09 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: Garry Hoban (2000) Making Practice Problematic: Listeningto student interviews as a catalyst for teacher reflection, Asia-Pacific Journal ofTeacher Education, 28:2, 133-147, DOI: 10.1080/713650685
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Asia-Paci® c Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2000
Making Practice Problematic: listening to studentinterviews as a catalyst for teacher re¯ ection
GARRY HOBAN, University of Wollongong
ABSTRACT This paper describes a two-year professional development programme in which
three secondary science teachers listened to audio-tapes of interviews conducted with their own
students describing their school experiences. The audio-tapes were compiled from interviews
with 30 year 9 students who identi® ed aspects of teaching and learning across different subjects
in their secondary school. This study shows how listening to student data on the tapes provided
teachers with a different perspective on classroom practice which con® rmed or challenged their
assumptions about student learning. The student data were a catalyst for the three teachers to
re¯ ect on their practice and to consider changes in their teaching.
Introduction
Fullan (1993, 1999) argues that it is only through re¯ ection at the personal, group andorganisational level that teachers will begin to question their practice and thinkdifferently about teaching and learning. This notion of re¯ ection originated in thewritings of John Dewey (1933) as a way of thinking about a problematic situation thatneeds to be resolved:
The function of re¯ ective thought is, therefore, to transform a situation inwhich there is experienced obscurity, doubt, con¯ ict, disturbance ofsome sort, into a situation that is clear, coherent, settled, harmonious.(pp. 100± 101)
Dewey argued that this process commenced with pre-re¯ ection in which an individualbecame perplexed about a situation followed by ® ve phases to resolve the problem:(1) suggestion; (2) intellectualisation; (3) hypothesis; (4) reasoning; and (5) testing.Over the last 50 years, researchers have extended Dewey’s notion and highlighted thevalue of re¯ ection for teacher education (Brook® eld, 1990, 1995; Ghaye & Lillyman,1997; Hull® sh & Smith, 1961; LaBoskey, 1993; Loughran, 1995; Zeichner & Liston,1987). Others have articulated levels of re¯ ection to include contemplating about thesocial and political dimensions of actions (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Elbaz, 1988; Hatton& Smith, 1995; Smyth, 1992; van Manen, 1977).
SchoÈ n (1983, 1987) saw re¯ ection not only as a way of thinking, but as a hallmarkof being a professional. He contended that professionals need to recognise the `com-plexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value-con¯ ict’ (1983, p. 39) of a worksetting and frame the context in which a problem is situated. Re¯ ection (re¯ ection-on-action or re¯ ection-in-action) is then an iterative process involving (1) a trigger forre¯ ection being the awareness of a problematic situation; (2) framing of the problemsetting; (3) reframing of the setting in light of past knowledge or experience; and(4) planning to develop future actions.
A common feature that permeates these different interpretations of re¯ ection is a
ISSN 1359-866X print; ISSN 1469-2945 online/00/020133-15
Ó 2000 Australian Teacher Education Association
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134 G. Hoban
self-awareness that a problem exits within one’s work practices. This is highlighted inDewey’ s phases of `pre-re¯ ection’ , `suggestion’ and intellectualisation’ as well as inSchoÈ n’ s phases of `trigger’ and `framing’ . It is this recognition of uncertainty or of aproblematic situation that initiates and drives the re¯ ective process. If a solution isobvious, then the need for re¯ ection is reduced. If there is no perceived problemembedded in one’ s practice, then there is little motivation for re¯ ection at all. Incontrast, the framing of a problematic situation is a catalyst for re¯ ection and change:
To achieve change, teachers need to discover that their existing frame forunderstanding what happens in their classes is only one of several possibleones, and this, according to SchoÈ n, is likely to be achieved only when theteachers themselves re¯ ect critically upon what they do and its results.(Barnes, 1992, p. 17)
An implication is that teachers and trainee teachers need to develop a better under-standing of the nature of teaching, not as a simplistic recipe-driven occupation, but associal, political and ethical work that is permeated with dilemmas and shaped bycultural and social in¯ uences (Hatton, 1998).
But what will trigger teachers’ thinking to perceive their practice as problematic toinitiate re¯ ection? Brook® eld (1995) argued that teachers need to become criticallyre¯ ective to `identify and scrutinise the assumptions that undergird how they work’
(p. xii). This means viewing teaching practice from different perspectives and seekingnew ways of thinking about classroom instruction. He identi® ed four main ways thiscan occur. First, teachers can re¯ ect individually by using a critical-incident technique(Brook® eld, 1990), by participating in personal action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986)or by documenting their personal biographies (Grundy & Hatton, 1998). A second wayto support re¯ ection is to seek different perspectives from colleagues by working insmall groups. For instance, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) contend that universityresearchers should support teacher researchers to build their own knowledge withempirical research using journals, oral inquiries and classroom/school studies or withconceptual research using essays which draw upon teachers’ experiences and assump-tions that underpin their practice. Similar collaboration involving teachers and teachereducators has been conducted in Australia in the Project for Enhancing EffectiveLearning (PEEL) using collaborative action research as a methodology for classroomresearch (Baird & Mitchell, 1986; Baird & North® eld, 1992; Baird et al., 1987) and inthe Perspectives and Voice of the Teacher (PAVOT) Project (Mitchell, 1999).
A third way to initiate re¯ ection involves teachers reading educational literaturewhich may provide alternative ideas for their instruction. In one study, researchliterature on children’ s thinking was introduced to science teachers in light of theirdiscussions about teaching strategies, which they subsequently experimented with intheir practice (Bell & Gilbert, 1994). Alternatively, in the Reading Instruction Study(Richardson, 1994) a staff developer videotaped a teacher’s lesson, followed by ameeting to view it together. At certain stages the teacher was asked to provide arationale for a particular action, followed by the introduction of formal knowledge bytrained staff developers in context with the discussions. A fourth avenue for seekingalternative perspectives is through the views of our own students. Rhine (1998) recentlyargued that the main value of educational research is to provide teachers with differentways of tapping into the thinking of their own students as a source for personalre¯ ection. Brook® eld (1995) used a classroom critical-incident questionnaire in whichstudents could write anonymous comments about his practice after a lesson and make
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Making Practice Problematic 135
suggestions to improve his teaching. The use of re¯ ective journals by students alsoprovides teachers with insights into student learning and has been explored in variouscontexts (Bain et al., 1999; Ghaye & Lillyman, 1997; Wilson et al., 1995; Zeichner &Liston, 1987).
This paper describes a study in which a teacher educator interviewed year 9 studentsto ascertain their views about teaching and learning across different subjects at theirhigh school. A small group of teachers then listened to these audio-tapes as a centralfeature of a two-year professional development programme. This paper will focus onthe role that the student tapes played in the study to initiate and sustain teacherre¯ ection.
Methodology
Participants and Procedure
As a teacher educator working at a rural university, I approached three science teachersat a small high school at the end of 1994 to invite them to participate in an innovativeprofessional development programme. The high school was 240 km from Sydney,Australia and 50 km from the university. The three male teachers constituted the entirescience department at the school. At the beginning of the study, one teacher was in his® rst year of teaching, another was in his ® fth year of teaching, and the third (head ofdepartment) had taught for 14 years. The focus of the programme was getting theteachers to re¯ ect on their practice in light of listening to student interviews concerningtheir perceptions of teaching and learning across different subjects in the school. Theteachers listened to the tapes in monthly meetings after school during 1995 and 1996.Most of the meetings lasted 90 minutes, during which time the teachers stopped theaudio-tape when they wanted and discussed implications for their own practice.
I had three main roles in the professional development programme. One was tointerview the teachers’ students, categorise the data and re-record sections of theinterviews onto thematic audio-tapes for the teachers to listen to during their meetings.Another role was to interview the teachers to ascertain how they framed their under-standing of their practice and if this was in¯ uenced by listening to the student tapes.For this study, the concept of frame’ refers to the `underlying assumptions thatin¯ uence teachers’ actions’ (Barnes, 1992, p. 10). A change in how the teachers framedtheir practice was an indicator that re¯ ection had occurred (SchoÈ n, 1983, 1987). Athird role was to assist the teachers in any direction for change that they decided uponas a result of the professional development programme.
A case study methodology (Yin, 1994) was used to monitor how each teacher framedhis understanding of his practice during the study. In the ® rst year of the programme,three data collection methods were used to ascertain if listening to the student tapes wasa catalyst for teacher re¯ ection. At the beginning of the programme teachers were askedto select a year 9 science class and to document in a diary their thoughts as theyconsidered the question, `Why do you teach the way you do?’ over a period of a month.At the end of this time, the teachers participated in two informal conversationalinterviews (Patton, 1990) to ascertain how they framed their understanding of theirpractice. The teachers then participated in a conversational interview every six monthsto ascertain if there was any change in how they framed their practice. After eachinterview, the teacher was provided with a transcript and my summary of the mainpoints to discuss as a member check of my interpretation of the data. Second, the
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136 G. Hoban
teachers completed a survey at the beginning of the study and 12 months later thatasked them open-ended questions about their practice. This survey had previously beenused in a large scale professional development programme for secondary scienceteachers (Bell & Gilbert, 1994). Third, at the end of the programme each of theteachers sketched and explained a diagram that showed any features of the programmewhich in¯ uenced any change in how they framed their practice. Data from theinterviews, surveys and diagram were monitored to note how the teachers framed theirpractice and any change which may have occurred during the programme (McMillan& Schumacher, 1993).
Gathering and Coding Student Interview Data
At the beginning of the study, 10 students were interviewed from each teacher’s year9 science class using a standardised open-ended interview (Patton, 1990). This con-sisted of a six interview questions but with ¯ exibility to probe students to get them toexplain their responses (see Appendix 1 for interview schedule). In all, 30 students wereinterviewed and each student was asked to describe his/her interests and then answerseveral questions which attempted to elicit student data about their perceptions ofteaching and learning across different subjects in the school. First, students were askedto describe their learning experiences in science by nominating science concepts theyunderstood and then probed in the interview to ascertain `What helped you to learnthat concept’? In their responses some students described personal in¯ uences on theirlearning, such as what they knew before the lesson (prior knowledge), and also socialin¯ uences, such as strategies used by teachers. They were then asked about learningexperiences in other subjects, such as what helped them to learn in their favouritesubject. In the last question they were asked about a hypothetical situation in whichthey were to imagine that they were a teacher and to describe the best teachingstrategies which would help them to learn. Some of the students were more articulatethan others in describing their classroom experiences and so these opinions were usedas a basis for comment by other students using a hermeneutic± dialectic approach whichinvolved asking some students to comment about the opinions of others (Guba &Lincoln, 1989). In all, 12 hours of interview data were collected from the year 9students, providing a rich source of student comments about teaching and learningacross different subjects in the secondary school.
Data from the interviews were then transcribed and coded according to factors whichin¯ uence learning, using Cambourne’s conditions for learning (Cambourne, 1988) ascategories. These pre-existing categories were chosen to analyse the data as theyidentify aspects of teaching and learning and aligned with the type of interview data thatthe students provided. Although the conditions were originally identi® ed in the contextof young children learning to talk in a family environment, some conditions arecommon to other settings. Some refer to the role of the learner such as engagement,response, practice, approximation and responsibility, whilst other conditions refer tothe role of the teacher in providing strategies to support social in¯ uences on learningsuch as demonstration, expectation and response. These categories are similar toconditions for learning identi® ed by Dewey (1901, 1916), who also highlighted theimportance of personal and social in¯ uences on learning. Any data that did not ® t intothese eight categories were placed into other categories as they emerged. For instance,Cambourne’ s conditions do not identify categories such as prior knowledge/experiencesor re¯ ection. After the transcripts were coded, sections of the original student inter-
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Making Practice Problematic 137
views were then re-recorded according to each category providing collections ofanecdotes about a particular aspect of teaching and learning. The purpose of thiscollation of audio-data was to present the student data in themes to the teachers andto mix up the student comments to maintain con® dentiality. If a student commentrelated to more than one category (e.g. trial & error and practicals), then they wererecorded onto both tapes.
In all, 16 separate audio-tapes were constructed that provided 8 hours of studentcomments focusing on different themes related to teaching and learning across differentsubjects. This was similar to constructing a qualitative database of comments aboutteaching and learning from students in the school. Four of the tapes related to personalin¯ uences on learning (e.g. prior knowledge, responsibility, re¯ ection, interest), sevenof the tapes related to teaching or social in¯ uences on learning (e.g. relationships,modelling, expectations, practice, trial & error, feedback and discussion), and ® ve ofthe tapes related to subject speci® c data (e.g. science practicals [1], writing, reading,best science teaching, and best subjects for learning). For example, the tape on priorknowledge had anecdotes from 12 students describing how knowledge from previouslearning experiences helped them to understand particular concepts in science andother subjects. The teachers listened to these tapes in monthly professional develop-ment meetings and sometimes this discussion would lead to ideas for trying in their ownpractice. The next section will focus on one of the teachers, Craig, who stated at thebeginning of the programme that his practice had changed very little in the ® ve yearssince he began teaching. Due to limitations of space, data relating to how the other twoteachers framed their practice during the programme will be presented in summarytables.
Results
The Case of Craig: framing his understanding of his practice as a `fun teacher’
At the beginning of the programme, Craig had been teaching high school science for® ve years and described himself as a `fun teacher’ whose role was to `give the studentsa good understanding about why things happen in our environment and also to givethem good skill levels in useful skills’ (Survey 1, December 1994, Qu. 9). He had notchanged his teaching much over ® ve years but experience had taught him that studentsoften do not retain all the information provided to them, as `most of them will forget90% of what you tell them anyway when they leave school, most of them probablyforget 90% of what you tell them when they leave the classroom’ (Interview 1,December 1994, TU 18).
Craig’s beliefs about being a fun teacher were based on the assumption that his ownstudents learned science in the same way as he did at high school. He remembered thathis favourite science teacher in years 9 and 10 made science fun by conducting shortpracticals (experiments) which illustrated science concepts. Craig believed, therefore,that students learn science most effectively by doing science practicals, so threequarters of what I do is prac[tical]s and 25% is theory. It is a bit hard to work out apercentage, it depends on a topic. If I have six or so lessons in a week, probably in fourof the six we would do some kind of prac[ticals]’ (Interview 2, December 1994, TU15). Hence, Craig taught a science topic by presenting a sequence of science conceptswhich were supplemented by practicals:
Basically I just sit down, write down everything that comes to mind I’ve done
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138 G. Hoban
in the past in a topic and then one of the things I think about is prac[tical]s.And I think about what I can do on the topic and think about the prac[tical]sthat relate to them depending on what we’ve got. A couple of the experimentsI remembered from what I did at school, some were from university but mostof them I suppose I got from another teacher when I ® rst started teaching.(Interview 1, December 1994, TU 75± 77)
He also stated that the experiments he organised for students were very structured, withthe students following his step-by-step directions throughout the lesson. For example,when he taught the topic of `magnetism’, he provided students with magnets so thatthey could work out what materials in the classroom were attracted to magnets anddocument this in a table. This lesson would be followed by activities to demonstrate theconcepts of attraction and repulsion, followed by a sequence of concepts and practicalsto explain electromagnetism and electric motors.
Listening to Data on the Student Tapes
Craig and the other two science teachers started their monthly meetings in March 1995to listen to the student tapes and to discuss any issues about their practice that arose.Craig believed that the `crux’ of the professional development programme was listeningto the student tapes because they provided him with an alternative perspective on hisown classroom practice which he had not experienced before. Some of the data on thestudent tapes con® rmed his beliefs about his practice, whereas other data challenged hisbeliefs. For instance, Craig commented that he already knew that students’ priorunderstandings enhanced their learning, as exempli® ed on the `prior knowledge’ tape,and that students disliked copying notes from the board or from books, as highlightedon the `writing’ tape.
Craig stated that it was listening to the `practicals’ tape which made him re¯ ect onhis practice the most because this was the central aspect of his teaching. He realisedfrom listening to the tape that his idea of having fun by doing practicals, based on hisown school experiences, and the students’ idea of fun were different. Some of thestudent comments on the `practicals’ tape challenged Craig’ s beliefs that experimentsshould be taught in a structured way with students following his directions `bit by bit’ .More speci® cally, the student data informed him that not all the students liked beinggiven prescriptive instructions for practicals and some preferred ¯ exibility to exploretheir own ideas. A sample of student anecdotes from the `practicals’ tape is provided inTable I.
Craig’s Reframing of his Understanding of his Practice to an `Open Learning Teacher’
Although Craig still believed that practicals were the best way for students to learn,there were some major changes in the way he organised them as a result of listening tothe student tapes. In an interview in May 1995, Craig realised that his view oforganising practicals differed from the views of his students and this initiated a change:`It became clear from the tapes, like I always wanted to make the stuff fun for the kids,but it became clear that my idea of what was fun and their idea of what was fun wereslightly different. They’ re along the same lines but the way I did it possibly wasn’ t thebest’ (Interview 3, May 1995, TU 3). Accordingly, he changed the way he organisedpracticals from being short and prescriptive that he directed `bit by bit’ to being longer,
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Making Practice Problematic 139
TABLE I. Student comments: practicals tape
Student comment 1: `Practicals help you to learn because they get you away from the desk and the boardand, especially if it is something interesting, it’ s a different way to learn. The teachers are up there andthey are saying ª This is what should happenº instead of just saying ª This is what happensº and writingit on the board. It is like learning twice. I can see it and I can also write it in the book and then go backand say that is what happens and remember that I did see it and that’s why it stays in my head a little better.’
Student comment 2: `Most of the time, like with some topics like circuits, doing the practicals onlyconfused me because I just walked out there and thought ª This is a transformer and this is an ammeter,what does that do?º No-one was really sure, but if he would have done it on the board ® rst, I would haveunderstood it a lot better.’
Student comment 3: I hate practicals, I don’ t ® nd it useful fun running around with a group of peopletrying to ® nd bits and pieces to stick together just to do something that you have previously learnt anywayand discussed. And you don’t really see the results that clearly because classroom experiments rarely workand it becomes hazy.’
more open-ended and with less de® nite end-points so that students could investigatetheir own ideas. He stated that he was becoming more of a teacher who encouraged`open learning’ because his practicals were now less structured, which involved moreproblem-solving for the students. He summarised his interpretation of what studentssaid about their learning on the tapes:
The majority of kids, not all, but the majority of kids said they like doingthings hands-on which is all this practical stuff. They like the fact that theyhave some trial and error, if they muck it up they can start again. But on theother hand with those problem-solving activities, they like a little bit ofdirection and a little bit of prior knowledge always helps. They like to dothings by themselves but they like to know where they’ re going. They like toknow what the end-point is going to be without getting the answer and theywant to know what way they’ re going to go, but they want to hop along bythemselves. And the fact that they like that means they can own what they’redoing and if they make a mistake they have got to ® x it up, so they are doingit in their way but with some direction. (Interview 3, May 1995, TU 61)
The change in Craig’s framing of his practice from a fun teacher’ to an `open learningteacher’ is summarised in Table II.
At the end of the programme, Craig was asked to sketch a diagram representing theprocess of his change and to explain the diagram. This diagram is shown in Fig. 1 andat the top demonstrates that the catalyst for change was comparing his ideas aboutteaching with the students’ anecdotes on the tapes. He explained the numbering in thediagram:
On point one I have my original ideas, they’re the ideas that I came into theprogramme with, before I’ve listened to the kids’ tapes, before I’ ve spoken toyou or Geoff and David. Point two is the students’ thoughts from the tapesthat we listened to and I think that was the most profound part of the wholeprogramme for me. It was sort of the crux to the whole thing. Without thestudent tapes basically I don’ t think it would work very well. Three is melistening to the tapes. After we listened to the tapes, we get to point four, thisis where I assess my thoughts against the students’ thoughts. In some waysthere were parallels, in some ways there were vast differences particularly in
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140 G. Hoban
TABLE II. Summary of Craig’ s reframing of his practice
Craig’ s framingof his practice Basis of his Catalyst for Reframing of Example of hisbefore the study framing re¯ ection his practice teaching
Described Craig assumed Listening to the Described When teachinghimself as a that his students student tapes, himself as an experiments he`fun teacher’ would learn especially the `open learning got students towho would science in the tape about teacher’ who write about theteach a class of same way that `practicals’ in still taught with process of theirstudents in a he did at school which some experiments, investigationsstructured way by doing lots of students stated but they were in their ownby all doing the structured that they less prescriptive words using asame prescribed experiments preferred to and were more journal insteadexperiment which he learn in open-ended for of simplywhich he remembered as experiments by students to copying hisdirected `bit by `fun’ . having more investigate their instructionsbit’ . open-ended own ideas. from the board.
investigations.
the aspects of practicals. My thoughts on writing and so on were mirroredsomewhat by the kids, but my ideas about practicals were in some ways vastlydifferent. I’ ve changed the way in which I do practicals.
Summary of How the Other Teachers Framed their Practice
At the beginning of the professional development programme, David was in his ® rstyear of teaching and Table IIII summarises his change in how he understood hispractice as a result of the professional development programme. At the beginningDavid described himself as a `structured teacher’ based on how he was taught scienceat school. From listening to the student tapes and discussing ideas with other teachershe became more `¯ exible’ and tried to adjust his teaching according to the way hisstudents were learning.
At the beginning of the professional development programme, Geoff had beenteaching for 15 years, and Table IV summarises how he changed his understanding ofhis teaching during the programme. At the beginning Geoff called himself a `re¯ ectiveteacher’ , as he had been experimenting with his practice over several years. The studenttapes con® rmed his suspicions that students needed to experiment with their own ideas,which was highlighted on the `responsibility’ tape. Later in the programme he describedhimself as a `much more re¯ ective teacher’ because without the tapes he only re¯ ectedwithin his own experiences, and the tapes gave him a broader perspective on learningfrom his own students.
Discussion and Conclusion
A catalyst is `an agent that causes change without undergoing change itself’ (EditorialCommittee, 1998). Consistent with this de® nition, listening to the student tapesdescribing teaching and learning caused the teachers to re¯ ect and think about how tochange their practice. This procedure adds to others which have been used as triggers
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Making Practice Problematic 141
FIG. 1. Craig’ s representation of the process of reframing his practice.
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142 G. Hoban
TABLE III. Summary of David’ s reframing of his practice
David’ s framingof his practice Basis of his Catalyst for Reframing of Example of hisbefore the study framing re¯ ection his practice teaching
Described himself David assumed Listening to the Described himself During a lessonas a `structured that his students student tapes, as a `¯ exible he would imagineteacher’ who learned science in especially the teacher’ who himself as one ofwould teach all the same tape on would change his his students andstudents in a class structured way relationships’ teaching wonder what theyin the same way that he did in his which described depending on the might be thinkingby presenting own schooling. how some type of student about his teachingconcepts in students preferred responses during at that time. Hesections by `doing to learn with his lessons. would change hislittle units that ® t teachers who they instruction duringinto a bigger unit’ . could relate to as a lesson if
a person. students wereunresponsive.
for teacher re¯ ection such as writing personal biographies (Grundy & Hatton, 1998),reading educational literature (Bell & Gilbert, 1994), conducting action research (Carr& Kemmis, 1986), participating in research communities (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,1993), reading students’ re¯ ective journals (Wilson et al., 1995) and using classroomquestionnaires (Brook® eld, 1995). The interview data on the student tapes werecontextual for the teachers because they could recall many of the classroom incidentsthat the students discussed, and it provided an alternative perspective on the teachers’
experiences. This form of data is different from other forms of contextual data such ascollected in action research and personal biographies because in these two proceduresthe participants are still interpreting experiences through their own biases and it doesnot include an alternative perspective.
TABLE IV. Summary of Geoff’s reframing of his practice
Geoff’ s framingof his practice Basis of his Catalyst for Reframing of Example of hisbefore the study framing re¯ ection his practice teaching
Described Geoff realised Listening to the Described When teachinghimself as a from his 15 student tapes, himself as a the topic of`re¯ ective years of especially the `much more `The humanteacher’ who experience that responsibility’ re¯ ective body’, he usedwould students did not tape, con® rmed teacher’ a jigsawexperiment learn in a his suspicions because data on technique inwith his traditional that students the student which theteaching but teacher-directed did not learn tapes gave him students wouldwas unsure if lesson and was best from another specialise in ahis instruction experimenting conventional perspective and body systemwas bene® cial with his teaching. encouraged him and then give afor the students. practice. to keep presentation to
experimenting. the class.
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Making Practice Problematic 143
A powerful aspect of using student tapes in professional development is that the datacan challenge teachers’ assumptions that underpin their instruction. This was demon-strated in the different tapes that the teachers identi® ed as the most in¯ uential. Forinstance, Craig thought that the `practicals’ tape had the most impact because his useof experiments was the central aspect of his teaching. He assumed that his studentslearned science in the same way as he did as a high school student, but data on thestudent tape challenged this assumption, which Lortie (1975) called teachers’ `appren-ticeship of observation’ . Accordingly, Craig re¯ ected and reorganised how he designedhis practical lessons to involve more problem-solving for the students. Similarly,David’s framing of his practice was based on the assumption that his own studentswould learn science in the same structured way as he did at school. Data on the`relationships’ tape challenged this assumption because some students described howthey learned in different ways in other subjects and preferred to experiment with theirown ideas. As a result, David reframed his teaching so that he became more ¯ exible toallow students to explore their own ideas and varied his teaching practices for differentstudents. Geoff, however, responded differently to the tapes, as he had been teachingfor 15 years and was a re¯ ective teacher before the programme started. Whereas thestudent tapes challenged the assumptions of the other two teachers, the data con® rmedmany of Geoff’ s tentative notions about student learning. For him the `responsibility’tape was the most salient because the data con® rmed his suspicions that students needto `own’ the ideas that they investigated.
Another feature of using student tapes in professional development is that it presentsa different form of student feedback. Teachers get feedback from students all the timein various ways, such as how students answer questions in class, what they write in theirbooks, their motivation to learn and answers in tests. But this feedback is generallyabout what is being taught in terms of whether or not students understand the contentof their instruction. Rarely is feedback about how they are teaching and how thestudents are learning. Also, feedback provided to teachers in end of subject evaluationsis often general and not about speci® c events. Furthermore, this study shows thatsecondary students have valuable comments to make about teaching and learning asthey are in a unique position to provide such insights because they are often taught byeight different teachers a week. This means that students can compare and contrastteaching strategies across different subjects which secondary teachers may not be awareof if they do not discuss instructional issues with teachers from other subject areas.Furthermore, it was clear from this study that the student data were valued by theteachers because after they had ® nished listening to the student tapes (in meetings overtwo years), they decided to try to collect their own data from their students. They allencouraged their students to write in learning logs at the end of each science lesson todocument what they learned and any teaching strategies which helped them. Theteachers also encouraged students to document any suggestions that would improve theteachers’ instruction. Although the teachers trialed this in their classrooms, the studentsfound it dif® cult to write at the end of each lesson, and after several months thestudents were then asked to document in their learning logs at the end of each week asa summary of teaching strategies that helped them to learn.
An implication of this study is that incorporating student interview tapes into aprofessional development programme may be a way to inform participants about thecomplex nature of teaching. Many teachers will not participate in re¯ ective practicesbecause they are not aware of the problematic nature of teaching in the ® rst place. Ifteachers have a simplistic view of pedagogy as the transmission of knowledge and are
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144 G. Hoban
unaware of the diversity of students’ social, cultural and academic backgrounds, thenany dif® culties in the classroom are often attributed solely to the students. Conversely,if teachers do have an understanding of the nature of teaching as work that is riddledwith dilemmas and contradictions, then they may seek better ways to organise theirinstruction. Listening to the student tapes in this study informed the teachers that thereare multiple perspectives on classroom practices, which David and Craig were notaware of before the programme started, as they taught students in their classes in thesame way. If teachers seriously consider a variety of student views on class experiences,they may realise that teaching is more than a simplistic delivery of knowledge and thatthere may be a range of interpretations from students based on their social and culturalhistories (Hatton, 1998).
It should be noted, however, that the professional development programme was notsolely based on the student tapes. Once the teachers began re¯ ecting on their practice,other factors came into play. Listening to the student tapes was the catalyst forre¯ ection and this started a cycle of change as outlined in Craig’s diagram in Fig. 1.This diagram shows that after he re¯ ected, which he labelled in his diagram as `assessmy thoughts versus student thoughts’ , he then experimented with his organisation ofpractical classes, some which worked and some which did not, and at the same timediscussed issues with the other two teachers. This led to further re¯ ections and actionsin trying out and re® ning ideas. In explaining his diagram he stated that `it’ s acontinually evolving process like a cycle because no group is the same ¼ just as kidschange, your ideas will have to change along with them so it’ s a continually evolvingprocess’ . This is a very different position from which he started at the beginning of hisprogramme when he explained that his teaching had not changed much in ® ve years.Hence, in this study it was useful to the professional development programme thatthere were several teachers within one faculty who were willing to participate in thisstudy and share ideas as a community.
A problem, however, in using student data to stimulate teacher re¯ ection is theethical implication of teachers identifying students from their voices on the studenttapes. At the beginning of the study when students were invited to participate, theywere informed that their comments would be mixed onto audio-tapes in an attempt tomaintain their anonymity and to present data in themes to the teachers. However, theteachers easily identi® ed the voices of their students when listening to the tapes. Thisraises the contentious issue of maintaining con® dentiality for the students whendisclosing information about their classroom experiences. On one hand, the teachersclaimed that it was advantageous for them to identify the voices, as they could adjusttheir instruction to the preferences of particular students. Conversely, this access tostudent opinion on teaching makes students vulnerable to possible retribution fromteachers. To address the issue of con® dentiality, perhaps other students could read theinterview transcripts to increase the likelihood that the students could remain anony-mous. Even so, when students are describing real classroom experiences, completecon® dentiality cannot be guaranteed, and the students need to be made aware of thissituation.
In this type of professional development, the role of a staff developer (in this case ateacher educator) was important to access and compile the student data. In this study,the conditions that Cambourne (1988) and Dewey (1901, 1916) identi® ed was a usefulframework to categorise data about teaching and learning, but it did not cover allaspects. Also, there are other ways to compile data into themes, such as according togender or learning preferences, which is a way of presenting raw data to teachers but
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Making Practice Problematic 145
packaged within a theoretical framework for professional development. Accordingly, astaff developer may offer a range of options to support teacher re¯ ection such asproviding relevant literature, ideas for collaborating as a community or with studentdata based on a particular framework. Providing teachers with audio-tapes from studentinterviews also provides them with a ¯ exible resource to use when it suits them. Ifteachers develop an understanding of the problematic nature of teaching, then they maybegin to value alternative perspectives on their practice and actively seek opinionsdirectly from their students as exempli® ed by the teachers involved in this study.Perhaps teachers and students could then regularly engage in a dialogue about class-room interactions to establish a more transparent relationship between teaching andlearning.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the three teachers involved in this study, Geoff Hastings, CraigLuccarda and David Lloyd, who gave permission to use their names in this article. In1997, each of the teachers won a New South Wales Minister of Education Award forTeaching Excellence. This was the ® rst time such an award was presented to a groupof teachers at one school.
Correspondence: Garry Hoban, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522,Australia (e-mail: garry [email protected]).
NOTES
[1] Practicals are science experiments conducted in a high school science laboratory.
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Appendix 1. Student Interview Schedule
Questions
1. Rapport question: Can you tell me about yourself, your interests, your hobbies?2. Science context question: Can you think of a concept or topic in science that you have been taught
in the last year that you understood well so that you can clearly remember it? Please tell me aboutit and can you think of anything that helped you to learn it?
3. Alternative context question: What subject do you believe that you learn best in? What is specialabout that subject? Can you tell me what happens in the subject that helps you to learn?
4. Hypothetical question: Can you think of a topic in science that you understand well? I want youto pretend that you are a science teacher and you are trying to teach some children about this new
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topic. How would you go about teaching this to the students, keeping in mind the strategies thathelp you to learn?
5. Open question: Do you have any other general comments about anything else in school or at homewhich helps you to learn?
6. Hermeneutic/dialectic question: I am going to tell you some of the things that other students havetold me which help them to learn in school. Could you give me your opinion on them?
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