Tan, Aik-Ling

This paper examines Science Practical Assessment (SPA) in the Singaporean classroom. In contrast to teacher-centric task setting and evaluation, this paper reports findings from a study where a class of students were involved in their own assessments mediated by digital video. Students were recorded during practical work and were then asked to review and edit the footage. Next, they evaluated their own and their classmates’ practical skills. These evaluations, scaffolded with a template and facilitated by the teacher, aimed to give the students a voice in presenting what they thought made ‘good’ science practical skills and practices in the laboratory. They also served as a platform for peer learning and provided a means for the students to be involved in discussing science and science practical skills. Results of this study reveal that students’ awareness of acceptable laboratory practices is enhanced through this innovative method of evaluating science practical work.

The nature and purposes of science education in Singapore have been, for a long time, an area of debate and concern. Ask teachers, curriculum developers, policy makers, science education researchers, scientists or students about the nature and purpose of science education, you will undoubtedly receive many different answers. The issue of interest here is the understanding of what nature and purposes of science education are among some teachers and students in Singapore. In this paper, we problematize the notion that high school students can think and should be able to think like a scientist. We hope that the discussion generated in this paper will contribute to an increased awareness among teachers and researchers about the issues relating to the nature of school science, learning science and the practices in the science classroom. This study examines two students from a class of 23 girls and their perception of what science is together with their biology teacher in a secondary school. In one of the classroom transcripts, the teacher reminded the students several times to ‘think like a scientist!”. This prompted us to question if the assumption that everyone knows how a scientist operate is valid. In this paper, we attempt to use Membership Categorisation Analysis (Freebody, 2003; McHoul and Watson, 1984) to provide insights into some ideas about science which the teacher and two students from the same school community have explicated. Their interview transcripts constitute the main data source in this paper. The results of this study revealed the complexities of issues relating to the introduction of the notion of nature of scientific enterprise in the secondary biology classrooms.

Researchers such as Becher, 1989; Pantin, 1968 and McDonald, 1994 in the field of disciplinarity focus on the differences between different disciplines. These researchers describe the variation of knowledge, skills and epistemological difference across different disciplines. Pantin (1968) extended the idea of disciplinarity beyond different disciplines to look into disciplinarity within a single discipline. Science is a discipline that has variation within itself and Pantin focuses on the differences between the sciences.

Set in Singapore, where the dominant pedagogy is teacher-centered and routinised, (Luke, Cazden, Lin & Freebody, 2005), this study tracks two teachers and two classes of students in Singapore to examine the subject of biology. Biology is a subject within the discipline of science and this study examines specifically the variations in interaction for two topics within biology, namely Reproduction in Plants and Ecology. The variation in interaction for this is further tracked in two different settings of the school: the classroom and the school science laboratory. The beliefs of teachers about the subject matter are also described and triangulated with the interactions that are observed in the two settings. The study that I reported here is qualitative in nature and uses tools of interview and analysis of classroom talk to establish the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about the subject matter and the interaction that results. This study seeks to address the following research questions:

A. What interactional features are evident in the teaching and learning of secondary biology as reflected in transcripts of classrooms?

B. What are the similarities and differences in the ways knowledge is realised relating to contrasts of setting and topic: in the classroom versus the laboratory and around the topics of Reproduction in Plants versus Ecology?

C. How do teachers describe and explain the distinctive demands of teaching and learning in biology?

Interviews and transcript analysis are used as methods of data analysis in this thesis. Transcripts are analysed by using principles of Conversation Analysis (ten Have, 1999 and Freebody, 2003) to illuminate the patterns of talk in the classroom and laboratory. The turn-taking structures, the building of exchanges and also the power relations are examined in the classroom and the laboratory for the two different topics. The beliefs of the teachers are elicited through a semi- structured interview that is analysed using paired contrasts and Membership Categorisation Principles (Freebody, 2003 and McHoul and Watson, 1984). From the interview and classroom talk, teacher knowledge in biology is also examined through the lenses of Bernstein and Lyotard. Such analysis is important in two ways. Firstly, it presents contrasting views through which interaction in the classroom and laboratory can be analyzed and understood. Secondly, it provides empirical evidence for existing theories in a local context.

The results of this study revealed that teachers believed that the syllabus and schemes of work for the subject dictated how they conducted their lessons and that they believed that Reproduction in Plants with its specialised vocabulary was highly classified and requires direct teacher transmission of content to the students Ecology on the other hand, with its weakly classified content allows for more student participation in the selection and learning of content. Analysis of classroom interactions reveals that turn-taking was tightly controlled by the teacher, with consensus being constructed generally using IRE sequences with cooperation from the students which usually occurs at the expense of student criticism and questioning. For laboratory sessions, interactions when Reproduction in Plants was taught were found to allow more student- initiated questions but the pattern modelled by the teacher of focusing on rule and convention compliance limited the type of questions asked by the students. During the Ecology unit, interactions during the fieldtrip where teacher control was greatly reduced were found to be less regulated and more spontaneous. The conclusions of the study are that using the lenses of theories of discourse and power were useful in increasing the understanding of ‘interaction’ in classrooms and school science laboratory and how they were similar or different across the two topics.

This study is of value as a micro-analysis of transcripts of a secondary biology laboratory and classroom and offers insights into the beliefs of teachers and how these get translated into classroom practices. This thesis also describes how the interaction in the laboratory and classroom is orchestrated in a principled manner by teachers and students for different topics in different settings. This study is new in the following respects:

A. The analysis is of the similarities and contrasts within a single field of disciplinary knowledge.

B. It documents the relationship between classroom practices and laboratory practices, showing how different kinds of work shape different kinds of interactional opportunities for learning.

C. It documents how science teachers account for differences of discipline, setting and topic.

D. It relates the accounts expressed in interviews and classroom practices.

Research on argumentation has increased our understanding of knowledge construction, group learning, and scaffolding structures in CSCL although analyses of argumentation pose many difficulties. This could be due to the many theoretical positions that can be taken when approaching discourse data. In this paper, we use three popular analytic methods (interactional, content-specific, and linguistic) to compare the same fragment of scientific argumentation by Grade 4 children in Singapore. We show the complementary emphases and strengths of each disciplinary position as well as their weaknesses. The results imply that analytic methods arising from different disciplinary positions can potentially broaden our overall understanding of using argumentation in CSCL.

"The study investigated the adoption and management of change relating to the teaching, learning and assessment of science practical skills within the science department of a secondary school in Singapore. The intended outcomes of the study featured the development of pedagogy and practices leading to the production of a departmental scheme of work incorporating Science Practical Assessment (SPA) skills. The research also supported a SPA-related professional development community that allowed teachers to share ideas and coach one another during an extensive intervention stage. The teachers involved in the project were also encouraged to reflect on and self-assess their learning as they taught in the laboratory." -- abstract.

Scardamalia (2002) discussed the knowledge building notion as one which is built on social cognitive principles of learning. She proposed 12 principles focusing on collaborative knowing among students gearing toward building a community of learners in classrooms. However, how teachers become the key mediator for fostering knowledge building in classrooms is not fully explored. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge building research in terms of teacher professional development. Set in Singapore, where the dominant pedagogy is teacher-centred and routinised (Luke, Cazden, Lin & Freebody 2005), this paper examines the journey taken by two biology teachers trying to reform their classrooms by incorporating knowledge building principles. In one of our email exchanges with a teacher, she was exasperated with her attempt to bring knowledge building into her classroom. After a few sessions, she exclaimed “But I have not started teaching!” This prompted us to seek answers to the research question “What are the factors that will impact knowledge building efforts in a Singapore science classroom?” Interviews and transcript analysis of classroom lessons are used as data and interpretive methods of data analysis are used in this paper. The beliefs of the teachers are elicited through a semi-structured interview which takes the form of a post-lesson dialogue in this paper. The results of this study revealed three key areas of concern in adopting knowledge building principles, namely, renegotiation of institutional authority, changing beliefs about teaching, and learning and building students’ capacity for epistemic agency. In order for teachers to transform their practices in the classroom, there needs to be a structured and concerted understanding of these factors.

This paper tracks the learning experiences in science of three students using Knowledge Forum. We examine the interaction process, in particular the seeking patterns that result as the three students explore and build the knowledge of convection current. Using micro-analysis of contribution on Knowledge Forum and principles of analysis of electronic interaction and discourse proposed by Zhu (1989), this paper analyses the forms of participation a student can assume, focusing mainly on the different forms in which students seek information as they navigate through the sea of information posted online. Using a grounded approach, we characterize two different ways in which students seek for information in an online environment, which we labeled as interpersonal seeking and collaborative seeking. We believe that the seeking behavior, albeit subtle, is instrumental in directing learning and directing the courses of ‘discussion’ and the quality of the knowledge that is built.

"Science education research is important for continued success in science achievements in Singapore. The current science education research landscape in Singapore is diverse and lacks a consolidated framework through which science education can be examined. As such, this pilot study hopes to reveal some areas in which science education research efforts can focus on to ensure continued innovation and achievements in science."-- [p. 1] of executive summary.