Protección de las extremidades superiores

This section describes what aspects of “good teaching” and “student ideas” the PTs focussed on. Five aspects emerged from analysis of the highlighting and coding data. These are each described separately before linking these to answer the research questions for this cycle. Each is presented with supporting quotes. Section 4.8 then outlines how these areas of focus allowed us to answer the research questions.

Because the analysis process is somewhat different from that used in Research Cycle 1 (Chapter 3), we have used different terms. The five aspects PTs focussed on we have called “themes”, and they lead to “claims”. In hierarchical terms themes are comparable to the summary claims of Research Cycle 1, because they are based on all of the PTs’ highlighting and coding. However, because we have already developed a language to describe how PTs highlight and code, we are not using metaphors. The claims used in

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Research Cycle 3 are essentially the same as the “final claims” of Research Cycle 1, because they are generalisations based on the PTs’ work.

4.7.1 The main aspects of good teaching and student ideas PTs focus on

 Theme 1: PTs focus on what students already know to help further their

explanations.

One of the first themes common across all groups was a focus on instances when the teacher tried to gather students’ prior knowledge about the subject. Some examples of this include:

“Opened topic by asking class what the[y] knew about the topic” [Group A, 00:01:00]

“Gave students a chance to give their own ideas to write down what they know about the topic” [Group D, 00:00:59]

“Frames lesson - Collect students thoughts” [Group 3, 00:00:59]

“Asking students for their ideas before the scenario. Summarizes students ideas” [Group 6, 00:05:40]

In all of these cases, the groups have paid attention to the teacher collecting the thoughts of the students at the start of the lesson. Many groups have highlighted the same time (00:00:59), indicating where they feel this is first happening. However, only Group 3 goes into detail about why the teacher might be doing this. They indicate that it is a way of framing the lesson.

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 Theme 2: PTs generally describe the actions of the teacher with little

coding.

PTs highlighted several instances focusing on what the teacher is physically doing e.g. “giving clear instructions” or “asking questions”. Most of the focus was on the actions of the teacher, with groups rarely going into detail about why the teacher may be doing this.

“teacher goes around from group to group asking questions” [Group E, 00:12:26] “Going around to the groups asking them questions about their opinions and getting them to explain to her” [Group C, 00:12:28]

“She walks around to each group seeing how they have progressed and guiding them towards their own answer” [Group B, 00:12:00]

“Teacher summarizes the students’ ideas” [Group 2, 00:05:59]

In most of these cases, PTs simply re-write what they see the teacher doing on the video. However, in the third quote, group B go beyond just indicating what the teacher does. They give a reason as to why she might be doing this. This is discussed further in Section 4.7.2.

 Theme 3: When PTs highlight student ideas, they often do not extend this to

what may underpin these ideas.

Along with being asked to highlight times of “good teaching”, PTs were also asked to highlight times where students in the video had ideas that they felt were important. For this, PTs paid attention to many common ideas. In many instances groups simply restated the idea, or described what students were talking about. For the most part, PTs

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did not go into further details about why these ideas are important, or what might underpin them.

“Discussing the idea of the pressure building up in the container.” [Group B, 00:14:12]

“Students mention the molecules moving fast inside the tank” [Group D, 00:10:38].

“When student suggest the size of the molecule changes” [Group A, 00:03:20] “Student suggest water may have been sucked out of it.” [Group 2, 00:08:37]

 Theme 4: When PTs highlight student ideas, they sometimes reference the

construction of knowledge and the quality of the students’ statements.

Many groups give at least one or two pieces of commentary on their highlighting of important student ideas that suggests an appreciation that knowledge is being

constructed. The US PTs were more likely to state that this process involves using prior knowledge than the Irish PTs. The quality of particular statements is also commented on. In some cases these comments are problem-specific, in other cases they are general:

“Talking about temperature trying to relate it to molecules”

“Students are starting to piece their ideas together to understand the big picture” “Student gives opinion in full”

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 Theme 5: When highlighting students’ ideas, PTs also highlight the

collaborative nature of the students’ statements.

There are many instances of PTs commenting on the collaborative nature or orientation towards other students’ statements. For example,

“Students trying to teach each other […] students seem pretty engaged in the lesson”

“Students are sharing their knowledge of different states of gas/matter with the class”

“Students trying to use everyday examples to explain why the tank imploded. Debating each others ideas”

“Every student idea is very important as they are getting closer and closer to understanding the concept”

4.7.2 PTs’ views of good teaching and noteworthy student ideas

A co-researcher and I used the 5 themes to generate two claims about PTs’ Professional Vision. As before, these final claims are a generalisation based on the PTs’ analysis of a specific teaching episode or artefact, but informed by their critiques of all five

workshops.

Claim 1: PTs generally highlight relevant instances of both good teaching and

student ideas when asked to do so.

PTs from both cohorts mostly highlighted many relevant instances of good teaching and student ideas, and did not highlight instances we would deem questionable. The first

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five minutes of the video shows the teacher asking a lot of probing questions, and PTs reference this. The teaching episodes and student ideas that they pay attention to are important and align with IBSE. However, highlighting of good teaching is rarely

accompanied by any coding. Theme 3 shows that this is also frequently, but not quite as often, the case for highlighting student ideas.

Claim 2: PTs recognise that students’ ideas derive from their own and other

students’ prior knowledge and experiences.

Through the use of video analysis we can see that PTs appreciate some of the affordances of open inquiry. Most groups highlight instances where students refer explicitly to making links to their prior knowledge, referencing the ideas of other group members, and coming to a better understanding of the problem on hand. This finding is somewhat surprising given the potentially restrictive nature of the headings given to the PTs.

4.8 More Insights into Professional Vision - Implications for DBR