Research in Science Education, 1992, 22, 308 - 314

CAN ANY GOOD COME OUT OF RES EA RCH IN G IN SCIENCE EDUCATION AND BEING A SCIENCE T E A C H E R

AT THE SAME TIME?

Barry Newman University of New South Wales

ABSTRACT

Recent experience has demonstrated that for an aged researcher, teaching secondary school science at a selective high school while committed to carrying out research in science education is riddled with difficulties. With respect to the research, problems ranged from there being too much time required to establish one's credentials as a teacher, to too much research being too easily suggested and undertaken. With respect to the teaching, among other things, it was too time-consuming, there were too many other duties to perform and other teachers became too involved in one's own interests. To make matters worse, there were too many students, they were too varied, too interesting and the relationship with them became too rewarding. A thoroughly disturbing state of affairs.

INTRODUCTION

Both teacher educators and education researchers are under some pressure to visit if not re-visit the classroom from time to time. Research and teacher education that is not informed by practice is likely to be misdirected if not misinformed.

Recently I decided to take six months study leave for the purpose of carrying out research with the location being a secondary school rather than a tertiary institution. Though the school was highly selective on an academic basis, I foolishly mentioned, with only a little fear and trepidation, that I wouldn't mind teaching the odd class or two for the odd lesson or two. As circumstances developed, I ended up teaching 15 to 18 periods a week for one term and somewhat more for half of a second term. I became a member of staff, though with a reduced load. I also acquired extra-curricular responsibilities. In short, I became a science teacher. At the same time I embarked on several research projects. It was a mistake and for a number of reasons. Problems arose with respect to the research, the teaching and the pupils themselves. What follows are reflections on personal recollections, but never made with tongue in cheek.

THE RESEA RCH

Credibility Teachers seemed to think that unless I could prove myself as a teacher, any research I chose to undertake with any of their pupils probably wouldn't be worth much. I offered to carry out any investigation teachers thought worth doing, while giving them a few suggestions as to what such investigations might be. Initially teachers were a little slow to make a response. Even if it were at all possible, establishing credibility was going to take some time, somewhere between six weeks and a year. Why would teachers be suspicious of the research we do?

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Research ideas Meanwhile, having begun to teach, ideas for research involving my own classes immediately began to suggest themselves. I had just started to teach a unit on Light to year 7 students (having mistakingly prepared a unit on Energy!). What did they really believe about tight, reflection, absorption and refraction? What did they believe and why, with respect to coloured filters, coloured paper and images being back to front but right way up? I must confess hay basic interest was with student's understandings and a few other areas, such as inherent problems in practical exercises. Imagine the plethora of questions that might have arisen if my research interests had been wide ranging. As narrow as they were, the problem was I still had too many ideas. Furthermore, I had yet to teach a number of classes with different topics to be introduced. At the six weeks stage some of the other science teachers began to have too many ideas as well. Table 1 indicates the research studies I eventually undertook, having severely pulled the reins in on my curiosity.

TABLE 1 RESEARCH STUDIES UNDERTAKEN

Light and Mirrors Mass, Weight, Solids and Gases Hot Air Balloons and Flotation Plants Chemical Reactions Tides Analysis of Years 11 & 12 Practical Exam Responses:

Nail Falling; Flea Jumping; Trolley Rolling School Subject Appraisal Black and White Body Radiation Exercise

R~earch origins Some of the ideas were an immediate consequence of my own teaching, some arose as suggestions of or as initiatives taken by other teachers, two had some beginnings in a research article I had read and some arose by my taking the opportunity to examine student responses to practical examination questions teachers had designed. In most instances, the research programs developed within the science staff room with proposals being appraised by one or more teachers. More often than not there search took the form of a lengthy questionnaire, with the intention that this be followed by student interviews. I never got around to the interviews. I am also ashamed to confess that one of the projects I enjoyed most of all was the one on the Black and White Body Radiation Exercise. It was science rather than education. Ultimately, I did it because I enjoyed it!

Research analysis Beating off many ideas that soon were too easily forthcoming and likely to overwhelm me, I had still generated too many research projects. The data now began to pour in as a flood. I had stacks of it. Again to my shame, to date, too tittle of it has been analysed. The teachers having become involved and interested, anticipated the immediate acquisition of rich insights into their teaching and students' learning. They were to be bitterly dissapointed. The opportunity for conjecture as to what was going on, what it all meant and how things might change had come, but teaching responsibilities move on relentlessly and so these opportunities were swiftly gone. A pity that we had come to expect too much too soon.

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Research worth Perhaps the research wouldn't be worth all that much. It was too school, class, pupil and problem specific. What value could there be in research dealing with a highly selective boys secondary school in the state of NSW, Austrafia, with data, on highly specific issues, collected from individuals making up single classes or school years?

THE TEACHING Of course the research could have been better handled if I hadn't been teaching. It was really a catch 22 situation: less teaching, more limited research; more teaching, lots of research but too little completed. Well, the "more teaching" was to provide me, now from a science teacher educator's point of view, with quite a shock.

Settling in I arrived at the school one day. I began teaching the next. It would be easy - it was a reduced load and I was a teacher educator. Unfortunately I was to be reminded of many of the things I had passed on to my tertiary students in all my foolishness. One day was nothing like enough to settle in. Simply learning the procedures of ordering equipment, getting the right video channel, photocopying, obtaining food, or receiving and sending mail, meant one walked in a translucent daze.

Too many oeoole More difficult and significant was the job of relating to the 15 other science teachers, 2 laboratory assistants, and other teachers - acquaintances of old - many whose names I had forgotten, a Headmaster, Bursar, engineer extraordinaire etc. As simple a skill as distinguishing between those who liked to be told a joke from those who only liked to tell them had to be acquired. Worse still, this was a teaching task that I had been given and I had to relate to students, many of them and all different and half the time I can't even remember names. Table 2 lists the classes and subjects that I taught.

TABLE 2 CLASSES & SUBJECTS TAUGHT

Year 7 Junior Science: Light Living Things Heat & Temperature

Year 7 Junior Science: Fossils Chemical Materials

Year 9 Junior Science: Food, Diet & Wellbeing I Year 10 Junior Science: Wellbeing II Year 11 Biology: Flowering Plants: Structure & Function Year 12 Chemistry: Atoms and Molecules Year 12 Chemistry: Organic Chemistry Year 12 Physics: Photography

Too little time There was to be no dilation of time experience for me. Lessons to be prepared, resources got ready, changed, improved and extended. Above all, as a teacher, my mind would not be available for vast blocks of time. As with the taxi sign, a mind "Not for Hire". If I wasn't teaching my class I might be teaching someone else's class. Even when not teaching, I might find myself at a compulsory assembly, at an education committee considering the

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International Baccalaureate program, at a science staff meeting, supporting a students' Crusader Union meeting or appreciating a production given by a theatrical group. I was exempt from sports duties (probably being too old). I might find myself marking homework, handing out locker keys to those who had lost them, taking my tutorial class on an outing (but that's another story, told below), setting exam questions, marking exam papers or writing reports. If I was not doing any of these things, I was rushing somewhere in order to be able to do them. I was being reminded that teachers work very hard and have little time to do all that is required. No wonder so very few results were analysed and pondered upon.

I maorance, ideals and the practical As one who had not taught science in a secondary school for almost nineteen years, though I had been teaching others to teach science during that time, I discovered there was too much new science to learn! Forget the ideal settings and strategies for teaching, I had to learn some science. Then there were the deadlines, always the deadlines. Even if one were committed to certain teaching strategies, the programs, with their in builttime fuses, brooked no delay and for the most part, no "fancy teaching". As a compromise, one found oneself teaching the way one really wanted to for a short period of time, then having to pack far too much into the time remaining.

I particularly enjoyed play-ground duty and exam supervision.

Disappointingly, though I had set myself the goal of being a different type of teacher than the one I had been so many years before, I found myself too easily reverting to old styles, particularly of management, when the going got tough. Interesting. Another topic for research.

Tear becoming too interested To some extent, another bothersome aspect was that too many teachers, in the course of time, became too easy to get along with. After a while a number became interested in the possibility of someone else reflecting on their teaching and suggested that I come along to some of their classes to see what was going on. This was particularly disturbing on those occasions when teachers imagined there might be some benefit in my coming back a second time. I must confess (again) that I was partly to blame, since I had given an open invitation for anyone to have me observe their classes. Once some teachers began to invite me, others, feeling the pressure, felt they had to invite me as well. In each class the teacher concerned and I had to try and make some great discovery. One teacher discovered that it was far easier having two, rather than one, teach his class for their double period and to compound matters, I enjoyed it. Teachers began to discover (or they had known it all along) that discussing what students understood with respect to certain concepts and what we teachers understood with respect to those same concepts was almost as enjoyable as eating or telling jokes. But always for all those who reflected on what might be, there was too much tension between the ideal and the practical.

THE PUPILS Too many It is an old saying, but worth repeating: "Teaching wouldn't be too bad excePt for the pupils". I wanted to carry out the research, I got i'trapped" into teaching and I was lumbered with the pupils! There were far too many of them and not one of them was the same. How can a teacher be expected to genuinely care for them as individuals? How can

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someone interested in research afford to try? I remember sitting in seminar fashion with a group of year 8 students, the top level class (someone else's class I was teaching!), discussing with them what school subjects they really enjoyed and what scientific disciplines within science they enjoyed most. The only thing that one could get a clear majority view on was that they didn't intend to pursue science as a career, though some aspects of science they thought were indeed interesting.

Pupils interfedn~ with the research Unfortunately, from a research point of view, on some occasions, students displayed a genuine interest in the research of which they were part. How can one expect to produce research data, under such circumstances that is not contaminated with a subject: test second order interaction? Some students thought I was joking when I said I didn't wish to have their names recorded on a questionnaire, unless they wished to have it so recorded. Upon receiving the questionnaire, amazement set in when it was clear that I had spoken the truth. Undoubtedly, the astonishment itself must have affected the results.

Puoils had other interests and nr162 Another disappointing feature of my experience was to find that as far as students are concerned, school science only occupies a small fraction of their life, considerable competition coming from other areas. One of my classes was a year 7 science class which I also "taught" as a tutorial group. For this group I was obliged to act as a mother or father figure. Part of my duty to care was met in having picnics, going ten pin bowling, visiting a law court, viewing Robin Hood and eating at McDonald's. Students endeavoured, partly successfully, to persuade me that I owed them certain tutorial periods which I could pay back by substituting them for science lessons. It dawned on me that research in science education was somewhat limited in focus. My view on this matter was particularly reinforced when we visited the law court. While there, we heard a judge pronounce sentence on a drug dealer, at which time one of the students became upset to the point of crying. "I'm not worried about the man, it's his wife I feel sorry for", he managed to say. What an error, to think of engaging in research, being a science teacher and being a counsellor, all at the one time. They have too many interests and too many needs and most outside of science.

Too demanding The students also asked for too much. Many of them were very high achievers. They treated you as a person who had a duty to guarantee them "good results". A record such as obtaining all top ten places in the Higher School Certificate in the state of NSW in 4 unit science in 1990 didn't help. In 1991, tragedy struck when that tenth place was shared with a student from another school, a female. They wanted the teachers to be experts. What teacher then, has time for research or having students engage in genuine science? One student confronted me with a past examination paper of the school in which a question was asked that allowed for the determination of two different answers to the same question. His query was: "Is the question more difficult than I suppose or is the question corrupt? "Corrupt it was and to be given that advice, for him, was more important than any science involved. Put the research and teaching aside for one moment. In order for any of it to occur, these students needed to be managed or manage themselves. Sometimes the reality was the former. There were management demands ... on me. The time that I lost two scalpels was interesting. Calling upon all my resources of the dramatic and referring to these items as lethal weapons of interest to the police, meant that the scalpels were mysteriously found and by the pupils themselves, within the 24 hour

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deadline. Another worthy research domain, but not basically of the science education type. Imagine my powers of concentration on science education research matters, during the time when the mystery was unsolved.

Too interestin~ Almost of paramount significance, the students, even within science lessons and even while actually on task, were tremendously interesting entities, their behaviour sometime s relegating research to second place. After carefully explaining the workings of a Liebig condensor operating quite successfully in front of us all, one student expressed puzzlement as to why another student was claiming that the water being obtained at the delivery tube end had come from the copper (II) sulfate solution in the distilling flask. Surely it was obvious that water was being delivered by the tap to the condensor and then out to the delivery tube. Forget the research, I had to work harder at teaching. The question was asked by a pupil "Would a man born 4000 years ago look like an ape?" "Let us imagine", I replied, "that a man born 1 000 000 years ago looked just a little bit like an ape ..." I was unable to finish. Suddenly answering his own question he responded, "Of course not, 4 000 is only 0.4% of 1 000 000 and insignificant". He was 12 years old. The'best laugh I had in this entire sad tale of my experience was created for me in a class where a teacher asked a group of not too interested year 9 students: "Who could tell us how many moles of carbon dioxide have been lost?" There was some murmuring and then one thoughtful student replied, with perfect timing for each word, "Sir, I believe you could do that".

Too rewardine Finally, one of the greatest triumphs of schooling over research is to be found in the rewarding relationship that can be established between students and teacher (and between teacher and teachers). I fell seriously ill in the last week of the last term. The head of science, weighed down with research data that sympathetic teachers had collected for me upon their own volition (curse them for compounding some of the problems mentioned above), visited me. However, the choicest item he gave me that day was a card from one of my year 7 classes, each boy having signed his name. Knowing my memory, some had written additional words, identifying themselves thus: "the naughty one", "the talkative one".

CONCLUSION

May this be a warning to you all. With due respect to those few souls who actually teach a few days and then do research for a few days or to those who occasionally teach as part of a specifically designed research program, never carry out science education research and be a science teacher in the ordinary sense at the same time and in the same place. It's a little like savouring the main course and the dessert all in one go.

Alternatively, it or something like it, for all its difficulties has some value and is worth being "given a go". Science education researcher and science educator alike may recall or learn for the first time what schools, teachers, teaching and pupils are really like. With a research mentality, it might just be that such a teacher recognises that ignorance is so great that to reflect and act is to embark upon an exciting adventure into vast uncharted waters. Being a teacher might not only direct research but also inform its findings in ways not anticipated or understood by those who do not teach. The school, its pupils and staff might feel something was achieved, specifically for them, as well as perhaps for others. The researcher, particularly because he/she is both researcher and teacher, might well enjoy it. But you have been warned.

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I cannot conclude without expressing my indebtedness to: Andrew, Anne, Brian, Bruce, Eddie, Geoff, George, Greg, Heather, Jim, Joy, Mark, Michael, Oscar, Phil, Ralph, Sarah, Steve, Wendy and of course, 1M, 6J, 6.4U (atoms & molecules), 6.4U (photography), 1K, 3GW, 4C and 5Bio 2.

AUTHOR

DR. BARRY NEWMAN, Senior Lecturer, School of Teacher Education, University of New South Wales, St George Campus, Oatley, NSW 2223. Speci~di~ations: chemical education, history and philosophy of science, laboratory work, student conceptualisations.