Tan, Aik-Ling

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.

To foster students’ learning of critical-thinking skills, we incorporated ill-structured problems in a Human Diseases module for third-year Life Sciences students. Using a problem-solving rubric and working in groups of three, students attempted to solve problems presented to them. We mediated their discussions by asynchronous online discussion forums (AODFs) as part of mass customisation of learning for 40 students where personalised learning was constrained by structure of the module. We examined the quality of students’ discussion, focusing on the feedback group members provided to one another, using an interpreted Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy to code students’ feedback. Our analysis indicated that the students were able to provide uni-structural and multi-structural level in relation to solving an ill-structured problem, even though they are not used to solving ill-structured problems. This indicated that in a mid-size class, while personalised-learning is not always easy, it is possible to mass customise learning for students using common ill-structured problems in a class by mediating problem-solving using student discussions as feedback. However, more can be done to scaffold peer feedback on solving ill-structured problems so that the level of collaborative-learning can be improved in a mass customised model that approaches personalised learning.

"This pilot research study aims to help science educators gain an insight into the state of science learning in a high school through the lens of the philosophy of science and the ethics of science. The following research questions guide this research: 1. What are the learning processes which take place in a class, which aim to bring across the nature of science? 2. To what extent is the philosophy of science translated to actual classroom practice in school science? 3. What are students' perceptions of science after an education in science which aims to bring out the nature of scientific knowledge? "-- [p. 1] of executive summary.

This project sits at the nexus of pedagogies and human physiological changes during learning. Recent evidences from neuroscience research suggest that there exist intricate relationships between affect and learning. In the proposal, affect include emotions, moods, and emotional climates. Emotions are intense, short lived, and highly conscious affective states that typically have a salient cause and great deal of cognitive content whereas moods are relatively low-intensity, diffuse, and enduring affective states that have no salient antecedent cause and there little cognitive content. (Forgas, 2001, p.15) Emotional climate refers to the collective state of emotional communion among students in a class (Tobin et al. 2013). Stress pertaining to emotions of fear, anger and disgust (Lerner, Gonzalez, Dahl, Hariri, & Taylor, 2007) is one of the affect that is experienced during learning. Stress has been implicated as one of the major contributor to depression, anxiety and heart diseases. An individual's response to stressful situation varies and hence identifying and understanding stressful situations during learning can serve to improve students' learning experiences. Beyond the traditional methods of using self-reported psychometric instruments (such as questionnaires and interviews) to assess stressful situations, technologies can provide critical in-the-moment information about individual physiological changes during learning. Relevant technologies include analysis of facial and/or audio expressions of a person, and biometrics such as oximetry to measure pulse rate and blood oxygen level. These technologies afford both real time analysis of data for instant visualization of information, as well as a record of the information for review after the instructional or learning event.

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.