Search

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) of pre-service and in-service teachers plays a significant role in the successful implementation of educational reforms. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to explore the interaction between curriculum and/or assessment reform and TSE. Twenty-nine empirical research studies are analysed to find factors that impact TSE during change and the support mechanisms necessary to maintain high TSE. Using the Systematic Quantitative Literature Review method coupled with Social Cognitive Theory and Sources of Self-efficacy, studies reported that environmental determinants lower TSE during reform. It was found that to support high TSE professional learning was a necessity.

The fields of science and literacy education continue to be shaped by pervasive gender inequality. Previous research has documented how the formation of a 'science identity' is contingent on access to science capital while research in literacy education continues to highlight how boys struggle in their literacy acquisition. Despite a robust scholarship on gendered literacy practices and gender in STEM subjects, to date, there has been little investigation of the relationships between boys' science identity/ies and their literacy practices. We draw on a case study of 24 middle school boys living and learning in two different regions (e.g. metropolitan, rural) where we focus on how boys conceive of themselves as learners in two curriculum areas: science and literacy. Bridging multiple areas of scholarship (e.g., science literacy, science identity, boys in schooling), we concentrate on the participants' "self-belief in science" and "self-belief as readers" and consider the way they inform each other in reference to place. The implications of our study concern how the "science literate boy" comes to be in reference to the construction of discursive performances of science masculinities and how they are maintained alongside literate identities.

There is a need for robust, empirically-validated conceptualisations of teachers' attitudes towards teaching science, with a view to understand how these might explain their intention to teach science. The "Dimensions of Attitudes Toward Science" (DAS) theoretical framework suggests that cognitive, affective and perceived control dimensions of teachers' professional attitudes may be related to their behavioural intention to teach science. While the DAS framework has been employed in numerous studies investigating the attitudes of preservice and inservice teachers, its efficacy remains mostly unknown. The current study employed a cross-sectional survey research design to investigate the question, "to what extent does the DAS theoretical framework explain primary preservice teachers' intention to prioritise teaching science in their future practice?" Early childhood and primary preservice teachers (n = 250) at an Australian university completed the DAS instrument prior to completing a science curriculum unit. Structural equation modelling revealed inadequate/poor model fit across multiple indices. Perceived relevance of science education and enjoyment teaching science were statistically significant predictors of preservice teachers' intention to prioritise teaching science, whereas other attitudinal constructs from the framework were not significant in this research. These findings warrant further attention to theories of behaviour and behaviour change in science education research.

Sustainability is an important cross-curriculum priority in Australian education that is not commonly realised in schools and classrooms. In this article, we discuss the challenges and opportunities to enacting sustainability, suggesting that both top-down (systemic schoolwide leadership and support) and bottom-up (individual educator's reflexivity) support for sustainability is needed. We postulate that an action-oriented and transformative geography education may support the realisation of sustainable world views for learners, and we present a simple learning progression for action-oriented education, adapted from the Australian Curriculum: Humanities and Social Sciences, for achieving this aim. In this way, geography teachers may be empowered to embed sustainability in their day-to-day teaching.

Science curriculum and pedagogy offer ideal avenues for teaching young people the critical thinking skills they need to live in a post-truth world. Drawing on the theory of epistemic cognition, we present a selection of research-based pedagogies that have been shown to be effective in developing school students' understanding of knowledge and how it is produced. Following a systematic approach to literature searching and screening, we present a selection of pedagogies suitable for supporting students' epistemic cognitive growth at different schooling levels. Implications for school science teaching, science teacher education, and curriculum are discussed.

Informed by curriculum theory, this in-depth qualitative case study examined the experiences of one senior teacher, Stephen, as he enacted the first unit of Queensland's new "Earth and Environmental Science" (EES) syllabus. This study aimed to understand how Stephen navigated the 'space' between the intended and enacted curriculum, by focussing on what informed his teaching practice, and how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was realised (or otherwise). The realisation of ESD was limited to a few instances of teaching students about sustainability content, as Stephen's attention was turned to issues of time and student assessment, following major curricular reform. The tensions that Stephen recounted appeared to relate to a narrowed space between the intended and enacted curriculum, which manifested in feelings of reduced teacher autonomy. The implications of these findings for realising ESD in the context of curricular reform, and the importance of teacher reflexivity in achieving ESD, are discussed.

Initial teacher education (ITE) providers prepare graduates to be effective classroom practitioners, but there is little contemporary research capturing what this preparation actually looks like for primary (elementary) science education in Australia. Drawing on a broader study, this paper reports on teacher educators' practices and perspectives about inquiry-based science education using questionnaire and interview data. The findings unpack five themes that make sense of how inquiry-based science education is understood and enacted in ITE. Implications are discussed in the form of 'tensions' for both inquiry-based science teaching and learning with recommendations for navigating these tensions suggested.

Few studies in science education have examined how place-based experiences influence students' STEM career aspirations. Rural school students' lived experiences of place and non-traditional STEM career aspirations such as farming are scarcely considered in dominant narratives around science aspirations and career pathways. Adopting a critical relational perspective that considers place as a lived experience we ask "How do rural Australian students' ethnogeographies related to people and place influence their STEM career aspirations?" Drawing on a broader study (n = 45) of science aspirations, we focus on semi-structured interviews with six middle school students (13-14 years of age) in rural Australia who aspire to be farmers. Thematic analysis of the data demonstrates students' intended careers as farmers relate to their "connections to people" and "belonging to place." This article works through rural-urban binaries to present a counternarrative that legitimises farming as an important STEM career for young people and challenges dominant narratives around post-compulsory participation in senior secondary school and tertiary science as the ideal or only career pathway. Finally, implications of our findings for designing place-conscious school science education are discussed. This includes place-attentive strategies related to policy, pathways, and practice that appreciate the complex realities, strengths, and inequities in rural communities.

Recent reforms in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia have called for primary pre-service teachers to graduate with a specialisation in a priority learning area. This represents a significant change to the way that primary teachers are prepared. In this paper, we use Carol Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to be? approach (WPR) to analyse the discourses present in four policy documents that have led to the introduction of primary specialisations in Australian education. The policy analysis reveals that the introduction of primary specialisations does not have a strong evidence base. Moreover, slippage in definitions causes confusion about what the role entails, with certain people marginalised by this policy direction. Recommendations are given for how teachers and teacher educators can work effectively within this new policy context.

Given that interest is associated with learning in educational research, understanding how its development can be supported in different learning contexts represents an important line of inquiry. In this study, we investigate the influence of the slowmation construction process on middle school students' interest in learning science and geology. Both quantitative and qualitative data were generated from four classes of ninth-grade students; two classes participated in the construction of a slowmation about tectonic plate boundaries (n = 52) and two classes experienced a state-mandated programme of instruction (n = 43). The students completed the "Student Interest in Learning Science Survey," a Likert-style instrument, which examined their level of situational and individual interest prior to their participation in the study and upon their completion of the construction task or mandated instruction. Statistical analyses of these data revealed that the students who constructed a slowmation demonstrated significant increases in their interest in learning science and geology, while the students who experienced regular classroom instruction demonstrated lower levels of interest by the end of the study. Interview data obtained from students who constructed a slowmation suggest that the construction process afforded opportunities to work and learn in active, hands-on and collaborative ways; to exercise creativity; and to engage with technology. Importantly, increases in students' interest appeared to emerge from the early attentional and affective stages of their interest development, rather than through a meaningful connection to the geological subject matter, which has theoretical implications for interest research in learning contexts.

In Queensland, Australia, a new senior Earth and Environmental Science (EES) syllabus has been approved for first implementation in 2019. Given the natural alignment between EES and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), this study employs document analysis to investigate the extent to which the intended curriculum reflects the tenets of ESD. An exploratory content analysis examined the frequency of keywords to identify any prominent sustainability themes that might underpin the syllabus, while a curriculum key guided a deeper analysis according to four tenets of ESD: "Learning content"; "Pedagogy and learning environments"; "Societal transformation"; and "Learning outcomes." These analyses found that the ESD tenets reflected in the syllabus is limited chiefly to sustainability learning content, while broader notions of ESD, like the promotion of transformative learning, are marginalised or absent. Instead, the syllabus reflects a technical orientation to curriculum, underpinned by a neoliberal agenda. It is argued that the Queensland EES syllabus represents a missed opportunity to engage students with ESD. In a policy climate where achievement and accountability dominate educational discourse, there is an inherent risk that ESD will fall by the wayside, given it is not prioritised in the intended curriculum. Implications for curriculum development are also discussed.

There is a need for research-informed instructional approaches that promote school students' deep conceptual understanding of abstract geological concepts. Given that a type of learner-constructed stop-motion animation, 'slowmation', has been shown to offer affordances for learning in science preservice teacher education, we extended its application to middle school students and investigated the impact of the construction process on students' learning about plate tectonics. Drawing upon theoretical notions of knowledge reconstruction, this mixed methods case study explored two research questions that concerned the extent to which the slowmation construction process influenced students' conceptual understanding about plate tectonics and how students' learning was facilitated by the slowmation construction process. The participants were ninth grade students (n = 52) who constructed slowmations in small groups to explain the geological processes that occur at tectonic plate boundaries. Data were generated using a two-tiered multiple-choice test instrument, the GeoQuiz, which we designed and validated, and audio-recordings of students working together as they researched, planned, and constructed their slowmations. A significant improvement was found in students' GeoQuiz scores, from pretest to posttest, which indicates their conceptual understanding improved over the course of the construction process. Analysis of the qualitative data found that students' ideas increased in sophistication through 'teachable moments', wherein students learnt through dialogic teacher-student and student-student exchanges. We assert that such exchanges ought to be viewed as an integral part of the slowmation construction process itself. While the study's findings support existing research that suggests representation-based activities are effective for student learning of geological phenomena, they also raise important questions about how to best engage middle school students in the construction of a slowmation.

Teacher shortages are a significant global problem disproportionally affecting "hardest-to-staff" schools and subjects. To better understand (inter)national policy responses to teacher shortages, this paper uses a Bacchian-inspired approach to critically examine proposals suggested as solutions in policy documents from England and Australia, and thus how the problem is being thought about especially in relation to hardest-to-staff contexts. We contend that the problem representations in the policy documents are narrowly conceived and need to be considered differently through the lenses of (re)professionalisation and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are ongoing calls for research that identifies students' conceptions about geographical phenomena. In response, this study investigates junior secondary school students' (N = 95) conceptions about plate tectonics. Student response data was generated from semi-structured interviews-about-instances and a two-tiered multiple-choice test instrument developed and validated by the researchers. There were three main findings: (1) students held many alternative conceptions about plate tectonics, most of which have not been reported in previous research; (2) students' alternative conceptions most commonly concerned the formation of landforms at tectonic plate boundaries; and (3) students were particularly confused about the cause of subduction at an oceanic-continental convergent plate boundary. The findings of this study can assist geography teachers and researchers to develop innovative pedagogies that consider students' pre-instructional alternative conceptions and promote conceptual change learning.

Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing debates concerning the meaning of literacy and confusion regarding what constitutes essential literacies in the field. Our scoping review first identifies how literacy in middle school science is conceptualised in empirical studies published between 2006 and 2019 and, second, addresses a significant gap in understandings by identifying how dominant discourses inform practice. Specifically, our findings show the dominance of a narrow conception of literacy in the science classroom relating to skills-based pedagogic instruction. Based on our review, we conclude that the field of science requires a broadening of what constitutes literacy, and engagement with New Literacy Studies which focuses on literacy as a social practice closely interwoven with student identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to calls for research into effective instruction in the Earth and space sciences, and to identify directions for future research, this systematic review of the literature explores research into instructional approaches designed to facilitate conceptual change. In total, 52 studies were identified and analyzed. Analysis focused on the general characteristics of the research, the conceptual change instructional approaches that were used, and the methods employed to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches. The findings of this review support four assertions about the existing research: (1) astronomical phenomena have received greater attention than geological phenomena; (2) most studies have viewed conceptual change from a cognitive perspective only; (3) data about conceptual change were generated pre- and post-intervention only; and (4) the interventions reviewed presented limited opportunities to involve students in the construction and manipulation of multiple representations of the phenomenon being investigated. Based upon these assertions, the authors recommend that new research in the Earth and space science disciplines challenges traditional notions of conceptual change by exploring the role of affective variables on learning, focuses on the learning of geological phenomena through the construction of multiple representations, and employs qualitative data collection throughout the implementation of an instructional approach.

Education for Sustainability (EfS) has been prioritised in the School of Education at James Cook University (JCU), Townsville, Australia. This article presents a case study that explores the ways in which teacher educators integrate EfS in their teaching in the Bachelor of Education (BEd) (Primary) at JCU, and their perceptions of enablers and constraints. Two key findings arose from the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with four subject coordinators, and their subject outlines: (1) teacher educators at JCU integrate EfS in different ways through their choice of assessment, content and/or pedagogy; and (2) constraints operating at the school level, namely teacher educators' perceptions and understanding of EfS, were perceived to be salient challenges to the integration of EfS in the program. Vision, leadership and funding at the university level were also identified as enabling factors that warrant further investigation. Findings contribute to existing literature regarding the integration of EfS in preservice teacher education, and serve to inform practice at JCU and universities more broadly.