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DETERMINING DISCOURSES: CONSTRAINTS AND RESOURCES INFLUENCING
EARLY CAREER SCIENCE TEACHERS

By

Kelly B. Grindstaff

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy

2010

ABSTRACT

DETERMINING DISCOURSES: CONSTRAINTS AND RESOURCES
INFLUENCING EARLY CAREER SCIENCE TEACHERS

By
Kelly E. Grindstaff

This study explores the thinking and practices of five early-career teachers of
grades eight to ten science, in relation to their histories, schools, students, and larger
cultural and political forces. All the teachers are young women, two in their fourth year
of teaching. who teach together in an affluent suburb, along with one first-year teacher.
The other two are first-year teachers who teach in an urban setting.

All of these teachers most closely associated good science teaching with forming
relationships with students. They filtered science content through a lens of relevance
(mostly to everyday life) and interest for students. Thus they filtered science content
through a commitment to serving students, which makes sense since I argue that the
primary motivations for teaching had more to do with working with students and helping

people than the disciplines of science.

Thus, within the discourse of the supremacy of curriculum and the prevalence of
testing, these teachers enact hybrid practices which focus on covering content — to help
ensure the success of students — and on relevance and interest, which has more to do with
teaching styles and personality than disciplines of science. Ideas of good teaching are not
very focused on science, which contradicts the type of support they seek and utilize
around science content. This presents a challenge to pre- and in-service education and
support to question what student success means, what concern for students entails and

how to connect caring and concern for students with science.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost I wish to thank the live teachers in this study who gave their
time and shared their thoughts and practices with me. I am certain that I have gained
more from them than they have from me. I must also thank the school districts within
which they teach for allowing me to ask them to participate. I am also indebted to my
committee, Gail Richmond. Andy Anderson. Lynn Fendler and Avner Segall for their
feedback and especially their patience in what has been a longer process than I
anticipated.

I have to especially thank my parents, Annie & Carl Grindstaff, for the time they
freed up for me to write the first draft and work on my revisions — especially mum. And
to my sister, Laura Grindsta‘ff, who has always inspired me. And last but far from least, I
want to acknowledge my partner, Michael Mascarenhas, for putting up with my thorough
and slow approach to life and work, believing in me, and helping me see this through to
the end. And whereas our sons James, Sam and Ashwin may have prolonged this project,

it is for them, and children like them, that I and other educators do this kind of work.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi
List of Figures ................................................................................................................... Vii
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
1 Making stories: Investigating contraints and resources ............................................... 5
Research Agenda ............................................................................................................ 5
Methodological considerations and practices ................................................................. 6
Planning the study: Sampling and setting ....................................................................... 8
Data gathering and analysis .......................................................................................... 14
2. Discourses affecting and produced through teaching practices ................................. 28
The socio-cultural turn .................................................................................................. 28
Discourse ....................................................................................................................... 30
Teachers' stories, discourse and identity ....................................................................... 33
Analyzing teachers' stories using discourse (and its connection to identity) ................ 35
3. Classroom stories: Priorities and practices of "good" science teaching .................... 37
Relevance to everyday life ............................................................................................ 38
Interest and curiosity ..................................................................................................... 41
Content .......................................................................................................................... 43
Processes of science - inquiry and application ............................................................. 44
The filtering of science ................................................................................................. 47
4 Classroom stories: Relationships with students .......................................................... 53
The first year teachers ................................................................................................... 54
The fourth year teachers ................................................................................................ 63
From first year to fourth year: Practices and personalities ........................................... 68
From urban to suburban: Connecting in context ........................................................... 71
Concluding remarks: Relationships with students ........................................................ 74
5. Stories within discourses of curriculum and testing ..................................................... 75
Discourses of testing and accountability ....................................................................... 75
Contesting and attesting to the discourses of curriculum and testing in context .......... 84
The urban context: Teachers at Turner ......................................................................... 85
The suburban context: Teachers at Saunders ................................................................ 92
From urban to suburbanzThe consequences of curriculum in context ........................ 102
Concluding remarks: Discourses of curriculum and testing ....................................... 112
6. Stories of new teachers: Stretched thin, self-sufficient and supported ...................... 114
Discourses of the new teacher: Pay your dues ............................................................ 114

iv

Conflicting Identities: Self-sufficiency, mentors and collaboration ........................... 118

Concluding remarks: Foci for discussion, debate and collaboration .......................... 127
7. Recommendations for (science) teaching ................................................................ 130
Recognizing and understanding the priorities of new teachers in context .................. 130
Recognizing and understanding discourses and contexts of teaching ........................ 132
Possibilities for connecting needs of new teachers and their students with science... 134
A greater focus on Science Technology Society Environment (STSE) ..................... 134
Forms of institutional support ..................................................................................... 137
Concluding thoughts ................................................................................................... 138
References ....................................................................................................................... 140

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Percent of grade 10 students who pass ............................................................... 82
Table 2: Percent passing and letter grades for provincial exams in the sciences ........... 111
Table 3: Percent passing and letter grades for science 10 exam in 2005/6 ..................... 112

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Transcription conventions (adapted from Wortham, 2001) .............................. 21

vii

Introduction
Beginning thoughts

When I first envisioned this study, I knew that I wanted to work with early career
science teachers in the greater Vancouver area. At that time, my primary interest was in
what constrains and enables prospective and in-service teachers in questioning the
context and the content —- taking a analytical or critical stance with regard to what content
they should teach, and how, given the students in their classrooms and particular goals of
science literacy — both providing access to and reshaping school science toward more
equitable, democratic, and sustainable ends. These notions of a critical stance and of
science literacy were (and are) important to me.

However, I could not presume that these would match what was important for my
participants. I found myself heeding the cautions of Noddings (1984) that we not coerce
teachers to adopt our own philosophical and pedagogical stances. I found that I had to
better mesh my agenda with theirs. Indeed, I had to learn what their agenda was. And so
my focus shifted to understanding how these teachers develop their practices and how
these practices are reconciled within varying constraints, both external (such as
discourses of following prescribed curriculum and testing) and internal (such as notions
based on previous experiences). Their practices revolved around their own visions of
good (science) teaching. and what got in their way of enacting these visions more than

what resources upon which they drew.

The study

In focusing on what constrains (and enables) new teachers’ enactments of their
notions of good teaching, particularly the discourses that affect and are affected by their
practices. I aim to address several enduring issues in teaching in general and in science
teaching in particular in contemporary contexts. The attrition rate of new teachers across
the US. is up to 40% (Berg, Donaldson, & Johnson, 2005), and between 15 —20% across
Canada (National Graduates Survey, Statistics Canada, 2000) in the first five years of
teaching. The reasons for such high rates of teachers leaving the profession have much to
do with the discourses that infuse the profession with norms of isolation, and lack of
support in a demanding and often misunderstood career, which have remained virtually
unchanged for decades, from Lortie's (1975) classic study to contemporary investigations
(e.g. Kauffman, Johnson, Kardos, Liu & Penske, 2002). There is a significant need,
therefore, to find ways to better support new teachers, and experiment with growing ideas
ofthe importance of collaboration (Little, 1993; Darling-Hammond, 1998; Olson &
Craig. 1999, McLaughlin & Talbert. 2001 ).

In this study I aim to look at what constrains and enables new teachers — in their
first five years of teaching —teaching in ways that they feel efficacious. This is certainly
one important factor in the retention of teachers. As important as it is, whether or not
teachers feel efficacious, does not necessarily mean that their teaching matches the
images in reforms (Cohen, 1990). In science education, there has been much attention
paid to engendering an all-encompassing view of science literacy, which includes not
only scientific concepts, but the human processes of scientific investigations, and the

complex relationships between science, technology, and society (NRC, 1996, BC.

Ministry of Education. 2006). Thus. I also look at what constrains and enables teaching
toward such visions.

In addition, studies aimed at understanding how to pre- and in-service teachers do
and do not develop reform-based practices have largely focused on content knowledge of
teachers. There has been a focus on how thinking about science content frames
pedagogy, or on pedagogical content knowledge (see Barnett. J. & Hodson. D.. 2001;
Loughran..l., Mulhall. P. & Berry. A” 2004: Van Driel, J.H., De Jong, O., & Verloop, N.,
2002: /.eitllcr, 1).. 2002) There has been less attention paid to how science teachers
develop their practices in response to their views of students — what they need to know
about them, how to learn this, how and what students should learn, and why — and the
relationships they try to form with students. In my analysis of new teachers’ notions of
good science teaching. I aimed to connect the way they think about teaching science to
the relationships that they try to build with students.

In this study, then, I ultimately seek to tell the stories of new teachers in two
contexts to learn about how they develop their views and practices within the discourses
of teaching of which they are a part; both external (such inherited historical discourses
shaping curriculum and testing) and internal (such as previous experiences, values and
beliefs). I aim to look holistically at why they think and act in ways that they do. As you
will read, I argue that all of these teachers, albeit in different ways. use their priority of
serving and connecting with students to filter how they think about and enact science
curriculum. Within the discourse of the supremacy of curriculum and the prevalence of
testing, these teachers enact hybrid practices which focus on covering content — to help

ensure the success of students — and on relevance and interest, which has more to do with

teaching styles and personality than disciplines of science. Thus, ideas of good teaching
are not very focused on science which contradicts the type of support they seek and
utilize around science content. This presents a challenge to pre- and in-service education
and support to question what student success means. what concern for students entails

and how to connect caring and concern for students with science.

Chapter 1 Making stories: Investigating constraints and resources

Research Agenda

Borrowing from Britzman (2003), the over-arching goal of the study became to
investigate what constrains (and to some degree enables) early career teachers in
developing and enacting their visions of the practices that constitute “good ” science
teaching. and to investigate the discourses that legitimate or challenge such visions and
practices. I take the concept of discourse, which I will define more fully in the next
chapter, to mean something like taken—for-granted ways of thinking and acting, produced
through interaction and embedded in social institutions that help shape the theories
through which people understand themselves and their worlds.
Thus, I saw my task as two-fold:

1. Describe the thinking and practices of live beginning high school science
teachers; and analyze how their stances toward and ideas about students, teaching.
science and schools are manifested in their practices. Some guiding questions
were:

a. What goals of(science) teaching are most important for each teacher?
Why? How did these beliefs form?

b. How does each teacher enact the BC curriculum — what activities, forms
of instruction, and types of assessment does each teacher utilize and prefer
to meet the goals and needs of their classrooms?

c. How would they change the curriculum if they could? Why?

d. How does each teacher try to build relationships with students and for
what purposes?

e. How does each teacher aim to meet the needs of their students?

f. What are each teacher‘s primary concerns about their teaching and how do
they plan to address these concerns around their own practice?

2. Describe the nature of the discourses and associated expectations that these
beginning science teachers respond and contribute to; and analyze how these
different discourses contribute (legitimate or challenge) their theories about
students, teaching, science and schools and their practices.

a. What does each teacher see as constraints and resources for teaching how
they want to teach? How do they use and/or respond to them?
b. What communities of support exist in their schools and how does each

teacher use them?

Methodological considerations and practices

The questions I chose to explore above both dictated, and are dictated by,
methodology. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how different
discourses, writ large, constrain and enable my participants in developing and enacting
their visions of “good” science teaching. In doing so my goal was to make substantiated
claims about how teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policy makers might
better support early career teachers in developing thoughtful visions of generative science
teaching and the conditions needed to support such practice. This purpose is embedded in

the research questions and guided the methodology of the study.

At the same time, the questions I chose to ask arise from my identity. As Denzin
and Lincoln (2000) explain, we are situated researchers who approach our research with a
framework (ontology) that specifies a set of questions (epistemology) that we examine in
specific ways (methodology). I need to be clear, then, that I tried to encourage my
participants to question their practices and examine what they believed, what they did and
why they made the decisions they did, in order to hopefully have some small effect on
their teaching, in addition to learning about them as science teachers. As such, I felt that
it was my ethical responsibility as well as strategically necessary to be overt about my
purposes with my participants, and readers.

Let me be clear, however, that this does not mean that I simply mined the data for
the story I wanted to tell in the beginning. Whereas I recognize that other scholars
certainly would have had somewhat different relationships with my participants, and thus
would have collected somewhat different data and told somewhat different stories, I have
made every effort to tell stories that are “real." Certainly I have played a big hand in
writing these stories, as I am the one who interpreted the data and I am the one who
designed the questions and asked them. However, while the data is interpretatively
flexible —— another scholar could have focused on different themes, or asked different
questions — the data is not indefinitely flexible. I don’t believe I tell stories here that are
unsubstantiated or that others (most importantly my participants) would disagree with. I
have also tried to open myself up to questioning my own agenda. In fact, as I mentioned
at the outset of my writing, I had to shift my agenda, once I started talking to teachers. In

addition, perhaps the effect I wanted to have on teachers’ practices was not what they

needed. As such, I think it is my ethical responsibility as well as strategically necessary

to be overt about my purposes with my participants (and readers).

Planning the study: sampling and setting
A small number of teachers

This study follows Florio-Ruane‘s (2002) suggestion for learning more about
teacher practice. She writes, “to understand local knowledge in teaching and teacher
education, we need in-depth studies of individual teachers at work and of the variety of
ways that teachers think about and do that work.” (p. 209). In order to achieve generative
in-depth analyses. I chose to seek out a manageable number of teachers. hoping to attract
between four and six participants. In the end I worked with five teachers. In addition to
a limited quantity of cases, there were particular qualities that I felt would enhance both
what I could learn from, and what I could potentially offer to, my participants. I will

discuss each below.

Early career teachers of science 8, 9, 10.

I defined early career as teachers in their first five years of teaching. Most teachers who
leave the profession prematurely leave within the first five years. I wanted teachers early
in their career for a few reasons. First and foremost, I take seriously Lather’s (2002)
advocacy of research as praxis. I felt that I had the most to offer an early career teacher.

I had taught this same BC curriculum (grades 8 to 10 science) a few times and I had the
benefit ofa lot oftime to think about, read about and observe teaching practice. I thought

newer teachers might appreciate more whatever help I could offer them in thinking about

their practice. They might be hungry for the community that their teacher preparation
program no doubt encouraged them to find or make if they felt they did not have it. If
they were in a mentoring program, that many school districts have some form of, it would
be interesting to investigate the mentoring relationship as one source of support. Lastly,
unlike student teachers who have the constraints of being in another teacher’s classroom
and a lot of evaluation and support already, new teachers are forging their own practice in
the same conditions or at least the same school where they may spend a large part of their
career, and they usually do this largely on their own. Therefore they might be especially
open to avenues for learning about and from their teaching with a supportive outsider,

especially in their first two probationary years on the job.

Teachers in secondary schools on the east side of Vancouver and in the municipality of
West Vancouver.

Given that I wanted to study practices and beliefs about good teaching (including
student relationships) and what constrains and enables those practices and beliefs, I
wanted to compare two locations that had different student populations and potentially
different constraints and resources. With only 52% of all students in Vancouver schools
whose native language is English, language diversity is a given just about everywhere.
Racial diversity is also extensive throughout the greater Vancouver region. However,
according to the Vancouver school board website (http://www.vsb.bc.ca/schools),
language and ethnic and social class diversity are higher in east side schools. Thus I

targeted schools on the east side.

In contrast to the east side of Vancouver, the municipality of West Vancouver is
much less diverse with respect to social class. As I have already mentioned, all of the
greater Vancouver area is diverse with respect to ethnicities and language, including
West Vancouver. However, whereas there is always some diversity of social class, West
Vancouver is generally a very affluent community. In fact, it is consistently ranked as
one of the most affluent communities in Canada. Therefore, West Vancouver presented a
different context from the east side of Vancouver based on student population, and
possibly school culture and resources, which meant a potentially (and a partially)

’different set of constraints (and resources) for beginning science teachers.

Gaining Access

As I have already written, one reason I chose teachers in greater Vancouver was
because I had taught the same curriculum before, enabling me to be potentially helpful
and seen as more legitimate. Another reason for choosing West Vancouver specifically
as a research site was that I had taught there and I still knew teachers and some
administration who worked there. I figured I had an “in." I asked either teacher friends
or principals if any teachers at their schools fit my criteria. Only one school out of the
three high schools in the district had science teachers in their first five years of teaching.
I was instructed by the principal of this school to contact the district for approval. My
“in” did turn out to work in my favour. The senior district administration I contacted told
me she was supporting my request because I had taught in the district, and that she would
normally refuse such requests (to approach teachers) out of hand due to the extra

workload with committees and district activities that teaching staffs in small districts

IO

experience. This left me with the impression that had I not had that “in” I would not have
been able to even ask the teachers ifthey would be willing to be in my study. I also had
an “in” on the east side. A fellow science teacher friend taught at a school on the east
side and he informed me that there were three new science teachers at the school.

Of course I had to provide proof of the approval from my Institutional Review
Board (IRB). I did have approval for my study and my consent form, but I needed letters
from the principals of the schools where I would be conducting my research, before the
IRB would give me final approval. However, the district or board level approval had to
be given before the principals would write a letter and the school district and school
board wanted proof of my IRB approval. This was a catch—22. Fortunately, upon hearing
the situation, both principals were willing to write me a letter, with the stipulation that
IRB approval was given. I knew I would have approval with those letters, so I was
finally in a position to talk to the teachers.

In West Vanvouver, the vice principal set up a meeting with the three teachers
who fit my criteria in the school I call Saunders. They all agreed to be in my study with
very little hesitation. It seemed ironic that it had taken me months to get to the position
to present my ideas to the teachers, and they all agreed within about half an hour. The
district personnel I was in touch with warned me that she thought that it might be a
“tough sell” for me. It seemed that this could not have been further from the truth. I had
designed my ideas of my relationships with the teachers as one of trying not to take up
too much of their time and of trying to provide some service. I think I was able to convey
that message adequately, and I believe I lived up to it. At the school I call Turner on the

east side, my friend set up an information meeting over lunch with the new science

teachers so I could tell them about my research and what being involved would mean for

them. Of the three teachers there who fit my criteria, two agreed to participate.

My participants

The teachers in the study are all young women, though this was not by design. It
just happened that all the new junior science teachers at the two schools I approached
were women. All names are pseudonyms. Anne and Jaelyn taught at Turner Secondary.
on the east side. Anne was in her first year of teaching and taught at Turner half time,
splitting her load at another secondary school nearby. She taught one block each of grade
8. grade 9 and grade 10 science at Turner. At her other school, she was in an “extended
skills position” teaching science, math, and English. Jaelyn was in her second year of
teaching, this being her first full year at Turner. She had come to Turner the previous
January in a short-term position, which ended up lasting until the end of the school year.
She taught science 8 and 9 as well as grades I 1 and 12 chemistry.

Of the three teachers at Saunders Secondary, in West Vancouver, Delia was in her
first year, and Jun and Susanne were both in their fourth year of teaching. Delia taught
one block of science IO. She also taught chemistry I l and 12, planning 10, and math 8.
Susanne taught science 8 and science 9 as well as choir and planning 10. Most of her
junior science classes were part of a program called computer immersion, where students
all have laptops and take notes and do most assignments with the computer. This was
true of the grade 8 class I observed. Jun taught science 8, 9, and 10. Her grade 10 class
was a pre-AP science 10 designed to prepare students to take Advanced Placement

courses in the sciences in the future, such as AP biology.

12

Data sources

Just as my questions for this dissertation come out of my identity as a science
educator, the identities of these teachers are central in understanding their practice and
their learning to teach. The questions they ask themselves and what they care about
frames their burgeoning practice, what they learn from it and how it develops. Those
questions, beliefs and practices are generated through their own contexts, their school,
their students, their histories. their challenges. and to some degree. the teacher education
programs they completed.

Many scholars, for example, Linde (I993), Mishler (1999), and Ochs & Capps
(2001), draw connections between narratives and identities. Sfard & Prusak (2005)
define identity, which is salient for learning (in this case to teach science), as an ensemble
of narratives about a person that originate from actions, which become ascribed to the
actor themselves. Therefore, the stories that teachers tell about their practice, their
disappointments, successes, hopes and concerns was a primary data source. I had two
taped conversations with each teacher.

In addition to the two taped conversations I had with my five participants, I also
had numerous day to day short conversations, some of which became part of the my field
notes for that day. I took field notes whenever I sat in on their classes. I observed
Anne’s grade 8, grade 9 and grade IO science classes. With Jaelyn, I sat in on one block
of science 8 and one block of science 9. I observed Delia’s science 10 class, one each of

Suzanne’s science 8 and science 9 classes, and one each of Jun’s science 8, 9, and 10

classes. For each class I observed, I sat in and took field notes four or five times during
the second half of the school year.

In addition to my field notes and transcripts from our conversations, I also
collected course outlines, examples of tests and classroom activities to augment the field
notes. To get a better picture of the discourses of the “context,” which can constrain and
enable particular practices, I also looked at provincial curriculum documents and
provincial policies and operations, as well as the newsmagazine of the BC Teachers

Federation, and local newspaper articles.

Data gathering& analysis:
Positioning myself and participants

Since it is widely accepted that it is impossible to be completely absent from
one’s own study — to be entirely objective and neutral — I had no concern about being an
unobtrusive observer, limiting my engagement with “subjects” for fear of altering results
of the studied. Clearly I am actively present as the editor of others’ words and decisions
about where to include my own. It was not always easy to decide to what degree I should
inject my interpretations and theorize about what others have said or not said, and to what
degree my participants should be allowed to speak for themselves. In saying this, I
recognize the “crisis of representation” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000) - that I cannot hope to
portray my participants exactly as they would portray themselves; that I cannot directly
capture lived experience. As Geertz (2000) writes, “[t]he truth of the doctrine of cultural
(or historical) relativism is that we can never apprehend another people’s or another

period’s imagination neatly, as though it were our own. The falsity ofit is that we can

14

therefore never genuinely apprehend it at all” (p. 44). Still, how much to “point out what
[my participants] could not see, would not do, and could not have said” (Britzman, 2000,
p. 37) was a struggle as explicated by Britzman and Lather (1997). And as Weis et al
(2000) discuss such decisions inevitably depend on what the participants say and who
they are. The positioning of myself, then, is coupled with the positioning of my
participants.

There are no easy answers to this dilemma of positionality. As a participant-
observer. the part of me that is an insider may have something to say as a participant and
the part that is the outsider may feel compelled to theorize for and frame the words of my
participants in certain ways in order to tell the story I saw developing. The best I could
do was to try to be overt with my participants and readers about my theorizing and
contextualizing. I like Segall’s (2002) strategy of including participants’ responses to my
use and interpretation of their talk and actions. After all, if I am also a participant and an
insider, why shouldn’t everyone in the study get a chance to interpret or analyze for
themselves? Couldn’t these potentially differing interpretations make the study richer
and more interesting? This would be one more strategy to enact research as praxis, and
to research with as opposed to on others.

However, given the timing of my actual writing, and the commitments of the
teachers in the study, this did not turn out to be the most practical approach. No one had
the time (ultimately because I didn’t really give them enough of it) to read and comment
on my interpretations of their words, prior to the completion of the first draft of this
study. However, I have stayed in touch with my participants and invited them to

comment, and so, these comments may be something I can add prior to completing pieces

15

of this work for publication. Given the responses I have had, however, I think Anne may
be the only one who would take me up on it. These teachers are busy with their jobs and
lives and despite what I perceive as a good relationship, my impression is that they feel

they have better things to do. They have already done me a great service. I want to give
them the opportunity to have more ofa voice in a study about them, yet I have to respect

that they may not want to.

Interviews/Con versations

Given that the conversations I had with the teachers — the stories that they told —
were a primary data source, I want to discuss this process with regards to data generation,
analysis and positionality. While I did have a semi-structured format with questions
which attempted to get at their thoughts around a shared event (a classroom observation.
for example) or their thinking about a particular topic, what came out of the interview or
conversation was a joint endeavor between me and the teacher. The clarifying questions
we asked each other, the examples we gave, the volume of experiences talked about and
the topics that teachers wanted to talk about varied with each participant. I had my
agenda — things that I wanted to ask each teacher — but I was also flexible. And so the
conversations with each teacher were unique. and some participants certainly provided
much more information than others.

In addition, what the teachers conveyed to me was in part dependent on the
interaction and conversation that we shared. As I have already mentioned, I’m not saying
that the teacher would tell a completely different story to someone else, but that they

would tell a somewhat different story. They might focus on or emphasize different

16

things, or speak in a different way. For example, even though I had no direct or
consequential power over them, and I believe they felt quite comfortable talking to me,
they know that I have an agenda (from agreeing to participate and from the interview
questions themselves) and thus they likely had ideas of what I wanted them to focus on
and talk more about. In this way, the interview was not only about gleaning information
from the teacher, but it may have acted as a tool for the teacher to construct that
information. Therefore, by having the conversation, a participant may have come to
some different understandings about their teaching than if they had not had the
conversation with me. I certainly had a few instances where teachers said they had not
thought of something before. Perhaps our conversation helped them think about science
literacy or weighing the costs and benefits of assessments (two examples that come to
mind) differently. This is part of how I envision research as praxis.

Holstein and Gubrium (2000) write that “rather than searching for the best or
most authentic answer. the aim [of active interviewing] is to systematically activate
applicable ways of knowing — the possible answers — that respondents can reveal, [The
active interviewer] does not tell the respondents what to say but offers them pertinent
ways of conceptualizing issues and making connections — that is, ...it is the active
interviewer’s job to direct and harness the respondent’s constructive storytelling to the
research task at hand ” (p.123). I think this happens even without the interviewer being
consciously active about it, by virtue of who they are or the range of answers they
anticipate and thus probe further to elicit. I think it is necessary to acknowledge this
collaborative element in the construction of information, but as Holstein and Gubrium

point out, “[b]ias is a meaningful concept only if the subject is a preformed, purely

informational commodity that the interview process might somehow taint" (p. 123).
Therefore, it is not an acknowledgement of bias per se, but an acknowledgement of the
inevitably collaborative nature of knowledge construction.

Positioning participants as those researching with me does not mean, however,
that I can unproblematically consider their voices as Iiberatory expressions. Baker (1999)
notes that such notions are complicated by the researcher choosing and framing the words
as well as eliciting them with a particular questions, in addition to the recognition ofthe
effects of social history and experience on the possible thoughts and words evoked. That
is, at Foucault’s (I984) suggestion, we need to examine the historical terms that enabled
particular utterances and ask if we speak discourses that we are born and/or socialized
into, then who is speaking? In other words, I needed to acknowledge the problems and

explore the contexts of voice, as part of my interpretations.

Participant Observation

As I have already mentioned, I sat in on certain classes of grade 8, 9, and 10 science
that were taught by my participants. This part of the data collection was something that I
talked to potential participants about when we first met, and was also in the consent form.
This aspect of the research drew concern from the district-level administrator I sought
approval from in West Vancouver. She told me that she believed that if the teachers did
not know me, they would find the classroom observation piece threatening. This did not
turn out to be the case ultimately, but Susanne (at Saunders) and Jaelyn (at Turner), both
voiced concerns of feeling they were being evaluated. Luckily, it was not enough of a

concern for Susanne or Jaelyn to not consent. but it was something we talked about in the

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early stages of data collection. I reiterated, as I had in my consent form, that the purpose
of the observations was to get a sense of who the students were, and how the teacher
interacted with them, as well as to fill out the story of each teacher’s pedagogical
approach. And in this way, the observations served as topic generation for our
conversations, as I could ask about events or practices, which took place while I was in
the classroom. I believe that I showed them through our interaction and conversations
that the purpose of my presence in their classrooms was not evaluative.

Part of not being evaluative. was my role as the participant in what qualitative
researchers call participant observation. While I was in classrooms, I took field notes as
an observer, but I also talked to students, helped them with activities or questions, talked
to the teacher, and was sometimes invited to be part of classroom discussions. The
students seemed to quickly get used to my presence and treated me as another teacher at
times. I was an insider and an outsider at the same time. Participant observation in
general is an important piece of data gathering because, observations take place in
settings that lack the controlled artificial feel of interviews. According to Lofland and
Lofland (1995) , “participant observation refers to the process in which an investigator
establishes and sustains a many-sided and relatively Iong-tenn relationship with a human
association in its natural setting for the purpose of developing a scientific understanding
of that association” (p. 18). Moreover, participant observation is directed at action more
than language. and thus serves as a corroborator, so to speak. for the stories teachers tell.

Participant observation in classrooms. also gave me a sense of the context within
which my participants taught. Being in the schools, and the classrooms, seeing the

students in the hallways and in classes, sets the stage for the teachers’ stories. Given that

I am looking at the discourses that teachers contribute to and operate within, the
“context” is not the background or set, but part of the story, and part of the analysis of
what constrains and enables their practice. In addition, I fill out (or triangulate) the story
of “context” with an analysis of documents such the BC curriculum, provincial testing
policy, BC school funding practices, the newsmagazine of the BC Teachers Federation,

and local newspaper articles.

Transcription

I agree with Wortham (2001) that interpreting the meaning of utterances requires
attention to how that meaning unfolds in interactions. When transcribing audio-taped
conversations I transcribed verbatim the turn-taking by myself and the teachers in order
to foreground that interaction. This inclusion ofmy role. I believe. assists in my
interpretation since a chunk ofa teacher’s response is not abstracted from conversation,
and thus is not de-contextualized more than it already has to be for the purposes of
writing a dissertation. For example, including my talk helps to guard against interpreting
a teacher’s response as disclosing elements more salient to the teacher than they really
were.

Narrative researchers argue that how researchers transcribe utterances depends on
what research questions and theoretical frames they bring. In other words, transcription is
an analytical step (Mishler, I991; Ochs, 1979). Since I am mostly concerned with the
content of what the teachers are saying rather than the way they say it (I am not interested
in the structure or performance of their stories), I have transcribed their (and my) talk as

verbatim prose. However. I do not deny the claims of scholars such as Jakobson (1960)

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and Baumann & Briggs (1990) that meanings of utterances reside not only in what, but
also in how, something is said — that the form and the function of speech creates a
meaning unit. For example, words which were emphasized or pauses where I or a teacher
sought for the right word, contribute to the overall meaning of the text and were included
in the transcription. Thus I included a system for conveying how words were spoken as a

part of the verbatim prose. These are explicated in the figure below.

Figure 1: Transcription conventions (adapted from Wortham, 2001)

— breaks in speech (like interjecting a thought or starting a different way to say
something)

(underline) notable emphasis on a word
( ) descriptions of speech e.g. (softly)

(.) pause

(?) unintelligible recording

(( )) researcher comment

= interruption or next utterance following immediately. or continuous talk

As Gee (1991) asserts, “interpretation is an amalgam of structural properties of
texts and creative inferences drawn on the basis of context and previous experience” (p.
16). My interpretations of these transcripts, then, were focused on how and mostly what
was said in light of cues provided by me, and my knowledge of the contexts of the
school, the students in their class. and the teacher’s previous experiences. Much of this
contextual information was gleaned from previous conversations as well as the other
forms of data collection such as classroom observations, and the documents listed

previously.

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Ethnography and constructivist grounded theory

What I have been describing here I think would best be called an ethnography by
Creswell’s (1998) description, involving participant—observation in which the researcher
is immersed in the lives of a group (of beginning science teachers) through one-on-one
interviews to describe and interpret the group (especially behaviour, language and
interactions). To make sense of my data generated in this ethnography, I have used most
closely the tools of constructivist grounded theory as explicated by Charmaz (2000).
Charmaz starts with the ideas of Glaser & Strauss (1967) regarding grounding theory in
data by using systematic inductive guidelines for collection and analyzing data to build
theoretical frameworks that explain that data. She then critiques that their approach takes
an objectivist stance which assumes there is an external reality that can be discovered, in
order to come up with her more interpretative approach.

Thus, whereas I try not to force my data and analysis through my preconceptions,
frameworks or hypotheses, I believe it is impossible not to do so to some degree. As I
have already written, I am the person who has come up with questions to form this study
and I am the one asking the questions of my participants, and observing their classes. I
am the one analyzing the data that I helped to generate. Therefore, in using constructivist
grounded theory, I am not trying to discover the real world, but tell the story of“ a world
made real in the minds and through the words and actions of its members” (Charmaz,
2000, p. 523). Thus, in the chapters that follow I tell a story which attempts to interpret
how five science teachers construct their realities. The theories 1 develop seek to help
explain these realities, and hopefully provide a useful tool for other researchers with

similar questions.

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Constructivist grounded theory is an inductive approach in which data gathering,
analysis, and theory development occur simultaneously. I will describe my approach
briefly below. After sitting in on between I and 3 classes, I had my first taped
conversation with each teacher. These conversations ranged in length from 48 minutes
(with Susanne) to an hour and 54 minutes (with Delia). Also, for Delia and Anne, the
conversation took place in two parts since we ran out of time the first time we got
together to talk. I continued to go to their classes and take field notes, and then after
reviewing those notes and listening to conversations again, we scheduled the second
taped conversation. The second taped conversations all took place in June near the end of
the school year and was my last time with each teacher. These conversations ranged from
37 minutes (with Delia) to an hour and 11 minutes (with Jun).

As I looked over the field notes and re-listened to the conversations, I jotted down
ideas that came out, and used what Charmaz calls the constant comparative method.

That is. I compared across the teachers with regards to their views, situations, actions,
accounts, and experiences. I also compared what they said in the first interview with my
field notes about what they did and what their students did in the classroom, and
compared the themes or ideas I jotted down for each teacher. I made notes on the
themes I felt might be emerging across the data and I explored those more deeply in the
second conversation. Charmaz calls this theoretical sampling, where you go back to
collect more data to shed light on emerging theories. For example, in my field notes and
in my first set of conversations, I noted the centrality of testing in the interactions
between students and teachers as well as in the conversations about teachers’ practices.

This was an aspect of practice I asked further about in the second taped conversation.

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After the second conversation I transcribed all the conversations verbatim, using
the transcription conventions I described above. Charmaz advocates line by line coding,
in order to remain attuned to participants’ views of their realities, rather than assuming
that the researcher and researched share the same view or worlds. I did use the spirit of
line by line coding in that I recorded ideas about all applicable lines in my first re-reading
of the transcript. However, I found that there were some lines that didn’t warrant a code,
and so I did not literally code line by line. Again, I compared across the teachers, and
with the same teacher over time to help me establish categories for the themes I was
identifying. I want to be clear that these categories do not just emerge, but come to the
surface through my particular lens in aiming to answer my questions. Charmaz calls
establishing categories in this way in order to synthesize and explain data, focused
coding. The analytical framework then is shaped out of the categories. Throughout this
process I would write short memos about the themes and categories I identified as a way
of keeping track of what I might eventually write about.

For example, when I compared what the first year teachers in particular said about
support for their practice, I identified a theme of wanting more feedback and more of a
community to share resources. At the same time, I identified a theme of new teachers
feeling that they had to appear self-sufficient. There appeared to be a tension between
what they wanted and what they felt was legitimate in terms of support. These themes
eventually fit into a category I labeled self-sufficiency and support. The framework for
exploring and explaining the teachers’ thinking and actions within this entails placing
these within the discourses of new teachers that circulate in school communities and the

educational community more broadly. I discuss this more fully in the next chapter.

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Validity

My explanation here of how I analyzed the data is part of my attempt to convince
my readers that my interpretations are valid. There are many facets, and meanings to
terms such as ‘valid’ in the context of research. Traditionally. internal validity (the
credibility of conclusion or how/whether other explanations could explain results) and
external validity (if results can be generalized to other populations and contexts) have
been the primary concerns. You likely understand by now that by valid I do not mean that
my story accurately represents the exact stories my participants would tell. Nor does it
mean that any researcher would come up with same themes and conclusions. And there
are limits to generalizations in all research, and perhaps especially in education because
what happens in any one classroom involves teachers interacting with students, both of
whom have varying beliefs, motivations, experiences, etc. (Berliner, 2002) and in such
social analysis the same curriculum, for example, can produce different outcomes
(Erickson & Gutierrez, 2002).

In addition, construct validity refers to how well a test or some other measurable
entity represents a construct a researcher is interested in studying. How credible can
conclusions be and what good are generalizations if the measurements taken do not
actually measure the construct of interest? The multiple data sources (stories, actions,
curricular materials, policy documents, etc) are certainly beneficial in getting at
something as all encompassing as the demands and responses of discourses. Construct
validity here (or anywhere) is not a matter of proving that a measure correctly identifies a
construct (since this is impossible, discussed below), but a matter of making a

rhetorically effective argument that it is a reasonable and useful measure. Construct

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validity is, however, impossible to prove (as it is impossible to exactly match reality with
representation, concepts with objects, and words with things); and there are multiple
interpretations of how well a construct is measured due to the fact that research
discourses are shaped by ideologies, cultures, language, politics and power; and thus
different research discourses produce different “truths” (Cherryholmes, 1988).

However, as many scholars (Kvale, I994; Carr, 1995; Howe & Eisenhart, I990)
point out, claiming a postmodern stance does not grant the researcher freedom from
validity concerns. Abandoning positivist epistemology does not entail abandoning
standards of objectivity and rationality —- though what these mean and what they look
become more sophisticated, and more bound up in ethics and politics. Thus, I do intend
to convince my readers that I have written a reasonable and valid argument that is
supported by the data, and contributes productively and ethically to the conversation
about how to better support teachers, particularly beginning science teachers.

Anfara, Brown, & Mangione (2002) suggest that qualitative research would be
more rigorous and valid if the research questions, data collection and analysis were made
more explicit in order to show how the context of the research setting and the researcher
affected the data gathered and the interpretation and triangulation of that data. In
addition, Kvale (1994) points out that bias is unavoidable, but unintentional bias can be
counteracted by researchers making their presuppositions and views explicit. I have tried
to do this throughout the project.

This explicitness is connected to the most important aspect of validity. I believe
validity is notjust ruling out alternative explanations, but involves the purpose and

ethical implications, which are certainly effected by the assumptions of the researcher

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and community and the research design. Lather (2002) emphasizes that any criteria for
validity must be situated, relational, and temporal-historical. The crisis of representation
— that researchers cannot hope to portray their participants exactly as they would portray
themselves; that they cannot directly capture lived experience — is best dealt with by
contextually relevant practices. Given the political nature of knowledge generation,
contextual relevance always involves questions of ethics, blurring the lines between
ethics and validity. All research is really about making an argument, using data as
evidence and thus rhetoric and validity become blurred. This does not mean that because
a study aims to do the right thing, that it is valid. I think Lather wants research to move
away from tests of validity that obscure purposes and contexts and reconfigure a meaning
of validity that highlights these aspects instead — with the purposes of research
recognized as political and ethical. Given this focus on ethical purposes of research, it is
pertinent to examine those purposes and the harm and good that potentially results from
research for the research participants, and the communities of which they are a part.

Again, I have tried to stay cognizant of these priorities throughout the project.

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Chapter 2 Discourses affecting and produced through teaching practices

In order to make sense of data produced in this study, I employ a framework that I
have melded out of the similar ideas of several researchers/theorists in a way that
provides analytical purchase for investigating my participants priorities for and enactment
of their teaching practices. Central for me to what constrains and enables both notions of
good practice and the enactment of teaching practices, are the “contexts” (curriculum,
schools, students, personal histories, experiences and beliefs of teachers, etc) such
intentions and actions inform and form within. However, the term “context” does not
capture fully the dynamic nature of the practices and intentions of teachers situated in
particular socio-cultural and material circumstances. Thus I employ the concept of
discourse. Discourse is a construct which is used a great deal in social science research,
and which carries many meanings. Below I will explain what I take this construct to

mean, and why and how I use it.

The socio-cultural turn

Geertz (2000) argues that social scientists, among whom educational researchers
are usually classified, have shifted in how they conceptualize investigating learning or
behavior away from (seemingly) tidy cause-and-effect explanations of the natural
sciences towards interpretative explanations, borrowing analogies from the humanities.
This turn taken in the social sciences (p. 34) places a greater emphasis on the significant
role of the cultural, historical and social contexts affecting and being affected by the

actions and thinking of people.

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Making sense of the thinking of particular teachers (or whomever), entails
having access to evidence of such (talk, for example) in light of the context.
Thought as a process may be individual, but it is enabled and mediated through
symbol systems (language) of discourse communities; thought as a product, then,
is always social and cultural. Like Cole (1996). Geertz (2000) conceives of
cognition, emotion, motivation, perception, imagination, memory, whatever ...as
social affairs (p. 153).

Sfard and Prusak (2005) similarly refer to “the general sociocultural turn in the
human sciences,” (including educational research) as a reason for a great interest in the
notion of identity as created and recreated in social interaction (p 15). Likewise, the
notion of discourse — with various definitions, and discussed in more detail below — takes
up the salience of cultural, historical and social contexts. Britzman, like countless
scholars, draws on Marx: “[People] make their own history but do not make itjust as
they please” (Marx in Britzman, 2003, p. 40). Thus teachers’ goals, interpretations,
thinking. relationship—building, action, etc —— can only be understood situated in their
contexts — the discourses of schools, teaching, learning, knowledge and science from
their personal life experiences and society more broadly. These discourses, both internal
(personal histories, teaching experience, etc) and external (expectations of teacher
behaviour, support, accomplishments, etc) constrain and enable particular thinking and

action. Let me now be more explicit by what I mean by discourse.

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Discourse

Contributing to and precipitating from the socio-cultural turn is the notion
ofdiscourse. Many scholars draw on the work of Foucault for building tools of
inquiry to help answer the hows and whys of thinking and actions of people,
especially historical contributions that legitimate or challenge such thinking and
action. For example, Britzman (2003) uses the idea of discourses to investigate
the voices of student teachers. She draws on F oucault’s notion ofdiscourse as
taken-for-grantea’ ways ofunderstanding. speaking and acting, as she “questions
the consequences of the taken—for-granted knowledge shaping responses to
everyday life and the meanings fashioned from them” (p. 35). She also quotes
Thomas Popkewitz’s definition of discourse as “set[ting] the conditions by which
events are interpreted and one’s self as an individual is located in a dynamic
world” (Popkewitz in Britzman p. 39).

James Gee also draws on Foucault. but uses somewhat different vocabulary. For
Gee, these ways of understanding, speaking, and acting which set the frame for how
individuals interpret themselves and the world, is closer to what he calls Discourse, with
an upper-case D. Gee (1996) defines Discourse as ways of knowing, doing, talking,
reading. and writing, which are constructed and reproduced in social and cultural practice
and interaction (as opposed to “discourse" with a lower-case d, meaning a stretch of
language). This notion of Discourse is similar to how Erickson (1996) defines culture, as
implicitly learned standards of ways of thinking, speaking and acting within a group or
network of people, shaped by shared values and knowledge, which are aligned with

power and thus political divisions between groups.

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For Gee (1999), recognition is central to Discourse. To be recognized as a
particular someone we use Discourses — language, actions, interaction, values, beliefs,
symbols, and tools, which are embedded in a medley of social institutions. Gee (1999)
likens Foucault’s notion of discourse to his own idea of Conversations (with a upper-case
C). Gee writes about Conversations between and among Discourses which involve
controversy or debate, which are connected to values and ways of thinking that are
historically constituted and often taken-for-granted (i.e. people involved in Conversations
using Discourses are unaware of the historical events that helped to create or shape the
themes and values involved in the Conversation).

One common thread among these ideas ofdiscourses is that these ways of
understanding. communicating. valuing. and acting (which are taken-for-granted) are
always, in some way or another, within a community and through interaction. Lave and
Wenger (1991), who focus on what they call situated learning, write about communities
of practice, within which learning involves the construction of identities (p. 53),
constituted through participation in a community, where such participation is increased
with seeing and engaging the sociopolitical organization of practice (p. 91). Using the
ideas of discourse above, Lave and Wenger’s communities ofpractice might aptly be
termed discourse communities.

As Gee (1999) points out, there are many scholars who employ similar ideas to
those laid out here.l With this quick review I have intended to point out the similarities

or core of the notion of discourse as I see it and thus why I feel it is a generative tool for

 

' Gee notes that his term “Discourse” is meant to cover important aspects of: discourses (Foucault I996.
I969, I973, I977, I978, I980, I984, I985); cultural communities (Clark. 1996); discourse communities
(Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Miller, 1984): practices (Barton & Hamilton 1998: Bourdieu l977b, I985,
I990a,b; Heidegger I962); cultures (Geertz I973, I983); activity systems (Engestrom I987, I990:
Leont’ev I981; Wertsch 1998; among others (p. 38).

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inquiry. I take discourse to mean something along the lines of taken-for-granted ways of
thinking. communicating, acting, values and tools, constructed through shared language,
practice and interaction embedded in social institutions that help shape the theories
through which people understand themselves and their worlds. Gee (1999) notes terms
such as discourse are thinking devices that guide us to ask certain sorts of questions (p.
37). For me, then, using the tool of discourse helps to focus on how taken-for—granted
language, beliefs, practices, and institutions affect the way my participants envision the
work ofteaching science and how they form their teaching practices.

For many educational researchers, particularly in the area of literacy, the
framework of discourses has been helpful. Of particular interest for this study is Moje
(1996), who studied literacy practices in a secondary school chemistry classroom. She
draws on Gee’s (I990) notion of literacy as discourse as well as Erickson’s (I986) ideas
ofclassroom culture, where teachers and students define and negotiate rules, norms and
values. And thus, the thinking and practices that inform reading and writing and oral
language use of any content area like science “are embedded in the unique social and
cultural discourses of the classroom, school and larger culture, as interpreted by the
people who interact in school settings” (p. 175).

Moje conceptualizes classroom culture as defined by teachers’ and students’
beliefs about the nature of knowledge: philosophies and knowledge about the discipline,
teaching and learning in that discipline (in this case, chemistry) and teaching and Ieaming
in general; past school experiences and their role in schools; home and community
experiences; and feelings and emotions about school and themselves in general (p. 175).

Thus with a similar frame I hope to shed light on my participating teachers’ beliefs,

philosophies, experiences, and emotions, and how aspects of these are in response to their

students.

Teachers ’ stories, discourse and identity

Often linked to the notion of discourse is identity. Britzman examines the
meanings that people (student teachers in her study; early-career teachers in mine)
produce “through their theories, practices, routines, discourses, contexts, and reflections
on educational life” and “how such meanings produce identities” (p. 37). Gee avers that
we use Discourses to be recognized as a certain kind of person. Lave and Wenger write
about constructing identities through participation in communities of practice.

So identity. as I and many other researchers see it, is not akin to some extra-
discursive unchanging essence of being, as is attached to terms such as personality or
character. Rather, identity is fully discursive or collectively shaped. In order to
operationalize this slippery concept, Sfard and Prusak (2005) define identities as
“collections of stories about persons” (p. 16). They equate identity-building with story
telling. Thus. stories that people tell to others (which is a primary data source in this
study) or themselves, or those that others tell about them (which I am doing), are not
windows into or reflections of identity. Rather, these authors argue, these stories
themselves are a useful way to operationalize identity.

As Sfard and Prusak point out, identities originate in daily activities and
experiences, but they claim “it is our vision of our own or other people’s experiences, and
not the experiences as such that constitute identities.” They present narratives as

“discursive counterparts of one’s lived experiences“ (p. 17). Clearly then, actions,

33

experiences, and practices are integral to one’s identity, and narratives help to shape these
actions. Recognizing this, Sfard and Prusak focus on stories and “the activity of
identifying, rather than the end product on the complex dialectic between identity-
building and other human activities ” (p. 17). Specifically these authors and I are
interested in the co-molding of narratives and deeds, and in the interaction between
community and individual levels (p. 21), and thus the interplay between discourse and
identity.

We must keep in mind that not any story counts as a narrative, nor a narrative
which forms and informs identity. Sfard and Prusak (2005) specify that such narratives
must be “reifying, endorsable, and significant” (p. 16). Reifying statements indicate
repetitiveness, using verbs such as be, have or can, rather than do, or adverbs such as
always, usually, generally or never. Endorsable simply refers to stories that are taken to
be true by the individual in question. And these authors suggest that a story is significant
ifa change in the story affects the story-teller's feelings about the person ofinterest.

In addition to this criteria, Labov (1972) defines a narrative as a recapitulation of
past experience. In Juzwik’s (2006) discussion of Sfard and Prusak (2005), she notes that
Linde (1993) defines narrative as requiring an evaluation from the point of view of the
teller, and that “Ochs and Capps (2001) reframe evaluation as moral stance-taking”
(.luzwik, M.M., 2006, p. 16). Thus. I will use the criteria of evaluation or stance-taking —-
describing what is good or right or desired -— as a necessary part of narrative which helps

to form and inform identities of the teachers in this study.

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Analyzing teachers ’ stories using discourse (and its connection to identity)

The notions of discourse and identity, then, help me to ask particular questions
and analyze these teachers’ stories from a particular angle. In my conversations with my
participants, in my observations of their teaching. I looked for evidence of their ideas of
good science teaching. and what (perhaps taken-for-granted) practices. policies,
situations. and language appeared to constrain or enable those ideas in their practice. In
the chapters that follow, I present stories ofthese teachers’ thinking and practices and
how I take this thinking and action to respond and contribute to particular discourses.

In the following two chapters I write about these teachers stories centred on ideas
and practices inside their classrooms and what and how discourses constrain and enable
these ideas and practices. In chapter three I put together the stories ofteachers’ ideas of
the goals ofteaching science — stories that help to shape their practices, and come out of
their daily activities and experiences and carry evaluation of what is important in what
and how science is taught. I hypothesize about the discourses that help to shape
(specifically constrain) these goals. In chapter four, I discuss their views and enactment
of relationships with students, and how those affect and are affected by their vision of
good teaching and how both interact with discourses of teaching.

In chapters five and six I focus the teachers’ stories around their interaction with
larger communities and discourses originating outside their classrooms. In chapter five I
explore the discourse of curriculum and testing (and specifically of accountability) and
how each teacher’s notion of “good teaching” infomis, contests, and is constrained and
enabled by such a discourse. In chapter six I discuss the teachers’ stories of Ieaming to

teach, and support for their practice. both in terms oftheir experiences and their desires.

35

I explore how discourses of new teachers, self-sufficiency and community interact with
those experiences and desires. Thus, in these broad areas of teaching and testing science,
relationships with students. and learning and developing teaching practice, the interaction

of beliefs, practices and discourses is the analytical angle used.

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Chapter 3 Classroom Stories: Priorities and practices of “good” science teaching

In order to better understand what and how discourses constrain and enable
teaching practices and identities, I first had to get an idea of what my participants saw as
what they were trying to accomplish. Like Ochs and Capps (2001) and Linde (1993), I
sought stories which indicated evaluation or moral-stance-taking. Thus, I wanted to get a
sense of their visions of “good” science teaching. I asked all of the teachers in this study
in the first taped conversation, what their goals were in teaching science. Depending on
the flow of the conversation, I just asked the question and then followed up on the
answers (such was the case with Delia and Anne), or in some cases I suggested what I
meant by goals of teaching such as students being successful in school, learning what
they need to for adult life, or learning what they need to for a basis of a career (such was
the case with Susanne, Jun and Jaelyn). In both cases I tried to build on the responses to
get as full a response as possible without forcing teachers to talk about something they
did not see as important.

This question and its follow-up elicited what they felt were the goals, priorities or
big ideas for “good” science teaching. I felt the responses would carry evaluation of what
the most important goals are; what the most important elements of science teaching are.
In addition to the first conversation in which we talked about their goals, I asked them in
our second conversation about how they would do things differently if they didn’t have
the structures that dictated, to some degree, what and how they taught. For example, I
asked them to imagine there was no B.C. curriculum, no provincial exam or no common

school tests. This helps to paint a fuller picture oftheir notions of good teaching — of

37

how they want to teach and how they feel constrained and enabled in acting on those
notions.

I grouped themes I identified in the stories within the larger category of notions of
good science teaching. These teachers’ stories of good science teaching share a lot of
elements in common. I believe this is partly because the themes came out of a
conversation about goals, and thus tend to focus on what teachers want students to get out
of their science teaching. In addition, in many ways the contexts and discourses within
which teachers form these ideas are similar. How each individual teacher attempts to
achieve these goals also has similarities (again not surprising given similar contexts), but
there are differences as well, as there are ofcourse differences in the stories and identities
of teachers even in similar circumstances. For example, how a teacher tries to capitalize
on or generate interest can be different, even though both see that interest as important.

I focus in the following sections on the themes associated with their goals for
teaching science. both in terms of what science students need to understand and how best
to help students achieve that understanding. Then I make an argument about how their
ideas of good teaching, and their actual practices interact with discourses of teaching and

motivations for choosing teaching as a career.

Relevance to everyday life

Helping students see the relevance of material to their lives was an element of
teaching science that all of the teachers identified as significant. One aspect of seeing
relevance is understanding or realizing how “science is everywhere” (Jun, Apr 18/06;

Susanne, June 6/06). Jun felt this was important so that students “can see those real life

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applications” (Apr 18/06). Likewise Jaclyn said “I think they [students] don’t realize how
much science we use in our lives. I think is our job to make them realize it is
relevant”(Mar 3/06).

Jun conveyed that particular content was especially relevant. “I really like talking
about things like that [climate change] and saying, “you are the future voters, and I
decision makers and consumers.’ ...the same when we talk about the respiratory system
and smoking” (.lune 21/06). Anne also mentioned environmental science as “really
important, especially living in a consumer society and a society which really does have
the ability, by changing its ways, to impact the health of the whole world” (Mar 29/06).
Anne further evaluated content based on how “practical” it was. For example, the body
systems unit in grade 9 — Ieaming how bodies work —- “are things they are going to
encounter throughout their life” (Mar 29/06). Similarly, Anne talked about specific
content being both interesting and relevant. “It is really interesting knowing how simple
machines work, and it can be very useful, especially for students who plan to go into
professions like engineering or into trades where these things are really put into practice
every day” (Mar 29/06).

Delia tried to infuse her lessons with real-life applications. For example, during
the genetics unit in grade 10, she tried to initiate discussion around uses, consequences
and opinions about genetic research and engineering, such as genetically modified
organisms (e.g fish genes in tomatoes to help them withstand cold conditions) and in-
vitro fertilization (May 9/06). When I asked her about the lesson afterwards, she said that

her reasons for including that were “to help them realize they should know this and why”

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and because biotechnology is a huge industry, particularly in BC, with huge
corporations making big decisions about practices like agriculture.

When we talked about her goals in the first conversation. she also talked about
students building understanding which is useful in life. She talked about them
understanding what people were talking about on TV shows like CSI (Crime Scene
Investigation), or how taking an antacid is a simple neutralization reaction, or how to
scrutinize claims made on shampoo commercials (Apr 1 1/06). Similarly for Jaelyn, one
goal for the junior sciences was to provide “basic knowledge that every citizen should
have” (Mar 3/06). She wanted her students to be “scientifically correct” in their everyday
conversations and be able to use that knowledge in their lives.

When I asked Jaelyn how she would teach differently, how she would change the
curriculum if she had the leeway, time and resources to do so, she said she would build a
course based on concepts we use every day. As she put it, she would “try to bring the
concepts into the life, not the other way around” (June 22/06). She gave the example of a
refrigerator or a car and learning about how they are made and how they work, which
requires Ieaming about concepts like density, melting point, or gravity, rather than
Ieaming these concepts first and finding examples to illustrate them. Jaelyn said that
sometimes she had a hard time thinking of intriguing examples and she complained that
the textbook examples were not very realistic.

Similarly, Delia felt that she was “pretty good at trying to relate the criteria to
their lives” and she gave the example that she was “not just preaching the textbook” but
trying “to make them talk about it” (May 9/06). Here Delia is connecting a goal of good

teaching — relating the concepts (criteria) to their lives — with a practice of discussion

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(like she tried to use in the lesson I observed on genetics). presumably during which
students can relate the concepts to their lives and experiences. Jun relayed a similar
sentiment. Therefore, relevance is not just a goal and necessity for good teaching, but it

is achieved through distinct kinds of practices such as discussion.

Interest and curiosity

Jaclyn saw interest and relevance as two sides ofthe same coin. She claimed that
especially for thejunior sciences, like grade 8,"to generate interest in science is the key”
and “to generate any interest in anybody is to make it relevant” (Mar 3/06). She relayed
her experience with students: “Once they can relate it to what they see in everyday life, I
mean. they get more interested in it. Once they are more interested, well, why does
that happen? I mean they were asking questions” (June 2.2/06). Just as Jaelyn desired to
make her curriculum more realistic, she also said she would spend more time on "topics
that generate interest” (Mar 3/06). When I asked about her greatest concerns in her
teaching, the second one she mentioned was “making the lesson interesting” (Mar 3/06).

Student interest was a significant factor in Anne’s job satisfaction and planning.
"1 get excited about being able to explain things that are kind of bizarre or mysterious.”
(Mar 2/06). She really tried to respond to student interest as well. “If it is what a
particular class is interested in, then I do want to spend more time on it” (Mar 2/06). And
this is exactly what she did. For example, I noted that she put a lot of time and effort
into the astronomy unit it grade 9, even though this was a topic that Anne saw as the least
relevant in the curriculum. and as a biology major she did not feel the most prepared to

teach. However. because she anticipated student interest in the topic. she had gone to a

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workshop at a conference for science teachers and incorporated concepts like active
galaxies, which are not in the textbook or the PLOs.

It is not surprising that in any subject matter, a teacher’s priority is to do her best
to generate and capitalize on student interest. In science, this is often thought about in
terms of being curious about how the world works and the processes of trying to answer
the questions we are curious about. These teachers are no exception to that. When I
asked Susanne about what was important that her students get out of her class, her first
response was to “pique their curiosity. To get them thinking and go, ‘huh, well why is
that?” (May 9/06) She felt accomplished when her students showed they were excited
about science. “The thing that gets me is when the kids come in and they go, ‘ya, I got
science class.’ And it’s not a joke. They are actually ‘What are we doing today? What
are we going to learn?’ And that to me is a big thing” (May 9/06) Similarly, in our second
conversation, when I revisited this idea she said she wanted to share her passion for and
knowledge of science (June 6/06).

Delia shared her passion for science using a particular strategy of trying to
convince or help her students see science like she does — as easy and fun. She fought the
notion that science is hard or that it is “normal” to “hate science.” She said, “I fight that,
you know. And try to get them interested. That would be one of my main goals” (Apr
1 1/06). Delia wanted her students to see science, “even though it is taught as something
academic, it really is this wondrous” world of “repeating processes,” like looking at an
atom and the universe and seeing the repeating pattern of things orbiting things (Apr

11/06). Delia wanted to get students interested and seeing the wondrous side of science.

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Content

What is interesting here is that the importance ofcontent was almost always filtered
through a lens of relevance and to some degree interest. What content was worth
knowing or important for students was content that was seen by the teacher as relevant
for their lives and thus more likely to be interesting. I have already made note above
about specific content seen as particularly relevant by some of the teachers. Anne’s
opinion about the astronomy unit in grade 9 was the one case where a teacher separated
relevance and interest. She described the astronomy as “really neat, but right now I don’t
see it as a pressing issue It is one ofthose gee-whiz topics that draws a lot of kids in
kind of glamorous but not as applicable” (Mar 29/06). Jaclyn felt that the “content”
was important, but not at a high level for the junior sciences, and so the processes of
science were more important.

I asked the teachers about what specific content was most important, or what they
spent more or less time on and for what reasons. Aside from the arguments above about
relevance (and interest), the other major determinants were their own knowledge of the
curriculum, and time. As will be discussed below, teachers do tend to spend a little more
time in areas of the curriculum where they are more knowledgeable and feel they can
provide more interesting and relevant lessons. However, all the teachers in the study,
were very diligent about following the curriculum closely.

At Saunders, Susanne, Jun and another colleague, Clarissa, all taught science 8 and
9, and they built together and shared tests for topics and unit exams. Thus all of them
followed the PLOs closely in part to stay largely in sync with one another. I noted in my

observations that Susanne even put up the PLOs for the students to see at the beginning

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of every unit and discussed with the class what they were expected to understand by the
end of that section. Susanne also said “we go pretty much according to the textbook, with
variations here and there, obviously” (May 9/06).

Jun admitted that there were some physics concepts that she was less comfortable
teaching, but she also said that she didn’t feel like she was experienced enough to judge
what she could cut comers on in terms of the curriculum (Apr 18/06). Her syllabus and
her teaching revealed that she stuck closely to the PLOs. Whereas, there were not
common tests at Turner, at least between Anne and Jaclyn, there was still the expectation
Of following the PLOs. Again course syllabi and my observations ofteaching revealed a
program that had variation. but did not vary in following the PLOs. In addition, aside
from claiming there was far too much detail in the grade 10 curriculum, Anne said all the
topics in the grades 8 and 9 curriculum were “really interesting” (Mar 2/06), and thus

presumably she was happy from this perspective to engage in all the topics with her

students.

Processes of science — inquiry and application

In talking about goals for student learning in science, all the teachers raised the
idea of the processes of science as important. Later when I was trying to come up with
categories within the theme of good science teaching, I thought some of the ideas raised
by the teachers seemed to fit somewhere into what Anderson (2003) calls inquiry and
application. Anderson nicely lays out inquiry as the process of finding patterns in

experiences or phenomena to generate explanations. Application follows this process in

reverse: taking explanations already generated and using them to predict phenomena (p.
1 1-12). The ideas present below, I believe, are elements of inquiry and application.
Ideas about the importance of learning how science is practiced (i.e. inquiry and

application) varied among the participants. Anne wanted her students to learn how
interrogate methods and conclusions. She wanted her students to use the processes of
science to evaluate claims. “People take everything at face value and don’t evaluate what
t hey are being told. So I would like kids, through science, to be able to make their own
decisions about stuff. ...They need to know how to do research. ...how to find
information and ...how to evaluate information. ...They are great at finding stuff usually,
but suck at evaluating it” (Mar 2/06). Anne’s emphasis, then, was mostly evaluative —
are the explanations generated from patterns in data justified? She gave the following
example: “they are being told that there is no scientific truth about greenhouse gas
emissions causing global warming. I’d like them to be able to look at some ofthe things
that are happening and make a decision based on their scientific evaluation skills.” (Mar
2/06). In addition, Anne wanted students to be able to form a hypothesis and decide what
technique would work for their question.

Similarly, though less thoroughly, Susanne talked about students learning to
question claims as being important (June 6/06). Susanne did not elaborate on what she
meant by students Ieaming to question what they are told. but she did feel that if there
was “less stuff in the curriculum” she would have more time to focus on it. When she
spoke of what she felt students really needed to understand, Susanne talked first about

“the scientific method —— lab formats and stuff like that” as important for “the upcoming

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years” (June 6/06). Here Susanne brings up the ideas of how to investigate —- find patterns
in data — especially for the one purpose of preparing students for the senior sciences.

Jaclyn also focused on the processes of investigation. “I think the important thing
is how to question stuff. How do they go about investigating stuff? How do they go

about finding answers to whatever they are curious about? How do they go about
experimenting, researching, sharing, comparing?” (Mar 3/06). When talking about this
she referred to a research assignment she had given her students, which was to be on any
topic that interested them. This kind of assignment, she felt, helped them to build that
capacity.

Similarly. .lun talked about “the processes of investigating for sure” in terms of
what was important for students to understand, adding “I always tell them you have to
record what you observed or measured” and “if it doesn’t come out to what you had
expected or what all the theories say, they you need to think about what went wrong or
what was the possible source of error” (Apr 18/06). Here Jun is highlighting the
importance of understanding how the patterns in the data construct the explanations, and
she is guarding against making the data fit into explanations or theories.

Jun also talked about really understanding theories and patterns in order to apply
them. For example, in her grade 10 class on May 23/06, she was taking up homework on
calculating probabilities of offspring using Punnett squares. When doing the question
with the students she called the male and female possibilities sperm and eggs, so students
would not get lost in using the theory of recessive and dominant genes for traits in
figuring probability, but keep in mind where these probabilities were coming from —

combination possibilities of particular sperm and eggs. Jun was concerned about the

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ideas and understanding getting lost in calculations. She gave the example of many of
her grade 9 students in the work and energy unit of the course: “Okay, the mechanical
advantage is six. What does that mean? A lot ofthem can’t tell you” (June 21/06).
Similarly, Delia stressed in her classes understanding over memorization. “If

they understand there is actually less information that they need to know” (June 27/06).
During our first conversation she said, “I want them to understand the processes. And I
don’t want them to go home and memorize” (Apr I 1/06). She recalled her students
asking her if they had to memorize certain kinds of chemical reactions: “I’m like, no.
Please understand m they happen,” like why one element is more reactive than another.
(Apr 11/06). Delia compared “memorized facts” with being told you can’t do something

“because I said so” rather than being given a reason. She wanted her students to

understand the reasons for phenomena.

The filtering of science

To summarize, a big part of teaching science for these teachers was helping
students really understand some of the world around them, and helping them realize how
that understanding could make a difference in their lives, from preparing them for future
school and careers, to making lifestyle, political and consumer choices. Their
convictions for relevance and interest are similar to ideas teachers of any subject matter
might hold. For example, an English teacher might talk about choosing books that relate
to students lives and engage them in moral dilemmas that are a part of everyday life. The

importance of relevance is a generic idea that applies to all subject matter, not just

science.

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Good science teaching is also seen as a vehicle for encouraging wonder and
curiosity and teaching youth how to investigate phenomena and question and investigate
the claims of others. In my conversations with teachers, and in my observations of their
practice, it is hard to say conclusively which of these aspects of good teaching were the
highest priorities for each teacher. Some talked a lot more than others. And I do not

vvant to make the assumption that the first thing they said is what is most important. Also.
1. hese priorities may very well have varied according to which class each teacher had
foremost in their mind, or recent events in their classrooms. So this priority in science
teaching, which is more specific to science, is less well articulated. And even though the
idea of inquiry can certainly be firmly linked to science, the more generic notions of
curiosity and investigations can be aspects of school in general and many disciplines. For
example, in history students may investigate different sides of stories to try to determine
perspectives, motives and events. In math students may investigate different ways to
solve a problem. Thus, again, important science content is filtered through a lens of more
general service to students, rather than connected to the structure of science as a
discipline.

I would like to note here that, when I asked every one of these teachers what their
strengths were, all but one responded that they had productive relationships with students.
I think all their commitments (including Jun, who talked about it as something she
needed to work on rather than a strength) to this aspect of their practice was evidenced in
their emphases on interest and relevance. The prominence of igniting interest and
engaging in relevant material may very well demonstrate as much a desire to develop

relationships with students as to provide useful quality science teaching. Developing

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relationships with students was clearly a very significant aspect of their identities as
teachers. I have not included this aspect here in this section on good science teaching
because I felt this warranted its own category, which I will explore more thoroughly in
the next chapter. I was originally focused on good science teaching, although I have
come to the conclusion that science is secondary in the minds of these teachers with
regards to good teaching. Their priorities for their practices focused more on serving
students with “good teaching” and their teaching happens to be in science.

Jun provides a poignant example. When I asked about goals of teaching science or
what was important for students to understand. she responded “preparing them for future
studies; but not just in science. ...I almost think the content is not the most important
part” (Apr. 18, 2006). She suggested that work habits, working in groups, following
instructions and things like that were important since anyone could use them later in life.
Similarly, Anne talked about “a lot of what I’m doing is not having anything to do with
the academic requirements of the course” (Mar 2, 2006). She noted that especially in
grade 8 she was training them how to be students, respect each other, listen, think and
bring their books to class.

Part of the reason for good teaching to be secondarily about science may stem from
motivations for teaching. Jun had wanted to be a teacher since she was in elementary
school. She earned a degree in education with minors in math and science to teach in
those areas. Anne had known since she was in grade 10 that she wanted to be a teacher
and she had had several jobs working with youth like in camps. Her father had been a
science teacher and she had been “encouraged to go into the ‘harder’ fields” (Mar 2,

2006) and so she ended up with a degree in sciences. Delia too had wanted to be a

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teacher for a long time, but due to family pressures she had tried the avenue of pursuing a
career in chemistry first, which she hated. She correctly describes herself and an
extrovert and she did not feel a job as a chemist was for her.

Jaclyn, on the other hand had not had her sights on teaching for a long time. She
talked about “debating” between a laboratory job and teaching. She decided to get her
teaching degree and in the course of her program she discovered that “I love chemistry. I
love teaching. And both of them can be combined in this profession. . (Mar 3, 2006).
Susanne talked about considering a career in pediatric nursing since she wanted to work
with kids. She decided to teach in part because a friend talked to her about “all the things
you could do as a teacher in terms of helping kids” (June 6, 2006). Thus, overall primary
motivations for teaching had more to do with working with students and helping people
than the disciplines of science. Passion for the subject matter is there, but it seems to take
a back seat.

This makes sense since if passion for and interest in science was primary, these
women might have pursued careers as chemists or biologists rather than teachers. And
given that the five participants in the study are all women, it is not surprising that their
motivations to teach revolve around helping students and connecting with students.
Whereas this is a primary motivation for all teachers, women may be more likely to
emphasize this social and caring component over subject matter knowledge and passion.
Women are socialized to take up the care-giver role and be compassionate and
understanding. They have also, more recently. been encouraged to pursue fields where
women are underrepresented. such as the sciences.

The teachers in this study were chosen not because they were women but because

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they all taught science at the junior level in secondary schools in BC, meaning grades 8,
9 and 10 science. At the National Association for Research in Science Teaching
(NARST) conference in April 2007, the keynote speaker. David Pearson of U.C.
Berkeley opened his keynote address with a joke. He said everyone knew that
elementary teachers love their students, secondary teachers love their subject matter and
college or university teachers love themselves. My participants’ views of good teaching,
particularly the filtering of science content through connecting to students via relevance,
interest, and maintaining curiosity and wonder. might be seen as more typical ofmiddle
school or even elementary school teachers. It is tempting to surmise that their views. if
they are atypical of secondary teachers (which I am not sure that they are), are because
they all teach junior secondary level sciences. However, Delia and Jaclyn also teach
senior science — chemistry I l and 12, and Susanne was going to teach grade 11 biology
in the following year. And everyone in the study is certified to teach senior science in
their areas of specialty. Thus, it may have something to do with the fact that they are all
women with an emphasis on caring about and connecting with students.

These teachers did talk about passion for their subject matter, just as the joke
projects. However, I believe it was these passions, the curiosity, and the reasons why
they love the subject matter, which was what they wanted to get across to their students —
even their students in grade 12, although they certainly felt more freedom to do this in
grades 8 and 9. There is good reason to shift priorities slightly in grades I l and 12
because students are taking these courses where the focus shifts to preparation for future
studies rather than just future lives, and so particular content may take on a bigger role. I

argue however, that while this contextual change may shift priorities, it does not change

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to any great degree their ideas of good teaching, which affects the way they interact with
students.

Whereas I can only surmise about the role of gender and motivations for teaching, I
can conclude here is that there are these areas of similarity among all these teachers. I am
not interested in describing each participant as a certain kind of teacher, but rather I want
to get a sense of their visions of good science teaching in order to make arguments about
how these visions and their practices interact with discourses. In the chapter that follows I
will more fully describe my participants relationships with students, as I see this as
central to all their practices. I will then turn to the ways in which these teachers’ largely-
shared visions of good teaching and practices interact with larger discourses about and

within teaching in their contexts.

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Chapter 4 Classroom Stories: Relationships with students

In the previous chapter I discussed how my participants ideas of“good” teaching
interact with the discourses of which they are a part as teachers, and perhaps particularly
as women teachers. I argued that their ideas of good teaching were most closely tied with
a commitment to relationships with students than representing the disciplines of science.
In part I believe this comes from what they saw as who they were as teachers and what
they attributed as their strengths. Interestingly for the new teachers — Anne, Delia, and
Jaclyn — this was the first response. as their biggest strength. Based on watching them
interact with their students and listening to their stories, I believe this is a particularly
central aspect of their identities as teachers — it is the main thing that makes them good
teachers (although of course this is not the only element).

Whereas this aspect of teaching was still central to the more experienced teachers —
.lun and Susanne — it was not as prominent in their talk. nor in their classrooms. When I
asked each teacher about their strengths, all of them except Jun talked about their
relationships with their students. Susanne and Jun’s interaction with students in their
classrooms and their stories of relationships with students did not take on the same feel as
it did with the newer teachers.

Below I will discuss each teacher’s stories and incidents of building relationships
with students, to produce a picture ofthis aspect of their identities. One way to think of
this is that a theory about the roles of teachers and students is part of a teacher’s identity,
which is formed and informed by the discourses within which they exist. Specifically,

discourses affect and are affected by expectations that influence thought and action

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within that discourse. I will look particularly, then, at what expectations, and associated
needs and obligations, these teachers saw their differently conceived roles with and for

students fulfilling.

The first year teachers

Anne

Anne talked about her greatest strength as her ability to connect with students. It
is worth quoting her at length:

I feel I’m best at making connections with students. I feel that I only

very rarely in my 5 to 7 month career (laughing) have encountered a

student that I couldn’t make a connection with. I feel that is a big

strength, because I can sit students down and tell them what I need or sit

students down and ask them to tell me what they need. And we can have a

real dialogue about it. Since I’ve been teaching [this grade 10 class] I

have students who have shown up for the first time last week. And I’ve

somehow been able to not discourage them enough that they are coming to

class everyday (Mar 29/06).

Clearly Anne felt accomplished at getting to know her students in order to
do her best to meet their needs. This is important for any teacher, but perhaps
even more emphasized when working with particular populations of students.
Even though she is brand new at teaching. she was already carving out a niche for
herself in working with students with particular needs, be those learning
disabilities or students defined as “at-risk.” She had taken extra courses in special
education and had a background working in municipal family services programs.
She identified with being the kind ofteacher who could relate to kids, who cared

about them and who could teach students that other teachers did not know how to

connect with.

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She told me that she kept in mind that a lot of high school students’
behaviour is often motivated by not wanting to be embarrassed. She also
accepted that questioning authority was “an important part of this time in their
life” (May 4/06). Thus, she tried to understand where these teenagers were
coming from and why they act they way they do in order to respond in ways to
build a generative relationship as a teacher. In general Anne tried to be flexible
and to respond to the particular situations and needs of students.

“I mean you have to understand that these kids’ lives are hard. I mean

some students at this school have harder lives than you or I could ever

imagine. I mean I’ve got a student who is practically a mom. She’s got a

sister who has a baby and the sister is always at work, so her job is to look

after the baby. And what can she do. right? So you can’t -— I mean to me,

I think that if school fails to be flexible for the kids, the kids fail to be

successful in life” (June 22/06).

Anne’s flexible approach and her priority of “connecting with” students
lead to what she called her “loose style” in the classroom. She felt that her loose
style facilitated some great learning moments, such as the day she derailed her
lesson to address a homophobic remark and have a valuable impromptu
discussion about the rights and experiences of members of the GLBT community
in Canada. At the same time however, it also facilitated moments when students
would shout out inappropriate comments, as happened in one class I attended.
Thus. she said she was “trying to find the balance between strict but loose enough
to teach the way I want to teach” (Mar 29/06). Later in the year she also said she

tried to be flexible, but that she had also been too flexible, which had caused more

headaches than it was worth.

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With her flexible, responsive, understanding approach, Anne was aware
that other teachers, and other people in society have different ideas; that her tack
may not be preparing these students for the real world where they can’t show up
and say they forgot. Anne struggles with this a little bit, as she said, “sometimes
it does feel like we are coddling them, especially students like mine who couldn’t
get up for all of third semester. And then I let them do all the work in the last two
weeks” (June 22/06). But in the end Anne identifies as a teacher who understands
her students. She openly struggles with being too flexible, but in the end she
teaches in ways that she believes in. She argued,

“there is a reason they are not in the real world yet. They are

students. There is a reason why they haven’t graduated from high

school. So yes, they are growing up and they are learning.

...thn I present my rules they sound hard and fast. ...Then

when students come to talk to me. I’ll make exceptions. And, you

know, I will, if a student has really blown their chances, they’ve

blown their chances. I mean, I do draw the line somewhere. I just

don’t think we need to act like McDonalds here. This isn’t a

workplace. Sure their job is to learn, but we’re not paying them

for it” (June 22/06).

Anne definitely demonstrated to her students that she believed in them,
and that she would not give up on them. She gave them lots of chances to make-
up or re-do work. In her grade 10 class in particular — the one composed of
students most likely to fail science 10 — she did bend over backwards to give them
every opportunity. She felt that in a lot of their other classes, other teachers had
given up on them and that many of her students had given up on themselves (June
22/06).

Above all else. Anne’s priority in teaching was to be responsive to

students. One way which I’ve already discussed was being flexible with due

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dates and things like that if she knew something was going on in students lives.
More generally, with all students, she tried to provide a wide variety of
opportunities to learn and “different ways to express themselves” and “multiple
ways of showing their knowledge” (June 22/06), in an attempt to mesh with how
students learn, their attention spans, interests and strengths. She used a wide
variety of Ieaming activities and assessment tools, like writing stories, creating
comics, and doing skits, as well as more traditional methods of laboratories and
tests. She talked about and demonstrated that she responded when students were
interested in something. As I noted previously. she learned more about astronomy
at a science teachers’ conference, since her students were interested in that topic
even though it was a topic she was not particularly passionate about. She started a
dissection club after her grade 8 students did their only dissection in the
curriculum and were keen to do more. For Anne, her most important role as a

teacher was teaching in ways that were responsive to her students.

Delia

After talking with Delia, I really felt that I could understand her motivations for
the way she interacted with her students. She talked at length about her early experiences
in school, and a lot of negative feelings, and how those were so detrimental to her. And
so her approach was overwhelmingly for students “to associate these good feelings” with
being in her class and the subject matter (Apr 11/06). She worked hard to convince her
students that science (and chemistry) was something that was easy and fun. She talked

about it this way:

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One of the reasons I tell kids how hard it was for me to read is because a
lot of kids just decide they are bad at science in grade 8. ..I fight that.
..Because so many of the students’ perceptions of how easy or hard
science is, is what the teachers tell them. .. ‘This is really difficult. You
need to pay attention.’ And a lot of teachers will do that just as a power
thing. ‘You can’t skip this subject. You can’t miss a homework
assignment.’ ...But I teach it like this: ‘This is an easy subject. This is a
fun subject. You are going to like this subject because you are good at it.’
...And so it is a different line (Apr 11/06).

Delia recognized that many or most of her students were motivated to do the
work, and she surmised that this motivation came from pressure from their parents and
themselves, to get good grades. Thus she did not feel she was struggling with students

cooperating but she struggled with the idea that "internallv they are not going to want to

 

do it.” And so she really tried "to get them to associate goofiness and fun with the
subject.” (Apr 1 1/06). She would think of funny analogies to relate something funny,
like poking fun at herself, with concepts in the course. For example, she compared her
bad luck at finding the right partner with chemical reaction mechanisms - she couldn’t
find a person with the right energy and orientation. She tried to get her students laughing
so that they would have fun and remember the ideas they talked about.

Making her students laugh and doing her best to make a class that her students
would enjoy was a primary way that Delia tried to connect with her students. She saw
building that connection as a primary role of a teacher. Building that relationship was
paramount to, almost tantamount to, good teaching. Connecting with students was
intertwined with relevance of and interest in the subject matter. It is worth quoting her at
length about this:

If I feel connected to [my teacher]. and I feel like that information is

genuine I think that is what you need. You need to be connected to

your teacher. ...It doesn’t even matter to me that they are lecturing.
I’ve had good teachers who lectured and gave lots of notes. The note-

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taking is not it. It’s the connection. As long as you have this

connection, and it’s interesting, it hooks you. Not because it’s an

anticipatory set or whatever, an intentional hook, but you care about this
person whose giving you the information. You believe in this person

...You respect them enough to listen, and you wan; to know what they are

saying. ...And also. that you have this good experience” (May 9/06).

Delia believed that a big part of making that connection with students was
to “come down” or “lower” herself. She recognized that being the teacher put her
in a position of expected authority, but she felt that in order to connect with
students she had to be, in some ways, on their “level.” She talked about one
instructor at teachers’ college that she connected with because “he came down off
his pedestal” and showed her that he understood where she was coming from.
(May 9/06). Delia did the same in her teaching. She made efforts every day to
just talk to students and get to know them so that they didn’t feel threatened in
asking questions and they would come to her and say “I don’t get this.” She
appeared to be very successful in her efforts with most students. She was a
teacher who kids would go to with personal problems and students would raise
their hands and openly ask for help with problems. even in front oftheir peers in
her classes.

Despite her success, Delia worried a little bit about her informal
relationship with her students. She gave them a lot of freedom, and would
chastise them jokingly most of the time if students veered in inappropriate
directions. Some of this approach, she supposed, came from her high school
experiences in a mini-school program, where there was a lot of freedom and she

felt she learned just as much from the other kids in the program as she did from

the teachers (Apr 11/06). Yet even though she had her own rationale, she worried

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that other teachers might say she was not very professional. She recalled one
evaluator in her student teaching telling her she had to sound like a teacher, not a
student. But Delia thought, “who cares want I sound like?” She didn’t want her
students to take her “m seriously.” She felt, “you can’t be all doom and gloom
and like ‘you know this or you fail the provincial exam,’ because a lot of them
will just turn off. If you walk in and you’re like. ‘close your books, bring out
your paper, get a blue pen, underline in red. you know. I’m going to come around
and check. I don’t think that is how they learn” (May 9/06).

In watching her classes, Delia certainly did have a connection with most
of her students. Her other worry, besides appearing unprofessional, was
connecting with her students whose second language was English. Most of the
English language learners who Delia taught were Korean students who come to
Saunders in grades 8, 9, or 10, with limited English instruction before they arrive.
The other international students at the school were from Germany, Mexico or
Brazil and they came in their senior years and from international schools with far
more English instructionz. Delia advocated for a bilingual Korean teacher for
these students because she felt they were so ill-served in general at the school,
including in her own class. She would talk to these students individually and talk
to their counselors when she was concerned about how they were doing. The
counselor told her that their main goal is to learn English and not the science.

Even so, Delia did not absolve herself of her responsibility to do her best to teach

 

2 In order to offer special programming (such as Advanced Placement courses and Super Achievers, which
is a program for nationally ranked athletes or high-calibre performing artists who attend school in the
mornings and have their afternoons to train or practice). Saunders enrolled international students who paid
tuition.

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them the course material. However, she found it difficult because her identity as a
teacher depended so much on her connection with students. and she could not rely

on her usual strategies to connect with these students.

Jaelyn

Like Anne and Delia, Jaclyn also felt her biggest strength was the relationships
she built with students. In response to my question about her strengths, she said,

“I feel confident that I can connect with all the students. ...I think I’m a

good teacher because ofthat fact. .. Because if they don’t connect with

me, ifthey don’t value what I do, ifthey don’t appreciate what I do, ifl

don’t appreciate what they do, then I don’t think anything productive will

come of that lesson or that year” (Mar 3/06).

Like Delia, Jaclyn made an argument that the most important element of teaching is
connecting with students. She is a good teacher because she can connect with students.
And if a teacher and her students don’t have that connection and appreciation for one
another. their time together is not productive in terms of student learning. It is not
surprising then that Jaclyn exerts significant effort at building a good rapport as the
foundation of her practice.

She certainly exhibited friendly and respectful interaction with her students in her
classroom. With her individual greetings and her joking and talk with her students she
tried “to let them know I’m here and I care about you” (Mar 3/06). She didn’t have the
“loose style” of Anne, nor did she talk like her students act like a “nut” as Delia did. She
had clear and consistent expectations and she held her students accountable to meet those.

At the same time, it was evident that she walked her talk: “I think I genuinely like the

students, in whatever backgrounds they are coming from, or different levels they are at,

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in science, or in school in general, or in life...l really do respect them. . .I really appreciate
them putting an effort into my classes (Mar 3/06).

Like Anne, Jaclyn tried to understand what motivated her students. She said, “I
believe that no matter how they act, they all want to do well in school. ..And I give them
encouragement, applaud them for trying, and all those things I think will motivate them
to do well” (Mar 3/06). As all the teachers talked about in terms of good teaching,
Jaclyn tried very hard to come up with learning activities and assessments that would be
fun, interesting, and motivating for her students, as well as getting at the prescribed
Ieaming outcomes. Whereas she did not have the same degree in variety as Anne had in
terms of assessment types, she did assign projects occasionally instead of tests. She felt
that teachers, herself included, use tests as the only way they know to evaluate students.
Jaclyn experimented with other methods because the students enjoyed things like projects
more and she recognized that sometimes a test is "not the best [evaluation] for certain
students” (June 22/06).

In her daily routines she did her best to meet the needs of all her students. She
would give extensions on assignments and have individualized homework protocols. She
saved the notes from the overhead for some students to use later in the class. However,
she was very cognizant of doing these sorts of things discretely and privately because she
recognized that some students needed to “act cool” and she wanted to respect their need
to fit in or not be treated differently. Thus, respecting students, and attending to their

needs as best she can is key to Jaelyn’s identity as a teacher.

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T he fourth year teachers

Susanne

When I asked Susanne about her strengths, she said, "I think I am able to gate to
a lot ofthe students and come up with little things to help them remember” (May 9/06).
How Susanne related to students shared some similarity with the new teachers discussed
so far, in that she would talk to them outside of class and was involved in extracurricular
activities such the school musical and the badminton team. However, in her teaching, she
was somewhat different. especially from Anne and Delia. Iler interactions with students
had a more formal feel. This is not to say that those interactions weren’t friendly; they
were. Students would chat with Susanne and she had students who confided in her. just
as Delia did. However, she nor I would describe her style as “loose” like Anne did, or
that she would “lower” herself, as Delia did. There was a more distinct boundary
between teacher and student, and this worked for Susanne.

On one occasion in April. I observed Susanne’s class and had part ofa recorded
conversation with Delia on the same day. This day stuck out in my mind because it
provided such a striking comparison of the difference in the ways Susanne and Delia
interacted with their students. I had observed Susanne teaching science 9 that day, and
they reviewed naming of chemical compounds based on the formula, and writing the
formula. based on the compound name, prior to the lesson on balancing chemical
equations. After taking up the homework. and just prior to launching into the main
lesson, Susanne said, “If you did these and you got them correct. you won’t have
problems. Because as I told you, it doesn’t get any easier and today will be the hardest of

them all.” This class occurred right before my conversation with Delia, where she

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disparaged teachers telling students that the material was hard as way to get them to pay
attention to and/or do the work. Delia claimed teachers did that "as a power thing” and
that she wanted to portray science as something that was not hard, but fun and easy.

Clearly, Susanne and Delia had different ideas about this aspect of good teaching.
Yet both approaches fit with who each woman is as a teacher. Susanne gave the example
of one day when one of her classes had a teacher-on-call in a previous block and were
talking about getting in trouble as they came into her room. "When they came here they
werejust talking about it and I was like, ‘but you guys don’t talk that much.’ And they
go, ‘that’s because we know what we can get away with.’ (laughs) So in that sense, yes,
they have that respect for me.” Susanne also felt that her students in general liked her as
well, “because they come in, ‘Hi Ms. H., bye Ms H., have a good day’” (May 9/06).
Thus, Susanne had clear boundaries. but she was not overly formal.

I would not say that Susanne was on her pedestal (to use Delia’s term). She joked
with students, but not as part of the lesson; and she would admit when she didn’t
understand something herself and she would seek assistance from another teacher. This
happened in one class I observed, where one of the review questions students had been
assigned asked them to explain why something would look magnified under a drop of
water. Susanne found her own explanation lacking and later in the class asked the
physics teacher and came back to the students with an explanation. The students’
understanding was the most important thing, and Susanne didn’t mind that she had to
admit that she wasn’t sure and she would get back to them on that.

Like all the teachers here, Susanne’s interactions with students depended on her

ideas of how best to help them learn and succeed. When she first spoke of relating to

students, Susanne also mentioned coming up with mnemonics or other tricks to help them
remember. For example, during one class, in order to help her grade 9 students
remember which molecules were diatomic, she gave them this phrase: “Henderson’s
seven bright ideas or clues” (her pseudonym last name is Henderson) to represent H2 , Sg
Brz , I; , O; and CI; . She also talked about telling them “little anecdotes or stories” in
the same breath as talking about relating to the kids quite well” (May 9/06).

The other strength Susanne mentioned was being organized. This helped her
relationships with students, especially in the area she felt she needed to work on, which
was being more patient. She explained it this way: “I think the thing that has helped me
become a bit more patient and a bit more understanding is my organizational skills.
Because I’m organized, it is one less thing I have to worry about” (May 9/06). I believe
her emphasis on organization also stems from her desire to be fair to students. As I will
discuss in the next chapter, one rationale Susanne had for so much assessment was to be
fair to students. She had given an example ofa student who had dropped her marks for
three or four assignments, because she was dealing with a personally stressful situation at
home. Susanne’s frequent assessments allowed her to see that trend. address the student.
and it did not affect the student’s overall mark very much since it was only a few
assessments out of so many.

Another reason for the focus on organization, and its connection to being fair to
students, comes from fact that several of Susanne’s classes are in a special program
called computer immersion, where students each have a laptop, on which they take notes
and do assignments. Susanne talked a few times, both in recorded conversations and

casually after class about how computer immersion tended to draw kids who were super

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keen about computers and students who had special learning needs, particularly with
written output of information. Thus. she catered to students who might need
organizational help such as always putting the itinerary on the board, and posting
homework on the message system on the web. Susanne also talked about coaching
students on how to write tests, advising them to “do the test twice” by going over each
question and making sure before handing it in.

Thus, Susanne identified with and was a teacher who was very fair and did her
best to help her students be successful in her courses. Her tactics to motivate her students
were particularly different from Delia’s and Anne’s strategies. Some of this was her take
on good teaching, and some of it was in response to the particular students she was
teaching. With the bulk of her students in computer immersion, and her previous
experiences as a teacher in Delia’s shoes. she found that being organized was as a key
aspect of her practice which enabled her to meet the needs of her students as best as she

could.

Jun

Jun’s interaction with students was most like Susanne’s, of the other teachers in
the study. Given that Jun and Susanne worked closely together and shared and developed
resources between them, it is not surprising that their practices had elements in common.
Jun noted, like Susanne, that organization was a strength in her teaching. I could see this
from being in her classroom. She always had the agenda on the board, and other
information like the next test or assignment due date, names of students who needed to

make up work, things like that. Also like Susanne it was very important to her to be fair.

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She commented, “I think most [students] would say that I am Lady So I think that is a
big deal to them, and to me too - is fairness. So if they see me as fair, then I think respect
sort of goes along with that” (Apr 18/06). I think Jun’s comments are telling of her
understanding of her students. She recognized that a teacher’s fairness is very important
to them and she responded by setting consistent rules and by being organized so there
would never be any surprises for them.

At the same time, Jun depicted a dilemma in her practice of being strict enough to
garner respect, but also being more easy going to facilitate helping students, especially
those who were struggling. She described herselfas being “kind of strict” and that
students “don’t necessarily say ‘science is fun.”’ However she also said she needed to
work on “ being a little more personable.” She was trying to find that balance because
she felt, “as a new teacher,” that she had “to be strict to maintain that respect” and she
didn’t “want to be too easy on them” (Apr 18/06). This dilemma sprang from two places.
One was being a new teacher, which Jun mentioned. The other related reason was that
Jun felt she needed to create distance between herself and her students. “I’m pretty
casual but I don’t wear jeans to school and things like that because I want to be separate
from the students. And I think because of being fairly young and maybe being a small-
stature female has something to do with it too. So I want to be different.” (Apr 18/06).

Thus, Jun felt she had to act in certain ways to maintain that distance and respect
from students. Yet. she recognized the potential benefits of getting to know her students
better. Therefore, within being “kind of strict’ she was “trying to be a little more easy
going.” She talked about it making connections with students by talking to them "one on

one and just tell them if you feel like you don’t understand this or you feel like it is too

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much, come and talk to me.” She talked about trying to touch base with students one on
one. particularly for students who were struggling. She wanted to open up a better
dialogue between herself and her students so that she could adequately accommodate
special circumstances or difficulties students had.

Just as Jun tried in her teaching and interactions to respond to her students, their
desire for fairness, and their occasional special circumstances, she also responded to the
needs of parents. She mentioned that in some cases she had quite a bit of contact with
parents. Likewise, at Saunders there were a number of international students and she did
her best to meet their needs by trying to explain things in simpler words and stress certain
words in questions. She tried to sit them apart from one another so they would practice
their English, but she also let them talk in their home language with classmates to get
ideas in science across to one another. She wished for more information and advice
about teaching English language learners. as well as students with special needs in her
classroom.

Just like the other teachers in this study Jun was concerned about developing
relationships with her students. She felt the least confident of the teachers here at doing
this. She openly struggled with a balance between being strict and respected the meeting
the individual needs and responding to the individual situations of students. Her struggle,
I believe revolved around being fair. She needed to be organized and consistent, but she

also had to know if and when to make exceptions in order to be fair to everyone.

From first year to fourth year: practices and personalities

Whereas each teacher has their own priorities and practices when it comes to

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building relationships with students, there are interesting differences between the first
year and fourth year teachers in the study. At one end of the spectrum, Anne and Delia,
as first year teachers, share much in their “loose” approach and reliance on personality. I
think ofJaelyn as somewhat in the middle, with a very friendly but a little less flexible
style. She was actually in her second year of teaching. although this was her fist full
year, so she was also in the middle in terms of experience teaching. Susanne and Jun
were the other end of spectrum, with practices that emphasized fairness and organization.
I hypothesize that this pattern of difference between the more experienced and less
experienced teachers is not random, but grounded in the discourses of teaching and
student-teacher relationships, which I will discuss below.

One myth prevalent in popular culture and public sentiment about teaching is that
“anyone can teach.” Undergirding this notion are two connected ideas. First, the often-
cited “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975) means that teachers have spent most
of their lives Ieaming to teach, by watching their teachers as students. As Lortie’s
respondents indicate. student teachers and new teachers underestimate the difficulties
involved. This is not surprising given that when students makejudgments about their
teachers’ performances, they do so without the benefit of knowing what their teachers did
behind the scenes — what were the goals, preparations, strategies. reflections. etc.

Second is the idea that what makes a good teacher is their personality, or that
teachers are born rather than made. Despite the fact that several hundred studies
contradict this myth (Darling—Hammond, 1998) its prevalence is truly staggering. For
example. there have been countless Hollywood films about a person (perhaps a certified

teacher but often not) who with enough personality and passion (and noticeably without

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much thought or attention to pedagogy or often even subject matter) successfully changes
the lives of their usually troubled students. And there are programs in the US. like Teach
for America that take college graduates — presumably for their energy, drive and
commitment (and not for evidence of knowledge of pedagogy) — to teach in the most
needy areas of the US. In the transcript of John McCain’s speech to the NAACP in July
2008, he states. “They don’t have all the proper credits in educational “theory” or
“methodology” — all they have is Ieaming and the desire and ability to share it. If we’re
putting the interests of students first, then those qualifications should be enough”
(McCain, 2008). I take Mr McCain (or his speech writers) to mean that if one has
learning (subject matter knowledge) and desire that they automatically have the ability to
share it.

Thus, it is perhaps not so much that anyone can teach, but that teaching is a job
that requires little specific education or knowledge (beyond subject matter knowledge)
but a lot of drive, passion and ability to connect with students. These are of course
important aspects of teaching but they are not the whole story or even in most instances
the key to teaching success. I am not suggesting here that my participants hold these
views. I am quite certain they do not. However, they have grown up watching their
teachers without understanding what they did behind the scenes. And they have been
exposed over and over in the way public figures, ordinary people, popular culture and the
media depiction of teachers, which glories and emphasizes passion and personality in
teaching. They are affected by this discourse. And their careers as teachers are very
limited at the moment and that limited experience and Ieaming has not enabled them to

form and try out a lot of ideas and strategies for serving students with pedagogy and

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practice. Thus it is understandable that their notions of good teaching, tied up in their
relationships with students, relied more on using their personalities and passions for the
newest teachers.

Delia emphasized connecting with students and using humour to engender a sense
of fun and goofiness with her subject matter. Anne focused on connecting with students
through flexibility in making the content suit students — their interests, needs and
behaviours. Jaclyn saw connecting with students as a foundation for practice and she
aimed to build connections through friendly and respectful interaction and strategies like
positive reinforcement. variety and differentiation in assignments and assessments.
Jaclyn is in the middle in terms ofexperience and in terms of her approach using her
personality and practices to connect with students. Susanne and Jun on the other hand.
with more experience, had had more time to consider the relationship between their
practices and their relationships with students. They emphasized aspects of their teaching
practice that were fair for students (such as clear expectations, being organized and
multiple assessments). Thus the more experienced teachers relied more on practices to
connect with and serve students and the newer teachers relied more on personality and
day to day interactions. It may also be that the newer teachers they more closely
associated their priorities of good teaching which informed their practices with the

reasons they had just become teachers — to work with youth.

From urban to suburban: connecting in context

As I have already mentioned all the teachers in this study were very concerned

about and I think very successful in “connecting with” students. Whereas I argue that the

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amount of experience in teaching seems to matter most with respect to relationships with
students, the context and the students matter a great deal as well. These teachers respond
to their contexts — that is, the discourses around the students who they teach. For
example, Anne takes on the role of advocate for her largely lower class and previously
unsuccessful students. She struggles with the balance between coddling and providing
appropriate opportunities for ‘at risk’ youth. She takes up the cause providing them
every opportunity as she sees these students as having diminished opportunities in their
lives to succeed in school. She also advocates for them as she rallies against what she
interprets as other teachers giving up on these students. She is determined to do
everything she can think of to not give up on them. And so her emphasis on flexibility
stems in part from her newness and reliance on her convictions for connecting with
students as well as who those students are: those who have not succeeded with
conventional opportunities.

Anne and Jaclyn teach two ofthe same courses at the same school. And whereas
they shared a belief in connections with students as the foundation of good teaching,
those relationships looked somewhat different. Jaclyn had a friendly rapport, like Anne,
but she also had a focus on a clear and consistent expectations, rather than flexibility as
Anne had. This is part who these teachers are. that Jaclyn has a little more experience (as
discussed in the previous section) and also who their students are. Anne and Jaclyn both
teach a grade 8 and a grade 9 science. However, Anne also has the grade 10 class of
“most likely to fail” students. And Jaclyn also teaches grade II chemistry, which is not a
required course. Thus, on balance, Jaclyn has more students who have previously

experienced success in school and school science than Anne has. This affects their

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approach to students.

Delia’s emphasis on fun and humour in connecting with students stems from her
personality and past experiences and her newness as a teacher relying on what she knows
and who she is. We can also aim to understand Delia’s ideas and commitments in her
context. The students in Delia’s suburban classroom generally had every opportunity to
succeed in school. Delia tried to counter the emphasis on the external motivation of
marks she saw in her students, in part through relevance and interest (discussed in the
previous chapter) and in part through fun and a connection to her.

Jun and Susanne’s emphasis on being fair makes sense within a student
population that cares greatly about marks and their performance. They shared an
emphasis on being organized and having clear expectations as an important aspect of
being fair to their students. And they had a lot of assessments in an effort to be fair and
give students many opportunities to demonstrate their understandings, as well as be
rewarded for effort. This makes sense in a context where students are very focused on
their marks. Clear expectations, ample Opportunities and no surprises enable students to
do well if they want to. Like Delia. Jun and Susanne also recognized the external
motivation of marks. They too tried to combat it with relevance and interest in their
curriculum. Yet they also used this motivation. For example, Susanne saw part of her
success in finding ways to help her students remember things that would be on a test
(such as how to remember the three classes of levers). And Jun, who taught Biology 10
for students who intended to take advanced placement, understandably spent a lot of time

preparing her students for the provincial exam to be fair to them in their preparation.

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Concluding remarks: relationships with students

In the above discussion. I argue that relationships with students are central to how
these teachers envision good teaching and how they teach. Connecting to students is an
organizing thread for each of these teachers in building their priorities and practices.
This makes sense as most teachers (perhaps especially women) choose the career because
they see the importance of, feel they are good at, and genuinely enjoy working with
youth. In addition, students are not talked about as constraints in teaching. Although the
external motivation ofmarks is mentioned, particularly by Delia, this is seen as much or
more ofa problem ofcurriculurn and testing (discussed in the next chapter), than a
problem of student attitudes or aptitudes. Perhaps because these teachers are early in
their career they are not cynical about students and believe all students can learn.

The similarities among and differences between these teachers arise out of their
relationships to cultural discourses ofteaching and students. as well as their unique life
experiences. their experience teaching and their contexts. I have argued that a heavier
reliance on personality for the newest teachers is in part a manifestation of the cultural
discourses of what makes a good teacher as well as less experience at using pedagogy
and curriculum to connect with and serve students. The differences in relationships with
students based on context — class composition and surrounding community -— are
primarily based around serving a particular type of student. such as providing
opportunities to get good marks versus opportunities to complete all assignments and
pass a course. Thus, what kind of curricular experiences and emphasis on testing and
other assessments is closely linked to relationships with students. In the next chapter, I

further explore these teachers’ practices and priorities around curriculum and testing.

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Chapter 5 Stories within discourses of curriculum and testing

In the previous two chapters I argued that connecting with students was central to
the practices of the five teachers in this study. although what their relationships with
students looked like depended on their teaching experience, context (the students and
school they were serving), cultural discourses about teaching and their personal histories.
This shared commitment to students, however, results in very similar ways of filtering
science curriculum such that their ideas of good science teaching are linked to their ideas
of connecting with and serving student more than representing the disciplines of science.
In this chapter I argue that this shared over—arching commitment to students also
influences how teachers respond and contribute to the discourses of curriculum and

testing.

Discourses of testing and accountability

Of particular interest at the time ofthis study (spring of2006) is the discourse of
testing and accountability in education. I am taking discourses to mean taken-for-granted
ways ofthinking, communicating and acting. constructed in community. derived from
theories and knowledge dominant in the larger sociopolitical milieu. In our society, the
discourse of accountability is borne out of our sociopolitical milieu, which is currently
dominated by a neo-liberal agenda and a register of the economy, with resulting
emphases on measurement, transparency, accountability, self-sufficiency, and

competition. Teachers working within this discourse both adopt and challenge it.

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In education, the primary manifestation of a neo-liberal agenda is an increased
focus on testing and accountability in schools. Let us first consider, then, a little
background regarding the new grade 10 exams in British Columbia specifically, and
provincial and state testing more generally. In Canada, education is a provincially
controlled service, just as it is state-run in the United States. In both locations, provincial
or state mandated testing has increased in recent years. For example, the Michigan
educational assessment program (MEAP), which began in 1970, tested students in grades
4 and 7 in reading and mathematics. Due to the mandate ofthe No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB) that students must be tested in grades 3 through 8 starting in the 2005-2006
school year, the MEAP is now taken in English and math in grades 3 through 8, adding
science in grades 5 and 8, and social studies in grades 6 and 9. In addition, grades I l and
12, students write MEAP tests in the English, math, social studies and science courses in

which they are enrolled (www.migovtmtle). Other states have similar stories. New

 

York, for example. increased its’ testing of English and math in grades 4 and 8 in
response to NCLB. to testing in English and math in grades 3 through 8, adding science
in grade 4, social studies in grade 5, and science and social studies in grade 8. In
addition, high school students take the Regents exams in grade 12 level English,
languages other than English, maths. social studies, and the sciences
(www.cmsc.nysedgrw/osa).

Thus, states have been increasing testing regimes to comply with NCLB. signed
into law by Bush’s Republican government in 2002. Provinces have also employed an
increased focus on testing, and this has also been in response to changes in government

and government policy. However, by comparison, provinces in Canada are still much

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slimmer on testing overall than states in the US. For example, in Ontario (the most
populous province), the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) was
formed in 1996, after Mike Harris brought Progressive Conservative rule to Ontario when
he was elected premier in 1995. This office is responsible for testing all students in
reading, writing and mathematics in grades 3 and 6. maths (applied and academic) in
grade 9, and the Ontario secondary schools literacy test in grade 10 (www.cqao.com).

In BC, the foundational skills assessment (F SA) was designed to test students in
grades 4, 7 and 10 in English and math. The grade 10 F SA was replaced with the new
grade 10 exams in English, maths and science (and grade 11 exams in social studies) in
the 2004-2005 school year, under Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government who took
office in BC. in 2001. These new exams are worth 20% ofa student’s final mark in
these courses. In addition. grade 12 provincial exams have existed for decades and are
worth 40% of a student’s final grade in English courses, math courses, science courses,
and social studies courses such as history.

The rationale behind all this testing is usually couched as “achievement of high
standards” and “accountability.” The tests are supposed to measure achievement of
students and the reporting of results holds schools accountable for students meeting high
standards of achievement (NCLB, 2001, p. 3). With regard to BC. exams in particular,
the only B.C. ministry of education document I could find that mentioned the rationale

for the exams, was the Handbook of procedures for the graduation program, which offers:

Purpose of the Graduation Program Examinations

The British Columbia Graduation Program Examinations. created in 2004, were

implemented to:

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0 ensure that Grade 10, l 1 and 12 students meet consistent provincial standards of
achievement in academic subjects

- ensure that graduating students from all schools in the province are treated equitably
when applying for admission to universities and other post-secondary institutions

0 respond to a strong public desire for improved standards of education

(B.C. min of ed, 2006, p. 20)

You can see in the first ofthese three points the idea of meeting standards of
achievement, and the idea of accountability in the third point. The second point speaks to
what I, as a former teacher in BC, always thought was the purpose of the grade 12
exams. Adding the grade 10 (and the one grade I I) exams to the established grade 12
exams ignited a storm of controversy in BC. in 2004 and 2005, as opinions varied about
what achievement these exams measured, what standards were being met, how such
exams might benefit or hurt students and schools, and whether this was a productive way

to spend money on education.

Arguments about testing in B. C. newsprint

As one way of learning the tenor of the debate about increased testing in BC. I
analyzed a sample of newspaper articles throughout the province between Dec 2, 2004
and April 14, 2005, as the first set of grade 10 exams were administered in January 2005.
Several arguments are raised on both sides ofthe debate. Tom Christensen, who at the
time was the Minister of Education said the goal is to “increase student achievement"
and ensure accountability. He noted that this doesn't change the grade 10 curriculum,

but ensures that the curriculum is being taught (Edmonds, Richmond News, Dec 18,

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2004). Similar notions were echoed by a few school trustees. A couple of parents
and students also wrote in favour of the new exams stating that the results could be
used to modify curriculum and that students need to get used to wide-scale
competition and thus they need practice exam writing, because test-taking is a skill in
itself, and because students need to practice in high-pressure situation before the
marks really mean a lot.

Central to members of the BC. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF), was the concern
that the new grade 10 exams would be detrimental to lower-achieving students, because
students who struggle with courses like science 10 have other options in grade I 1, such
the Science and Technology 1 13. This position. adding that ultimately drop-out rates
among vulnerable students may increase, was taken up by some school trustees.

Sandra Mathison and E. Wayne Ross, professors in the Faculty of Education at
the University of British Columbia (UBC) encapsulated much of the debate against more
testing by acknowledging that “the use of high-stakes tests is an effort to treat teaching
and learning in a simple and fair manner.” However, they note that this does not work
“in a world where education is complex and with inequitable distribution of opportunity.”
Instead they suggested that the proven way to improve schools is through curriculum,
teachers, and involvement of the community and cited the problem of the test becoming
the curriculum at the expense of teaching in ways that are response to student needs and
interest. They note that the most often cited rationale for increased use of testing is to

provide information to help decision-makers shape policies and practices that enhance

 

3 In B.C. all students must pass science 10 to graduate from high school. Science & technology I 1 is a
course designed for students who do not wish to take sciences (earth & space, chemistry, physics, or
biology) in grades 11 or 12.

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academic success for students. However, research indicates that high-stakes testing
does not lead to better policies or practices. In fact, benefits are usually outweighed
by negative effects on learning and teaching. such as promoting superficial
understanding of subjects, and transferring control over the curriculum to people who
create the exams, rather than the teachers (Apr 4, 2005, Vancouver Sun. p. A1 1). Much
of their argument was echoed by teachers, parents and students.

Another detrimental effect occurs when the Fraser Institute, a conservative think
tank based in Vancouver. uses provincial standardized tests (the FSA in grades 4 and 7,
and provincial exams in grades 10. l l. and 12) to rank schools. Every year they produce

an elementary and secondary school “report card” (www .li'aserinstituteca). Greg Ponart,

 

assistant superintendent with the Richmond school district, cautioned that provincial
exams are only one of many measures that school districts rely on to indicate student
achievement and thus, the problem with tests is that they can be seen by some as all
encompassing. "Our concern is when groups rely solely on that data to determine the
effectiveness of schools." Once the Fraser Institutc’s rankings hit the news, “schools
get calls," he said. Al Klassen, president of the Richmond Teacher's Association, added
"you can explain all you want, parents and groups like the Fraser institute are going to
jump on those quick- and-dirty rankings - it's like a top 10 list” (Richmond News,
Dec 18,2004).

Along the same lines, Dr Mathison and Dr Ross also cautioned that “when test
scores are central to decision-making, people tend to treat test results as the major goal of
schooling, rather than as a potentially useful but fallible indicator of achievement.” They

note that “despite efforts to create tests that are reliable, scores on standardized tests can

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be surprisingly inconsistent; that's why every major standardized test publisher tells
schools not to use them to make decisions about grade retention or graduation.” In
addition, these scholars note that “recent studies suggest that standard test scores more
accurately indicate family income than students' educational achievement” (Vancouver
Sun, Apr. 4, 2005. p. A1 I). It is worth noting here that in the Fraser Institute “report
card,” with results from the year ofmy study. that of the “top” 15 schools in the province,
13 were private schools, and the two public schools were both on the far west side of
Vancouver near UBC, where there is a high concentration of people with PhDs and a
concentration of wealth (not necessarily the same people). In this instance, the
correlation of wealth and education with standardized test achievement appears strong. It
is also worth noting that a main goal of the Fraser Institute, according to its’ website

(w ww.I’raserinstit__rge_.ga). is to promote private education.

 

After the results of the first set of grade 10 exams were out, the Vancouver Sun
reported: “According to the Ministry of Education, 88 per cent of students passed English
10 exams, 79 per cent passed science 10 and 90 per cent passed the exam for principles of
math 10” (Apr 2, 2005, p. C6). The Ministry of Education press release noted that
province-wide, 91 per cent of English 10 students, 90 per cent of science students, and 89
per cent of principles of math 10 students would have passed the courses if their mark
were based on classroom work alone. When provincial exam marks are factored in. those
numbers increase to 93 per cent, 91 per cent and 91 per cent, the release states (J onson,
Brian, Penticton Western News, Mar 30, 2005, p. 10).

I would like to do a quick analysis on this reporting to illustrate rhetorical strategies

used in the media by the government. For clarity I will use a chart.

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Table 1: Percent of grade 10 students who pass

 

 

 

 

 

exam (20% of final mark) course w/ out exam course with exam
English 880/0 9I0/o 930/0
science 79% 90% 91%
math 90% 89% 91%

 

 

 

 

What the Ministry of Education press release should really convey is that an
additional evaluation, coming at the end of the year raised students’ passing rates by
between I and 2%. The Ministry can’t have data on what course passing rates would
have been if some other form of final evaluation had been used other than the provincial
exam. Teachers would have used some other form ofevaluation in place ofthe
provincial exam, and therefore their claim of passing rates without the exam are
completely hypothetical and not likely accurate. What they could accurately report, but
do not, is that more students passed their courses than passed the provincial exams. In
science, which is of particular interest in this study. 79% ofstudents passed the exam.
And for approximately 13% of students who failed the exam, their course mark was high
enough that it allowed them to pass the course, resulting in a 91% passing rate.

However, Education Minister Tom Christensen said, "Many parents and teachers
had concerns about how these exams would affect students' course marks. Overall pass
rates show us that more students are earning credit for required courses than if final
grades had been determined by school work alone." (Jonson, Brian, Penticton Western
News, Mar 30, 2005, p. 10). Again, the problem is that Mr Christensen cannot know
what the passing rate would have been if determined by school work alone, because

teachers did not prepare final evaluations as part of that school work.

 

Whereas the debate around testing that the new grade 10 exams sparked is not
raised daily in the newspapers across B.C. anymore, this issue has not died. It peppers
the newspapers at the time of FSA administrations or provincial exams, or when the
Fraser Institute “report cards” are published. On October 27-28, 2006 the BC. Teachers’
Federation, together with the faculties of education at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and
the University of British Columbia (UBC) put on the “What really counts! Rethinking
accountability” conference in Vancouver. In his keynote address, Paul Shaker, SF U
Dean of Education, warned that society should be “suspect of any accountability system
that neglects the full dimension of life” and uses pencil-and-paper tests in a simplistic
attempt to apply a certain kind of science to education. He argued that accountability or
assessment models must be much more comprehensive and complex than a multiple-
choice test designed to sort rather than assess. (BCTF. 2006. p. l) The reference to
sorting no doubt drew images ofthe Fraser Institutes’ ranking of schools in BC, based
on provincial exam and F SA results, discussed above. And so, the same arguments keep
circulating, and the exams persist.

To sum up, the prevalence of standardized testing for purposes of accountability
has recently increased, with the provincial government arguing the benefits and
mandating compliance. These practices, and the new grade 10 provincial exams in BC.
in particular, have both supporters and critics in the general public, higher education.
parents, teachers, and students. The heightened use and acceptance of a discourse of
accountability, are in part based on knowledge and notions derived from fields such as

economics and psychology that inform the current liberal-democratic political project

83

LII

which envisions people as resources to be optimized and education as an apparatus for
that goal.

Therefore, it is not my intent here to make a complete argument about the new
grade 10 exams, or standardized tests in general. Rather, I am trying to paint a history of
standardized assessment in BC. (and briefly compare it to other provinces and states in
the US), and point out the rhetoric, and rationalities circulating within, informing and
challenging the discourses contributing to the increasing pertinence of testing and notions
of accountability. The object of this study is to better understand how such discourses
influence and are influenced by the actions and thinking of the teachers in this study.
What is most pertinent in this landscape of escalating testing. for my participants, is the
new grade 10 provincial exam in science. I will now tum to their stories about the exam

in particular and testing and notions of accountability in general.

Contesting and attesting to the discourses of curriculum and testing in context

The live teachers in this study had a range of feelings, both in strength and
opinion, about the new grade 10 provincial exam in science and an increased presence of
achievement and accountability practices and rhetoric. I use their thoughts about the
exam as a springboard to examine how the discourses of curriculum, especially of
accountability and testing, functions and interacts with their convictions for connecting
with students. Whereas in the previous chapter, I argued that the differences in student
teacher relationships vary more greatly based on years of service than by context (and
individual factors), here I argue that context matters the most with regards to how

teachers interpret, respond and contribute to discourses of curriculum and testing.

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The urban context: Teachers at Turner

Anne

Anne was the most outspoken against the new exams. This is not surprising given
that her grade 10 class, which was formed in February with money the province saved
when teachers went on strike for two weeks in October, was composed of students who
were all identified as most likely to fail science 10. Opponents of the grade 10 exam as a
new graduation requirement claimed the exams would hurt students like those in Anne’s
class by potentially increasing their frustration and drop-out rates. Anne certainly
identified with this Opposition to the new exams. She spoke of getting her students
through the course and of her fears the provincial exam could jeopardize their chances of
passing.

All but three [students], I would be surprised if they passed the provincial.

I’m not saying that they don’t understand anything. I’m just saying that

the provincial is written in a language that is very difficult for them to

understand. And these are students who get discouraged easily. A lot of

these students are students who are not the strongest readers, who are not

good at taking rote information and problem solving with it. They are

weak students for a reason. And it’s because they can’t do well on

standardized tests (June 22/06).

Anne echoes the concerns of the voices in the news when the exams were first
administered. She takes on the identity of an advocate for her “most likely to fail” cohort
of students. She points to the language of the test as a central problem for these students
and a reason why they are not good at these kinds of tests. I believe she forms her

opinion based on both her experience with these students, and what others say about “at

risk” youth. It is pertinent to keep in mind that despite the fact that this is Anne’s first

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year of teaching, she has a fair bit of experience with students who struggle in school for
a variety of reasons. At her other school, she teaches in an “extended skills” program,
which she was hired to do based on her coursework in special education, as well as her
work experiences in family services and youth camps.

In addition, Anne strongly associated herself with the BC TF — the teachers’ union
- more than any first year teacher I had encountered, and more than any other teacher in
this study. She attended the BCTF’s annual general meeting that year and she knew
things like “conduct unbecoming a teacher” off the top of her head. Part of this may
come from the influence of her parents who are both teachers in BC. I believe it also
comes from her strong sense of social justice. which she demonstrates in the way she
talks about her students and her teaching. For example, she spoke of a time in class when
she addressed a homophobic remark, and it became a teachable moment and supplanted
the lesson. Issues like these are important to her and she will use time and energy to
address them. I believe part of her admonition of the exams comes from her knowledge
of the union’s opposition to them and her strong affiliation with the union, as well as the
effects she sees on her “at risk” students.

Anne felt that with this grade 10 class a big part of her job was help the students
pass. She did not want to give up on them, as she felt other teachers had. She worried
that many of her students had given up on themselves. Some of her students were in
grade 1 l and so this was already their second time in science 10. Anne felt strongly that
repeating science 10 was not what these students needed to be doing. Therefore, she
provided multiple opportunities to make up and re-do work and accepted that work until

the day before she had to hand in her final grades, taking on extra work for herself. Anne

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felt that the exam worked against this central purpose in her teaching of this particular
group of students.

She said she found it “very frustrating” that in order to graduate, grade 10
students had to be able to determine things like the radioactive decay of substances, the
poles of electromagnets, and the probability of different phenotypes. She questioned
whether these sorts ofthings would be important to their lives. She said, “It feels like
gate-keeping. I feel like we’ve set the standards too high. And I know the BC.
government set the standard high because they thought that would make the students
smarter because they would have to learn more, but really it’s just making students
frustrated” (June 22/06). Here, Anne nicely separates what she sees as the intentions or
goals behind the practice of mandating these exams, and the actual outcome of requiring
them. especially for the population of students she taught.

Anne’s questioning of what is in the grade 10 curriculum and thus her criticism of
the exam, stems from her notions of good science teaching, which arises from her
commitment to students. She felt that students needed to learn to evaluate claims, and
learn about issues that are of interest to them and have relevance to their lives. She
resented defining student success in part as passing tests that did not have relevance. She
sees some of the curriculum and thus at least some of what is tested on the exam as too
esoteric. She criticizes that there is too much emphasis on details that are more in-depth
than they need to be and not so important for everyone to understand. Whereas she
agrees that all students should take science 10, she feels the curriculum should be
“enough that they can understand the world — like understand, oh that’s an oxidation

reaction, it’s rust. Without having to say, I can balance that reaction” (June 22, 2006).

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She felt that in this respect the exam was too hard to be a graduation requirement for
every student. She gave the example of getting questions for the geology unit test from
earth science 11 test bank, because “[t]he grade 10 material is actually so high now that
they’re actually covering half of earth science I 1” (June 22/6).

Anne claims that most adults who have a degree in science. or teachers who are
not familiar with the science 10 curriculum, would score about 50% on the exam. She
pointed to the common experience that most pe0ple don’t remember the science that
wasn’t in their area of specialty. She made the argument that the exam was gate-keeping
because it was too hard and all students have to take and pass science 10 to graduate.
“There’s a lot of students who just need to get through high school and they’ll be
completely successful in the real world. It’sjust such a stumbling block to expect them
to pass science 10. Like you can’t make the cow fatter by weighing it.” In this vein she
felt that the exam was a waste of energy and money.

Despite Anne’s feelings about the provincial exam presenting an obstacle for her
particular students. she must accept that exam and it does affect her teaching. She said,
“The other thing governing what I choose to spend time on, unfortunately, is the grade 10
exam” (Mar 2/06). In this sense the exam does help to ensure that teachers are teaching
the curriculum, which is one reason cited for its existence. As Anne argues above.
however, some of the details of that curriculum are unnecessary and she would prefer the
discretion to focus on what is most pertinent for her students. Anne likely would not
have gone into as much detail in topics such as radioactivity or reproduction and focused
on the larger ideas she felt students needed to understand as well as “the doing and the

enjoying” (Mar 2/06) of learning science. Anne complained that the exams were part of

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what she called the “culture of academic achievement” which is so pervasive and
encourages students to have an “externally motivated. marks-driven way of looking at
science” (Mar 2, 2006).

Thus, in Anne’s urban context, and especially with her grade 10 class of students
most likely to fail, the exam conflicts with her notions of good teaching and how best to
serve students, but it also has one of the largest impacts. It is a larger factor in her
circumstance because she has a group of students for whom passing the course has very
real consequences. and not doing so is a very real possibility. In addition she has not
taught the class for the whole semester and thus must make up for gaps in their different
experiences. For example, Anne put together a physics packet the end of the year in
order to be sure students had all covered that material prior to the provincial exam since
she had not been responsible for teaching them that section of the course. So whereas I do
not see the expectation and practice of more testing as necessitating great changes in
teaching practice alone, when it is coupled with extenuating circumstances. the effect is

more significant.

Jaclyn

When I asked Jaclyn about her greatest concerns in her teaching, her first
response was keeping up with marking (Mar 3/06). During that same conversation we
talked about the large volume of laboratory reports she marked. I asked her if she was
getting enough information about how her students understood the concepts or the
processes of investigation, or if her feedback to them, in terms of their learning, justified

all the time and effort she spent marking. Jaclyn said that while that was a good question,

89

she couldn’t give me an answer right away, as she “never took the time to actually stop

and think about things like that” (Mar 3/06). This is an example of the taken-for-granted

 

idea that teachers need to mark everything that students do. I’m not claiming here
whether Jaclyn should mark every lab or not. but I do want to point out the pervasiveness
of the acceptance ofa large marking load and the assumption of its usefulness, rather than
an argument for its usefulness based on the function and benefits of those assessments.
This assumption stems from the taken-for-granted discourses of measurement and of
accountability in schools.

This is not to say that teachers do not think about and hold Opinions about
assessment practices. Jaclyn also recognized the “culture of academic achievement” that
Anne did. She talked about the perennial question, “is this going to be on the test?” and
added, “Those questions I really don’t like — but the students are trained in that way.
...And I think it is even more now with the grade 10 exam” (June 22/06). She argued
that the government should get rid of the grade 10 exam. She concurred with Anne that
it is a mechanism that puts more pressure on teachers to get through all the curriculum.
She also noted how it affected her teaching of grades 8 and 9: “Because when they get to
grade 10 they have to write this provincial exam there is no way around it. So in
grade 8 and grade 9, as a teacher, we have to prep them on how to write tests. how to do
well on tests” (June 22/06).

Jaclyn gave a poignant example of the exam negatively affecting her practice.
The previous year was her first year of teaching. and she started her job at Turner at the
end of January. Jaclyn took over for a teacher who left in the middle of the year and. by

the sounds of it, had taught only the physics portion of the science 10 curriculum. The

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knowledge that her students had to write the new provincial exam forced Jaclyn to teach
in ways that she felt badly about. When she arrived at the end of January, Jaclyn had
about four and a half months to teach the biology, earth science, and chemistry portions
of the course. She felt impelled to make up packages of information for the students with
notes and diagrams and a few blanks to be filled in. She said, “I felt really bad that they
had to do that but I had to do what I had to do because they have to write the
exam and some kids are scared that they are not going to get everything covered. And
um. I didn’t like that at all. I didn’t like that experience. I don’t think the kids enjoyed it
either because it was so boring” (June 22/06).

Clearly Jaclyn made a decision about how to teach that compromised her ideas of
good teaching and she felt that it was a disservice to the students. However. she would
have felt that she was doing her students more of a disservice, if she had not “gone
through” the packages and covered all the material on which the students would be
tested. Jaelyn’s case was not typical in that she was taking over for another teacher (who
seems to be an anomaly) in the middle of the school year. However, the exam does not
allow for unusual or extenuating circumstances such as her situation in the previous year.
I think this is a most central point. One could argue that if a teacher teaches well and
covers all the curriculum that they do not have to teach differently or teach to the test.
However, in unusual circumstances like Jaelyn’s the previous year, or Anne’s discussed
above, the exam does affect teaching in ways that can be argued as negative.

The reality is that teachers often have to make decisions about what to spend more
or less time on in a class, even though the vast majority of teachers try very

conscientiously to engage students with all the concepts and practices in the curriculum.

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Jaclyn stated, “I try my best to cover everything in the IRP4 but sometimes you spend less
time on certain areas. But I only had this time to cover everything. But I don’t feel that
pressure with the grade 8’s and 9’3, but with the 10’s I did” (June 22/06). She gave the
example of her current grade 8 class, not spending as much time on rocks and minerals as
other topics, and thus not putting that on their final exam. Jaclyn disagreed with the
exam because she felt pressured to teach in ways that didn’t match her ideas of good
teaching. She did not feel that she needed that exam to keep her to the curriculum — she
tried her best to do this already — but she wanted the freedom to match assessments with

her teaching, and to teach in ways that she felt were most effective for her students.

The suburban context: Teachers at Saunders

Delia

Delia, like Anne, taught a class that was put together in February with money
saved from the teachers’ strike. Unlike Anne, her class was not overtly put together as
“most likely to fail,” but Delia made a convincing argument that many of her students
were “cast-offs”, with nine English language learners, and four students identified to
receive Ieaming assistance in a class of seventeen students. However, this teaching
situation did not cause Delia to hold particular distain for the exam like Anne. Rather,
Delia was the only teacher in the study who overtly supported the exam.

Delia takes up the discourse of the provincial government and the media in

suggesting that one reasonable rationale for the new grade 10 exam was to keep teachers

 

4 IRP stands for integrated resource package. The province provides a list ofresources to go with the
prescribed learning outcomes (PLO) which make up the curriculum

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accountable: “I do really think we all should be accountable. I think it is accountability.
So I don’t have a problem with it [the exam)” (May 9/06). Delia’s idea ofaccountability,
however, is specific to her experiences in teaching science. “I think it is good to have the
provincial exam, hold us responsible for it. I think it is important that a_ll the sections are
gone through, just so these kids know where their strengths are. ....so they have a good
sense Of what the sciences are. Cause that is all those first three years [grades 8 to 10]
are. is a preview of all those subjects” (June 27/06‘). We must keep in mind that Delia’s
concern regarding adequately preparing students for future study. especially in terms of
choosing which senior sciences to take, makes sense given the context Of her school.
Most of her students will go on to take senior sciences. In addition, keeping teachers
accountable is also more fair for all students since she believes “it is not the bright
students who are ever affected. It’s the lower end student who is always affected” (June
27/06) by having less sufficient preparation.

Thus, Delia felt the exam helps to ensure that all areas ofthe curriculum are
taught sufficiently, particularly in areas that are not the areas of expertise of the teacher.
Teaching ajunior science course (grades 8 to 10) means teaching in the fields ofbiology,
chemistry, physics, and earth and space science. This can require teachers with little
background in a subject to teach that subject. Delia, a chemistry major and biology
minor, said she didn’t care much for earth science or electricity and magnetism. She
claimed that she would concentrate a lot more on chemistry if she didn’t have to follow
the curriculum. “We’ll teach what we know, what we feel comfortable in,” she said. She
is right at least up to a point. All these teachers admit to lingering in their strengths.

However, even though teachers say that they probably won’t go into the same depth in a

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topic they don’t know as well, they also express the desire to get support in these areas,
and the commitment to teach these in these areas as best they can. I investigate these
teachers’ thoughts and practices regarding such support in the next chapter.

What is very interesting is that even though Delia accepted that a legitimate
purpose of the exam is to push teachers to cover all the material. she complained that the
grade 10 curriculum was too packed. She told me that she had enough time for two
weeks of review in her chemistry 12 class and a week and half of review for her grade I 1
chemistry students. However, “I finished my science 10 the day before. We had one day
of review. One day. And I pushed.” (June 27/06). Like Jaclyn in the previous year, she
had taken over the class from another teacher and was catching-up to some degree so this
added to that push and the time constraints. liven so. Delia assessed that the grade 10
science curriculum “is insane. And if there wasn’t a provincial exam, I would omit
sections” (June 27/06). She questioned if all the material makes sense for grade 10. She
wondered aloud why genetics was taught in grade 10 and then not in grades 11 and 12
biology. She noted, “That seems skewed like why aren’t we concentrating on building
their knowledge?” (June 27/06).

It may appear that Delia’s support of the exam as a legitimate means to hold
teachers accountable for teaching curriculum, becomes somewhat specious given that she
feels some material should be omitted from that curriculum. Why hold teachers
accountable for something you don’t believe in, in the first place? But what Delia is
really arguing, I believe, is that junior science teachers need to be accountable for

teaching all major areas of science — biology. chemistry, physics, earth and space science

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— well enough that students gain a good understanding of what these areas of study look
like. She is not arguing that all the material is important for students to understand.

Delia’s main support ofthe provincial exam, like arguments made in the
newspapers, was that it gave the students a chance to practice writing an exam. Here
again, it is not really important what is on the exam, but the practice of being tested on
whole year’s worth of information. She believed that students need practice at preparing
for and writing a 2 to 3 hour exam, so they are better prepared for grade 12. The practice
in writing the exam is a practice needed for the reality of higher education where most of
her students are headed. Thus. like Anne, Delia’s opinion ofthe exam is in part based on
who her students are.

She only once briefly mentioned the comparison aspect of provincial exam,
saying, “I think it is important for me to know and for them to know how they did on a
test that everybody in the province wrote. I don’t think it is harmful. But who knows.”
Here again I think there is evidence of Delia’s opinions formed within her context. She
has likely heard arguments that the exams are harmful to some students. While she is not
sure about this, she doesn’t see the harm in it, mostly because that comparison is
generally not harmful to her students. Saunders was in the top 20 high schools in the
province based on the Fraser Institute report card.

Despite her acceptance and even support ofthe provincial exam Delia complained
about how focused on tests her students were in general. She commented, “especially at
this school” student are “so marks-driven that their focus becomes the test” (June 27/06).
She complained that this approach results in them learning the textbook, just rote

memorization, and not really understanding the concepts so that they can manipulate

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information to adapt it to fit an unfamiliar question or problem. She surmised that this
comes from the “pressure on them from their parents” (June 27/06) and thus many
students were very motivated — but motivated to get marks, not necessarily motivated to
understand. Delia characterized her students as “not application kids” (June 27/06)
because she felt they had a hard time applying what they had learned to a novel
circumstance. Thus. she stressed with her students “if they understand there is actually
less information that they need to know” (June 27/06). Delia’s emphasis on
understanding processes within science — to not memorize and understand why things
happen, like a chemical reaction — may, in part, stem from working against what Anne
called the “culture of achievement,” which Delia sees as so prominent at Saunders.

Delia doesn’t make a connection between the provincial exam and the discourse
of accountability in schools, or the “culture of academic achievement” among her
students. This is not surprising, given that most of the arguments against the new grade
10 exam were aimed at elucidating the unintended consequences for students who do not
plan to go on to university. Such students make up a very small portion of Delia’s

classes.

Jun

Jun taught grade 10 science in the same school as Delia. Although it was her
fourth year teaching, it was her first year teaching grade 10 and she said she still felt
“kind of new” when it came to teaching (Apr 18/06). Jun had her class from the start of
the year, which is not unusual, but in contrast to Anne, Jaclyn the previous year, and

Delia. Jun’s class was designated as pre-AP science 10, taken by students who intended

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to enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) science courses in grades 11 and 12. It was at the
Opposite end of the spectrum from Anne’s group, chosen as most likely to fail, (and to
some degree Delia’s “cast-offs”) in that Jun’s class was composed ofstudents self-
selected as most likely to be successful in science.

Like the other teachers teaching grade 10, and perhaps even more so with her pre-
AP class, Jun felt pressure from the new provincial exam and found it “hard when you
have no control over the exam” (June 21/06). She felt pressure to “get through all the
material” even if it meant compromising her teaching strategies. Even though Jun was
not taking over someone else's class. she still felt rushed towards the end of the year as
she told me that she was doing more fill in the blank notes to "get through a lot of
material in a short amount of time.” She explained, “for grade 10 I think it’s because of
that exam. And it’s my fear ifl don’t get through this, there’s going to be a question on
the exam about this and they are going to say. my teacher didn’t teach me that” (June
21/06). Here I think Jun reveals that she is responding to her students’ expectations. in
that they expect her to adequately prepare them for the exam. Jun mentions twice that
she feels she has a dilemma, because on one hand “all this stuff is important in a way, in
terms of understanding how to do things and how things work” but on the other hand, “it
always seems like there’s so much stuff’ (June 21/06). Whereas Jun wasn’t willing to
say what should be removed from the curriculum, she had feelings that there was too
much material, and the presence of the provincial exam accentuated the pressure to cover
all of it, resulting in some compromising of her teaching.

Like Delia, Jun believed that the purpose of the exam was to “make sure that by

the end of grade 10 all students have covered these topics” (June 21/06). Like Jaclyn, she

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questioned whether this was necessary, however, “because at least in our department at
our school, I think we’re pretty good about covering the material.” She added that
“maybe [another teacher] does earth science in more depth, because he’s geology and
maybe I would concentrate on biology more, but I think we’re all pretty good about
covering the material.” I believed her. For example, when we talked about why she
planned a particular project in grade 8, she said it was the best way she could follow the
prescribed Ieaming outcomes and not give the students straight notes (June 21/06). In our
previous conversation Jun had said that other than lingering “a little bit” where she is
more comfortable, or spending more time on ideas students find more difficult, she just
follows “what the curriculum says” (Apr 18/06).

I agree with Jun. From what I observed with these five teachers, either in science
10 with the exam, or in science 8 or 9 without one, all the teachers were very diligent
about following material in the curriculum. From my own years teaching the same
curriculum, 1 know that my colleagues and I were very disciplined about engaging the
students in all the curriculum as best we could. These teachers (like all I have worked
with or observed) were probably most able to teach in ways that they wanted to in their
areas of specialty, but they sought help in areas that were not their strengths, and never
entertained the idea of just not teaching something. For example, Jun said she knew
nothing about earth science when she started teaching and had to learn a lot. Even Delia,
who claims she would teach more chemistry if the exam weren’t there is speaking
hypothetically. The discourses of teaching in schools revolve around content in the
curriculum, and teachers do not treat it as something optional, even if they disagree with

the volume or content.

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Interestingly, the notion that teachers need the test in order to be held accountable
to teach the curriculum seems to be one that teachers and the general public, and
government accept and use, but one based upon little or no evidence. In addition, neither
these teachers, nor the provincial government make arguments that tested curriculum is
vital for all students to understand. In fact, the argument that the teachers in this study
make above, have more to do with students needing to understand the processes in
science and material that is relevant to their lives as citizens, rather than all the
curriculum. Jun, in particular, identified “environmental issues and issues that depend on
their future, our future” as one of the most important in science, but also that “if we are
pressed for time, I’m going to cut that kind of discussion.” These kinds of issues —— what
Bruno Latour (1991) calls “hybrids — ...imbroglios of science, politics, economy, law,
[etc]” (p. 2) are not on the provincial exam. Thus, Jun claimed “those are things we are
losing with all the testing. That is what is nice about grade 8, because there seems to
be less pressure and we can get into some of those discussions” (June 21/06).

When speaking about the provincial exam. .lun added. “I guess the idea is then
they go into those specialty courses — biology l 1, chemistry 1 1 — and they all need to be
on the same page going into those” (June 21/06). Since all this material may not be
necessary for lives as citizens, a better rationale for the exam may be to adequately
prepare all students for further science. Here Jun is revealing her very reasonable
expectation, especially given the students in her AP science 10 classroom, that science 10
is primarily preparation for future science courses. Jun is not in this moment thinking

about students who do not take these senior science courses but still need to pass science

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10 with the provincial exam worth 20 per cent. Like Anne and Delia, Jun interprets the
purpose of the exam through the lens of serving her particular students.

Thus, even though Jun was not sure the exam was necessary, she did not complain
about the exam. She did, however, talk in retrospect about how she had gotten caught up
in what Anne called the “culture of academic achievement.” Jun admitted, “I’m
embarrassed to say this but for my grade 10’s I had over 1000 points. ...That’s cLa_zy.
Like I don’t need 1000 marks to decide how well they did I get so focused on, you
know, if I don’t collect this, they won’t do it” (June 21/06). She talked about how she
needed to “relax a little about that” and how a colleague had given her advice that
teaching was only 30% about content and 70% about trying “to make a good person” and
she needed to remind herself of that more (.lune 21/06). I interpret Jun to mean that her
own focus on testing and marking might get in the way sometimes of helping to make a
“good person” — perhaps one who understands the complexity of a local environmental
debate and so has the knowledge to care and act, but who was not exposed to all aspects

of the curriculum.

Susanne

Susanne did not teach grade 10 that year, but she had taught the course
previously. We did not talk specifically about the provincial exam. Susanne talked of not
enough time as a major constraint in her teaching. She mentioned being pressed for time
eight times in the two taped conversations we shared. She believed this was even more of
a constraint for teachers of grade 10, given the amount of material. “I know the jump

from grade 9 to grade 10 is quite a bit just in terms of the material. I know in grade 10

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there is more than — than people can teach it; more information that needs to be delivered
than time” (May 9/06).

Even in grades 8 and 9, Susanne felt that ifthere was “less stuff in the
curriculum” then there would be more time to focus on the processes of questioning. and
getting involved in investigations outside school, such as science fairs or physics teams
which Susanne associated with good science teaching. When we talked about her
assessment, Susanne mused whether less assessment would actually be better. However,
she felt that students needed many Opportunities to be assessed so that one bad day would
not affect their mark. She used this rationale for having a lot of quizzes, labs and other
assignments. She used the example of one of her students whose marks dropped for 3 or
4 assignments during a personally difficult period for the student, but the overall mark
was not affected very much because there were so many marks.

It is interesting that Susanne makes an argument for frequent assessment as a way
to be fair to students regarding their marks. rather than as a way to gather frequent
information about understanding. I’m not saying that Susanne is not using those frequent
assessments to see how students are learning and adjusting her teaching accordingly, I am
merely pointing out that when Susanne talked about assessment, it was from the
perspective of students’ marks, which fits right in with the discourses surrounding
assessment in schools, perhaps especially at Saunders, and her own emphasis on being
fair as a key component of building relationships with students.

At the same time, Susanne. like all the other teachers, provides evidence that her
students are driven by marks. She recounted that her students always want to know what

mark they got on a test or assignment, but they don’t look at the feedback, and toss

IOI

assignments aside when they are handed back. She had experimented with having
students hand in a group lab report once, but didn’t try that again after a parent
complained that her daughter was doing all the work, and the other students was getting
the mark that her daughter had earned. It is nothing new to report that this “culture of
academic achievement” exists in schools ( e.g. Sedlak. M, Wheeler, C., Pullin, D. &
Cusick. P.. 1986). However. I am interested in how it operates as part ofthe discourses
of schools (of which the discourses ofcurriculum and testing and accountability are
influential) and how it contributes to the thinking and actions of teachers in general and

these teachers in particular.

From urban to suburban: The consequences of curriculum in context
Teachers ’ thoughts (and actions) across contexts

Across both contexts there are complaints about the new grade 10 exam in science
and what Anne called the “culture ofacademic achievement.” Despite their complaints,
these teachers perpetuate as well as respond in particular ways to the discourses of
curriculum and testing. My participants, like virtually all teachers, define student
success, at least in part, by marks and passing tests. It is understandable that they are
committed to helping their students pass courses, complete assignments and do well on
tests. They are without a doubt committed to their students. Yet, they could define
student success, for example, as being able to evaluate claims about relevant issues and
focus on practicing doing so with applicable information. And in the process, students
should learn enough about topics in the prescribed curriculum to demonstrate their

understanding on assessments they designed and have some degree of success on an

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external exam. But as teachers and former students, I believe it is difficult for them to

define student success without reference to marks as a proxy for the knowledge, skills,

dispositions. etc, that they feel students need as current and future learners and citizens.
This discourse ofmarks and grades is part of what we think ofas school.

Just as the discourse of school mandates the practices of awarding marks,
following the prescribed curriculum is sacrosanct. Teachers overwhelmingly do their best
to cover curriculum although they also make decisions about small omissions based on
their ideas of good teaching. The question that policy-makers and teachers should be
asking is not how to hold teachers accountable. but what teachers and students should be
held accountable for. All the teachers in this study. including Delia who supported the
exam, felt there wasjust too much in the curriculum, particularly in grade 10. Even
Susanne, who did not teach grade 10 at the time of this study, frequently commented that
there was not enough time even in grade 8 and 9. However, there was an acceptance, or
at least a resignation among teachers, that they had to do their best to get through it all.

I believe part of the reason that these teachers stick so firmly to the curriculum as
a central practice, with or without an external exam, is because this is an aspect of
teaching that goes without saying; it is taken for granted. Teaching the curriculum is the
teacher’s job. Jun didn’t feel she had the knowledge to make a judgment about what
curriculum should be cut out and she talked of her dilemma between teaching all that
important stuff, and not teaching as well as she might ifthere was less ofit. I also
believe that because these teachers functionally deline an important aspect of student
success in terms of doing well on tests, that part of their commitment to students is to

engage them in all the curriculum as best they can.

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Thus, despite the complaints, I did not see that the new exam affected practice
very much. In extenuating circumstances like Anne’s and Jaelyn’s the previous year,
there may be very tangible effects, but otherwise I do not see much difference between
the approach of teachers who teach grade 10 to those who teach grade 8, or between the
curriculum and instruction I participated in some 10 years previously and the practice of
these teachers. This is similar to Anderson (2009) who found that even though upper
elementary teachers in his study complained a great deal about the restrictions of testing
under No Child Left Behind, that practices in these grades in terms of time spent on
particular subject matter had not changed much. I think the negligible impact of the
exam is that the “culture of academic achievement” that already exists may be heightened

for both teachers and students.

It is possible that the presence of an exam could result in minor shifts in curricular
focus. For example, the provincial exam attempts to assess about 90% of content PLOs
but only three out of eight “applications of science” PLOs, relating to what the teachers
and I called processes of science above. This is understandable since these are difficult
understandings to demonstrate on a test composed of multiple choice (up to 75%),
matching (up to 20%) and true-or-false (up to 20%) questions. However, this does add
credence to Jun’s argument that discussion of such issues can get pushed out with a
higher focus on testing.

These applications of science PLOs are not assessed by the grade 10 provincial
exam, and are to be assessed in the classroom:

0 describe some important scientific discoveries that resulted from scientists applying

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their knowledge and creativity to explore unexpected events

0 describe the interactions between scientific developments and the beliefs and values of
society

0 identify and consider ethical implications ofscientific investigations

- analyse costs and benefits of alternatives in resolving sociO-scientific issues
Interestingly, of the four content PLOs that are not assessed, one of them is:

- analyse implications of current and emerging biomedical. genetic, and reproductive
technologies

These areas not covered by the exam are prime candidates for fruitful content in
terms of relevance, interest, and understanding the processes of science — all identified as
important goals in good science teaching by these teachers. And so, even if their
practices do not change very much with the presence of exams, the exam may function as
a barrier to re-envisioning practices that better fit with their visions of good teaching, and
meet the perceived needs of their students. In other words the exam may act as an excuse
of sorts for not imagining and enacting practices better matched to visions of good
teaching.

Thus, overall teachers generally do not like the new exams but practices are not
too negatively influenced except in extenuating circumstances. The differences in
practices around, and arguments for and against, the new exams varied based on the
context. At Saunders in the suburban context, the argument for practice at test-taking and
the representation of all sciences for future study has legitimacy given the expected paths
of the majority Of students in the school. In the urban context of Turner Secondary

School, Anne’s concerns in particular to cover the material so students can pass or come

105

close to passing the exam and pass the course. or that the material is impractical and
esoteric, are also legitimate. And it is out ofconcern for students and how success for
students is defined differently in these different contexts that drives the concerns and
complaints of the teachers.

One could argue that Anne should have higher expectations for her students, and
that a provincial exam might necessitate and thus help her do that. But I believe that
criticism is too simplified. Anne believes in the potential of her students to learn the
grade 10 science curriculum. Ilowever, she believes that she understands their lack of
motivation and concern to do well in school and she does not want to see that as an
impediment to their lives. Delia, at the other end of the spectrum in supporting the
exams, saw the benefit to her students in their preparation for their futures. Thus, there
were many shared concerns with the exam in particular and curriculum in general as
being too much material to know some of which may not be particularly relevant for
students’ futures. However, opinions were ultimately based on the degrees of service or

disservice to students, and this varied notably by context.

C'ircmnstances and outcomes across contexts

SO is the exam more detrimental to students at Turner than at Saunders? We don’t
need publications like the Fraser lnstitute’s “report card” to tell us that the best predictor
of student success on standardized tests is their family’s education and wealth. This is
an already well-established correlation. For example, socio—economic status (and
accompanying resources) is more closely correlated with SAT scores than any other

factor (Hanson. 1993). In the Fraser report card for high schools released in April of

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2007 (reporting on the some of the students of the teachers in this study), only two of the
top fifteen were public schools, both serving communities in expensive areas of a big city
near a major university —- a pretty good indication that parents have high levels of wealth
and/or education compared to the rest of society. What is useful about this correlation is
not an indication of where (i.e. what schools and their teachers) ‘improvement’ is needed,
but rather it indicates that schools may be better at rewarding cultural capital5 rather than
teaching it. This then would suggest that teachers need more support in teaching all
students, particularly those who have had less positive experiences with school, or who
come with different Discourses (Gee, 1999) than typical in wealthy well-educated
settings (Lemke, 1990; Heath, 1983). Lemke (1990) argues that “those from social
backgrounds where the activity structures, preferred grammar, rhetorical patters. and
figures of speech ...are least like those of science and the classroom do least well” (p.22).
Even though the intent (or at least the rhetoric of the intent) is to identify schools
that are struggling and to help those schools. the result is the opposite. In my study, the
school district in which Saunders is located has experienced growth in the student
population in part because it attracts students from a neighbouring district. That
neighbouring district has a decreasing school age population, which has lead to closings
of neighbourhood schools. While the school age population is shrinking anyway in this

area, the perception that schools in Saunder’s district are better has contributed.

 

5 Bourdieu (I977a; 1985; 1986) describes cultural capital as something like ways of
thinking, acting, talking, skills, and knowledge that are learned from experiences in a
cultural setting( like a family, neighborhood, classroom, workplace, etc.). Some scholars
argue that schools reward children who come to school with the expected cultural capital,
rather than teaching those ways of acting, skills, etc to children.

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In addition, schools like Turner, are not running at capacity, whereas schools are
overflowing on the other side of the city in this large district, where house prices are
higher. Rather than providing help for struggling schools, publications like the Fraser
report card contribute to perceptions that schools are better in certain places than they are
in others. This perception can be an impetus for parents who have the means and
inclination to leave. taking their student dollars with them.

What is most pertinent and interesting is that I saw no compelling evidence to
suggest that schools like Saunders are indeed better than those like Turner. This is not to
say that there are no differences. There are both stark and subtle differences. Yet, in my
evaluation these differences do not translate into a significant differences in Ieaming
Opportunities for students. The two major differences between the two are in the
buildings themselves. and in the student population.

Saunders is a newer building with more modern rooms. and newer furniture like
desks and chairs. Saunders also had a few more computers available for teacher use. At
both schools each teacher had a computer for their use in their classroom. In Delia’s
case, where she did not have her own classroom, she had computer in her office area.
Anne was the only one in the study who did not have such easy access to a computer.
Since she was allocated in February to a classroom that was previously not used, it did
not have a computer, and she never got one, despite asking. There were two computers
in the staff room, but one was not working, so Anne usually used another teacher’s
computer in their classroom, when she could. Thus there was a small (and for everyone

except Anne) inconsequential difference in resources, that could be easily observed.

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Both schools are diverse linguistically and racially with respect to the student
population. The socio-economic status of Saunders’ students is definitely on the high end
with little diversity. Turner, in contrast, has a population that is diverse socio-
economically, with a higher than average numbers of low-income families within the
school district. Thus, the major difference is the social class of the students. As I have
already written, these differences in social class translate to differences in comparisons
like the Fraser Institute’s report card. Saunders was in the top 20, whereas Turner ranked
around 150.

I believe these different rankings. which we must keep in mind reflect test scores
which are not particularly good measures of learning or understanding. stem from
differences in social class, rather than in differences in the quality of education offered at
these two schools. First, both schools, like all in the province, use the same provincial
curriculum as their basis for instruction and testing. These two schools use the same
textbooks, and many of the same activities associated with those books. For example, in
both settings. teachers often used the same laboratory activities to confirm ideas already
learned. Additionally, teachers at these two schools have similar ideas Of good teaching
(as discussed in a previous chapter) and Often use similar strategies as a part of their
practices. For example, Jaclyn and Susanne both talked about their strategies of “pre-
viewing” vocabulary at the beginning of a unit.

So if curriculum, teaching strategies, and teacher ideas are so similar, what causes
the difference? How does social class translate to higher scores? One theory is the idea
of cultural capital mentioned earlier. Students coming from middle to upper class

backgrounds are more likely to come to school with the skill set, and expectations for

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themselves to please the teacher and succeed in school. In addition, I believe the
discourses and associated expectations of both parents and students of the middle and
upper classes affect teachers’ strategies and emphases, particularly with regards to
testing. As I’ve documented above, teachers at Saunders felt their students were under
pressure from their parents (and themselves) to do well on tests. This translated into
greater pressure on those teachers to prepare students for tests. While this existed at
Turner as well, no teacher at Turner mentioned pressure from parents, and sometimes, ‘.
preparing students for tests was focused on students passing. like Anne talked about.
rather than performing at high levels.

Whereas at both locations the discourse of testing and accountability was

 

prevalent, teachers at Saunders seemed more consumed with marks and marking and may
have taught more to the test. For example, the three teachers who taught science 8 and 9
(of which Jun and Susanne were two) all shared their tests among one another so there
would be consistency between their classes. In addition, they collaborated on "unit
exams” for the biology, chemistry, and physics units in the course. I believe that it was
this slightly ratcheted-up focus on testing that led teachers at Saunders to make decisions
such as using a conversion factor for the force of gravity as 10 X mass, rather than
deriving the force ofgravity from force = mass X acceleration due to gravity (mass X
IOm/sz), as the teachers at Turner did. Newton’s formula, F=ma is not in the grade 9
curriculum. For teachers at Turner it made sense to introduce it and use it since using the
force of gravity in problems is in the curriculum, and this introduces students to a

fundamental concept in Newtonian physics. At Saunders, since it was not part of the

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curriculum, teachers felt it would be easier for students to perform calculations without
another formula to confuse them.

With this example, I believe it is arguable that the quality of teaching was no less
at Turner (and with this particular example may have been better). Yet the focus on test
preparation and consistency may have been higher at Saunders. And. certainly the
expectations and pressure from parents and students was greater at Saunders in terms of
test preparation and performance.

Cohen (1988) calls teaching the “impossible profession” because its goal is
human improvement with clients (students) who are not chosen by nor choose the
teacher. If the criteria for ‘improvement’ are at odds between students and teachers, or
students do not want to or will not 'improvc.’ then teaching is certainly an uphill effort.
There are students at both Saunders and Turner who are motivated and interested in
school (by both marks and Ieaming), and students who are not interested in school, who
feel they don’t excel there, and for whom school does figure prominently in their future
plans. However. at Turner, there are more of the latter than there are at Saunders. Here
is a quick comparison of provincial exam results for Saunders and for Turner:

Table 2: Percent passing and letter rades for provincial exams in the sciences

pass A B C+ C C- F
Saunders - Biology 12 exam 94 35 30 9 ll 9 6
Turner — Biology12 exam 83 25 21 ll 1 l 15 17

 

 

 

 

 

Saunders — Chemistry 12 94 24 33 18 12 6 6

 

 

 

 

 

Turner — Chemistry 12 100 19 21 l3 I7 30 0
Saunders - Physics 12 100 49 24 12 15 0 0
Turner — Physics 12 97 25 31 21 8 11 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

lll

 

Table 3: Percent passing and letter rades for science 10 exam in 2005/6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pass A B C+ C C- F
Saunders 90 I7 26 l6 l6 14 10
Turner 78 10 28 12 12 I7 22

 

 

 

Anne’s concern that the grade 10 provincial exam was frustrating for her students
— those deemed most likely to fail —— seems to be borne out in the provincial exam results.
We can see that students at Turner did not do as well as those at Saunders on this
assessment, with the greatest difference in the per cent of A’s on the exam (Saunders 7%
higher). and the percent of failures (Turner 12% higher). If we compare the grade 12
results in the sciences, the margins ofdiffcrence between Turner and Saunders students
overall are less, particularly in Chemistry and Physics. Thus, it seems to be those
students who choose not to take senior sciences (or if they do, they take biology) like
many in Anne’s class, who struggle more with these types of assessments. I want to be
clear that I am not blaming the students, rather than the teachers for lower scores at
Turner. What I want to point out here is that such rankings are more a reflection of
portions of school populations whose definitions of human improvement, goals and
identities (related to social class) do not match with those of schools (or at least this kind
of assessment in schools), than the quality of educational opportunities for students.
Thus the rhetoric and intent of standardized testing to leave no children behind and help

decision-makers aid low-performing schools. does not match the outcomes.

Concluding remarks: discourses of curriculum and testing
To sum up, the discourses of curriculum and testing and accountability result in
teachers treating the curriculum as sacrosanct. despite a consensus that there was too

much material and that some of it may be esoteric for a class necessary for high school

112

 

graduation. These discourses of school also function in teachers largely defining student
success as performance for marks. Because these teachers define good teaching as
intimately linked to their commitment to students, their opinions about the new external
measure of the grade 10 provincial science exam varied somewhat by context, i.e. who
the students are and the potential detriment or benefit the exam would have for them.
Thus, there was a small degree of acceptance in the suburban setting and no acceptance in
the urban setting. In both locations, however, the new exam did not have much affect on
practice, except in extenuating circumstances. The outcomes of the exams, then, are to

reify the perceived effectiveness of schools along lines of social class.

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Chapter 6 Stories of new teachers: Stretched thin, self-sufficient and
supported

Introduction

In the previous chapters I argue that all the teachers in this study intimately connect
good teaching with relationships with students. Science content is thus filtered through
ideas of service to students. How they connect with students depends more on their
experience in teaching than on the context (although both are significant). Judgments and
practices within the discourses of curriculum and testing (including the new provincial

exam in science) are based on service or disservice to students and thus depend more on

 

the context than years of experience. In this chapter, I explore discourses of being a new
teacher, to which my participants contribute and respond, and the kinds of assistance they

utilized and sought in order to support their practices.

Discourses of the new teacher: Pay your dues

It is taken for granted as usual for new teachers to have teaching loads that
include a lot of different courses or “preps.” It is not unusual to have to travel from
classroom to classroom, or to teach a course or two outside one’s area(s) of
specialization. Whereas these situations are not ideal for any teacher, they are especially
difficult for new teachers, who are preparing to teach courses for the first time, as well as
Ieaming school routines and practices, and developing relationships with other staff
members. However, the discourse of new teachers is to pay your dues and feel lucky
you have job, so it is seen as normal that new teachers work most waking hours of their

week.

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Delia and Anne, the two first year teachers in this study, both had teaching loads
that were typical of my description above. Anne taught in two schools, and taught seven
different courses. Delia described her job as the “dog’s breakfast.” This load resulted in
little time for her to actually think about her teaching. “Oh, I don’t even worry about
getting better right now. I don’t have enough time, I think. to reflect, like I did [in
teachers college]. You know how you are supposed to have your little reflection after the
class — what went well? Did I reach my goals? ...I have like ten minutes to pick my
stuff up and get to another classroom with the materials I need for that class” (May 9/06).
Toward the end of the school year, she voiced how tired she had become: “I look at this
little office and I think, Oh my gosh, can I do another year of 5 preps and 6 classes and
early mornings and coaching 3 seasons. and all to go through this next year?” (May 9/06)
Similarly, Anne understandably noted, “I’ve found that new courses, new preps, all sorts
of stuff — just everything seems a bit overwhelming” (June 22/06). Jaclyn had a more
reasonable load in her first full year of teaching, with one classroom and only four
different courses, all in junior science or chemistry. Even so, just being a teacher, and
especially a new teacher she spent many hours on the job. “Just the other day I was here
the night before until 8:00 for two days in a row making solutions. I was thinking. Oh my
god, it’s 8:00 I want to go home and eat” (Mar 3/06).

This situation for new teachers can be normalized by both themselves and those
around them. Despite feeling overwhelmed, Anne implied that the expectations of her
weren’t completely unreasonable by saying, "and at this point I’m young and I have the
time. Well, I make the time” (June 22/06). Likewise, Jaclyn felt “very lucky” because

she knew “for a lot ofyoung teachers to get that permanent job, it is long journey of all

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these different various courses or the blocks that they have to teach” (Mar 3/06). She
reiterated this in our second conversation saying she knew many new teachers had loads
of seven or six preps. “because when you are a new teacher. you get whatever is
leftover.” Even though she recognized it as "the reality of it all” because “you’re lucky
to have a job” she felt that it was “unfair” and “there should be a limit to how many preps
you are going to get as a new teacher” (June 22/06).

In their analyses of teacher induction programs. Britton, Senta, Paine and Huntley
(2000) also suggest that initial teaching assignments should be better matched to the
skills Of new teachers, but that this runs counter to the discourse of new teachers (though
they don’t use this term). These authors recognize this same discourse as they point to
“beliefs about school staffing that run counter to supporting new teachers” evidenced by
the reality that new teachers often have the most demanding teaching assignments and
that more experienced faculty often regard this as a "rite of passage — they went through
it at the beginning. so new teachers should bear these hardships as well” (p. 6). Susanne.
in her fourth year of teaching, recalled, “when I was in Delia’s situation of having to run
from class to class, I had a hard time” (May 9/06). This was exacerbated by the fact that
only two of her blocks in that first year were science, but she explained that she didn’t
complain because “as a starting teacher you don’t want to say no” (May 9/06).

The discourse of paying your clues as a new teacher does not always prevent new
teachers from complaining about their workload. However, it normalizes the frantic pace
of work as a new teacher and contributes to high attrition rates. Teachers, like everyone
else, want to be adequately recognized for their efforts and skill. When I asked the Open

question of how they could be better supported. several teachers mentioned workload and

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pay. Whereas teachers know they are not going into a profession in which they will get
particularly wealthy, they also work harder than they imagined. Lortie (1975) points out
that students and new teachers underestimate the difficulties involved, which is not
surprising given that students make judgments about their teachers’ performances without
the benefit of understanding what went into their goals. preparations, strategies.
reflections, etc. Susanne exemplified this as she noted. “I knew I was going into a field
that I knew I wouldn’t get rich on. But then again when I first started it was more than I r
had expected” (May 9/06). Jaclyn called the workload “unimaginable,” but she hoped

and believed that it would get easier (Mar 3/06).

 

Thus, teachers find out quickly that the job is harder than they may have thought.
The consistent desire for more time to do a betterjob, and fair recognition and
compensation for their work are common desires. Anne claimed, “definitely the more
time I took to prepare, the more I felt like I was doing a professional job, the more I was
able to respond to students’ needs, and the more I felt that the students got out of each
lesson. So ifl’d had another block Ofprep. I think it would have made a lot of
difference.” Anne complained about this workload versus the pay: “If you consider that
I’m working till 6:00 or 7:00 at night and getting back up at 6:30 in the morning to come
back to work, I’m not getting paid much. So that is frustrating” (Mar 29). Likewise, Jun
shared that it was “tough to think about all the hours and hard work you are putting in,
especially as a new teacher, and what you get on your pay check.” Like Jaclyn and Anne,
Jun independently suggested that a reduced and controlled load of new teachers would be
appropriate. She suggested that for new teachers. six out of eight blocks be considered

full time, and that they should have only three different courses to teach. because “it

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always seems like the new teachers who get stuck with more prep. like Delia being all
over the school” (June 21/06).

Thus the discourse of new teachers putting in their time or paying their dues is
both strengthened and challenged by the new teachers in this study. They expect and
accept the workload (although it comes as a bit of shock at first). Yet at the same time
they feel it should be differently. A similar conflict emerged as I looked into the kinds of

support they utilized and sought, which I explore in the next section.

Conflicting identities: Self-sufficiency, mentors, and collaboration

Britzman (1986) discusses the roots and consequences of the cultural myths
pertaining to the practice and development of teachers, one being that “teachers are self-
made” (p. 448). This myth, Operating as part of the discourses of teaching, butts up
against some of these teachers’ experiences and creates what I interpret as a conflicted
identity. On the one hand these new teachers want to be seen as self-made and self-
sufficient. On the other hand, some of them want more feedback and all of them have
experienced valuable moments of working with others, and relying on them for resources,
ideas, and advice. Thus, new teachers will draw on all support that is available, but
typically only if it is easily or readily accessible. Ifthat support is the norm, and
especially if that support is not just a one-way street, but configured as sharing (where
new teachers may understandably have less to share), new teachers may be more likely to
participate because it provides them with the resources or ideas they want, while
preserving some of their feelings of self-sufficiency, and it helps with their workload

rather than adding to it.

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The two newest teachers in this study. Anne and Delia, were the most outspoken
about wanting more observation and feedback. This may be because they are the most
used to this from their previous year in teachers’ college. Delia said, “I guess because I
was coming out of being a student teacher where people were always observing me and I
got feedback after every class ...right into this. The first time anyone at this school came
in and looked into my classroom was February ...[the new principal] came in and
watched for 15 minutes And then she left and I wanted to say, ‘so what did you think’ r
but then I thought I would look too stupid” (May 9/06). Clearly Delia is open to

feedback but she is also worried about appearing too needy or insecure.

 

Similarly. Anne surmises that most teachers don’t want to be evaluated, and so she L
is probably an anomaly since she would really like more feedback. “I would love to have
more in-class observation. I know that is probably what most teachers would hag but I
would love to have someone come in ...like, that transition was really weak because”
(May 29/06). These two teachers want feedback and want advice, but they do not see
that desire or asking for it as the norm and so they are, at times anyway, hesitant to do so.
I believe it is this conflict between what they want and believe could help them develop
their practice as teachers and what they see as accepted that results in hybrid practices
where they often work on their own, but at other times, with perhaps different
opportunities such as a more experienced staff members’ initiation, they seek out and/or
accept resources or advice.

For example, Anne said, “I have been working in kind of a vacuum as far as
finding test materials and hand-outs and stuff ’(May 4/06). Likewise Delia shared, “I do

everything myself. Like I write all the worksheets and everything like that” (May 9/06).

119

At another time, Anne talked about calling a lot on the department heads at both her
schools for help, as well as counselors and a particular teacher at her other school.
Delia’s sphere of support was much smaller. “When I got these courses I really don’t
know what I assumed. Like someone to come over and go ‘I’m part ofthe math
department and I heard you just got a math. Well come over here and I’ll give you -’
Well, it didn’t happen” (May 9/06). However, Delia recognized that “most teachers
would share everything” and mentioned how one teacher told her to “just go through my
binders.” Yet Delia told me, “but you never really do” because “there isn’t the
opportunity to do it. and also you don’t want to as a new teacher.” Delia didn’t want

the other teachers to think, “she uses all our resources.” Also, Delia didn’t like the idea Of

 

{T

“just taking things from other people. I want to feel like I have something [to
contribute]” (May 9/06). I think this is why Delia felt that only one teacher — another
chemistry teacher - really helped her. His approach to share between them, rather than to
just offer his resources. made an impression on her. “Even though he has been here 12
years or whatever and I’ve been here one, he was never like. ‘you should do it this way.’
Although he could have at any point and I would have listened” (May 9/06).

Thus, for teachers who need support the most, that support can’t just be casually
offered, but should be seen as the norm, and offered in such a way that the new teacher is
a contributing member of the community. To make feedback (not evaluation per se),
resource and idea sharing part of the discourses of new teachers, these practices need to
be institutionally supported. Anne wanted “more prep time — but not just for me, for
more senior teachers so that they could take their time to help me learn things” (June

22/06). She felt lucky that, even though the science department head at Turner had a

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class during her prep block, that it was a class with “fabulous kids” in which he could
help Anne at times, if she needed it. “And if he hadn’t had that particular class on that
block, I would have been trying to figure it out after school, or before school, which is
Often times when I would like to meet with the kids” (June 22/06). Jaclyn had similar
ideas. She too wished she “could spend more time with other teachers in the department”
but “not during lunch time, not after school, but a time set for us to get together” because
she had other commitments like yearbook and volleyball, “and you don’t have time after E-
school. And then you still have to mark and prep.” She recalled, “I’ve been here since

last school year and I don’t think we have ever had the chance to sit down as a

 

department and talk about different areas of science - how we do things in the junior
sciences” (Mar 3/06).

I should note here that my participants mostly talked about mentoring from other
teachers (particularly in subject-specific areas) and collaborative professional
development opportunities when they talked about support for their practices. This was
central to Jaelyn’s recommendations for how to better support new teachers. She thought
the best scenario would be an experienced teacher working with a new teacher so that
they could share and discuss their ideas. as well as help new teachers learn “little things”
like attendance and marking systems (June 22/06). She took advantage of the
opportunities she had, as she relied on the department for physics help and a senior
teacher upstairs for help in biology. She was still in touch with her sponsor teacher from
her student teaching and her old high school chemistry teacher for ideas as well. Jaclyn
was doing the best she could to fashion herself with mentors in an environment where

that was not institutionally supported.

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The idea of a mentor or some kind of induction program is not new, and is a trend
that has been growing. In 2005-6 in the US. 80% of new teachers participated in some
kind ofinduction program, up from 40% in 1990-91 (Russell, 2006). Programs are often
organized and funded at the district level, but about 30 states require or provide funds for
districts to offer induction programs (Britton, Senta, Paine & Huntley, 2000). The
Northwest Territories has an induction program (which is not surprising given the added
difficulty of retaining teachers in the northern Canada). Ontario began a new induction L
program in the fall of 2007 which includes mentoring for new teachers by experienced
teachers, a protocol of professional development and corresponding performance

appraisals of new teachers (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2006). This program was

 

organized in response to a report that between] 993 and 1999, there was an attrition rate
of 22-33 per cent during the first three years for all new teachers in Ontario. The most
common reason cited for leaving is lack of support to adjust to the demands of the
classroom (Ontario Ministry ofEducation. 2005).

Saunders’ district actually had a program for new teachers and had experimented
with some informal mentoring. The major problem with the new teacher program was
that new teachers saw it as adding to their workload, rather than helping them. Susanne
complained that “going to those meetings at the start was an additional something. And
they went on and on and on. It wasn’t somewhere that you wanted to be after working
all day.” Delia explained that “there was this first year teachers’ thing and they were
always having these meetings and I could never make the meetings cause I was coaching
every semester.”

As Britton et a1 (2000) point out, any assistance is helpful to new teachers, and

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virtually every induction program deals with what .laelyn calls “little things” as well as
general support such as maintaining relationships with students and handling stress.
However, as Susanne and Delia demonstrate, those kinds of programs may not be very
convenient for new teachers. In addition, given that the teachers in this study already feel
pretty accomplished at connecting with students, coupled with the high workload for new
teachers. they tend to desire support which can immediately make their lives easier, such
as subject-specific resource sharing (discussed in more detail below).

Likewise Britton et a1 (2000) claim that more effective programs include a
subject-specific focus on curriculum and instruction, which requires more time and
resources. Other scholars have reached similar conclusions, such as Little’s (1993)
advocation for subject matter collaboratives. and Darling-Hamond’s (1998) suggestion of
the potential for curriculum-centred professional development, including induction. Jun
relayed that a few years ago, when she was a first year teacher, Saunders had an informal
mentoring program which was subject-specific, as new teachers “were paired up with
other teachers in the department.” Jun concluded that the program “was a good flea but
we didn’t actually get together very much to meet and discuss things” (Apr 18/06). Jun
said her mentor was great “but we didn’t have any decided times or discussion topics or
anything. ...I never felt like I couldn’t go and talk to him about anything. ...but. you
know, you get so busy in the year” (June 21/06). Within teachers’ busy schedules, it was
hard to make the time to actually build or utilize a mentoring relationship. Reducing the
first year teaching load, as Jun suggested and as happens in New Zealand where first year
teachers are paid a full salary with an 80% teaching load (Britton et a1, 2000) would be

one avenue for providing more time. Release time for mentors would be appropriate as

123

 

well.

Of course more time, while certainly beneficial, cannot be the only institutional
support. Whereas all the teachers here would appreciate more time to prepare lessons,
more time searching the Internet or textbooks for activities is probably not the best way
to spend that time. Time to work with colleagues on curriculum and instruction, was
something that everyone wanted more of. And thus the conflict that arises between
wanting a professional community (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001) - and wanting to be
perceived as an expert or contributing (rather than just taking) member Of that community
needs to be reduced by the norm of working together on goals. activities. rationales. and
strategies.

The desire for including a subject—specific focus in terms of support or mentoring
was evidenced by the kind of support my participants sought on the job. It was also
something that everyone found useful, though it is far from the norm. What this support
looked like, was largely based on sharing resources like test questions and activities.
This makes sense given the daily pressures and time constraints of teachers in general and
new teachers in particular. New teachers understandably desire support that makes their
jobs easier.

One area where teachers in this study desired help in particular was in teaching
content in areas of science that were not in their area of specialty. For example, Jaclyn
wanted help with biology, “because I am not the master when it comes to biology. If I
could talk to other biology teachers about my biology lesson, they probably have better
ideas on howl should be approaching this topic” (Mar 3/06). Similarly, Jun talked about

not spending as much time in earth science in grade 10 and how as a group of teachers

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.1’
4

 

they tried to figure out how the one earth science specialist in the department might trade
up units, so that he could teach the earth science. It would seem to make sense for that
earth science specialist to act as an “earth science mentor” for the other teachers. and help
them. Someone else might act as a biology mentor, or chemistry mentor.

When support in terms of resources and thinking about less familiar subject
matter is given, the results can be significant. For example, Anne, a biology major, said
in her first interview. “I don’t go as in depth in astronomy as other teachers would
because, quite honestly, I can’t answer half the questions they [the students] are going to
ask me.” However, in May, Anne attended a science teacher conference and went to a
session about teaching astronomy so she would be better prepared for that section of the
course. She learned about some new things and came away with new resources. As a
result when she was teaching the astronomy unit in grade 9. l was impressed with how in
depth she did go and how much time she spent on this section.

Yet, this somewhat shallow version of subject-specific support does not address
the root of these teachers’ notions of good teaching. They all prioritized connecting with
students, which translated into the filtering of science content through a lens of potential
relevance (for citizens and consumers) and interest. Thus, discussion and resource
sharing and development would be most useful for these teachers if the focus was on
priorities, rationales and strategies for engaging students in relevant and interesting
curriculum. This is not to say that these sorts of things are never discussed but what
teachers talked about and what they produced together or shared was more Often focused
on being on the same page with activities, worksheets and assessments in following the

curriculum. As discussed in the previous chapter. these teachers were diligent about

125

 

 

following the curriculum. And as stated above, they were pressed for time. Thus it is not
surprising that rather than questioning what aspects of the curriculum best fit with their
notions of good teaching or how to best fashion their priorities to fit with the curriculum,
these teachers mostly shared ready-made resources or sometimes developed resources
together. sharing the work.

By far the best example ofa collaborative norm was exemplified by Susanne. Jun,
and another colleague (who was also in her first five years of teaching but did not l—
participate in this study because she taught science in a language other than English).
This relationship was clearly built around subject matter as these three teachers all taught

science 8 and 9. Susanne talked about this group helping each other out “in terms of

 

worksheets, handouts, or activities” (May 9). She really valued this relationship.
commenting, “the three of us, we make such a great team, we are so collaborative, and
where one of us is weak, the other is strong (June 6/06). Likewise, Jun said, “I do talk to
other teachers in the department. I feel lucky for the people that I work with ...because I
think we are all very willing to share ideas and offer help” (Apr 18/06). I believe because
this relationship was valuable to her, Jun wished for more time together, and to widen
that norm to the department: “I think more time to get together would be good. ..We say
we should have a binder and all the activities you do in science 8 ...so we always have
these ideas but we never do it” (Apr 18/06).

Even though Jun and Susanne’s group is not a model ofa professional learning
community, it is certainly a better model than working alone searching for subject-
specific resources. Even if the focus of the group is to share tests and activities. that act

of sharing opens the door (both in the moment and in setting a new norm) for discussion

126

of why certain test questions are useful in understanding how students make sense of
ideas, or what policies should be in place, or how to better teach a unit so that the content
is more relevant and interesting for students and their future lives as citizens. Thus, a
norm of working collaboratively does not automatically mean meaningful collaboration
in terms of questioning practice in light of priorities, but it provides better avenues and

opportunities for doing so.

Concluding remarks: foci for discussion, debate and collaboration
The discourses of new teachers in terms of paying your dues and being self-

sufficient both work against supporting the continued learning and development of new

 

teachers’ practices. The former normalizes a workload which virtually prohibits thinking
about practice and latter conflicts with teachers ideas of how to improve their practice.
However. these discourses are contested. Reduced workloads for new teachers and
institutional support, largely in terms of time. for programs such as mentoring are ideas
gaining momentum and being tried. Whereas the existence of such programs is growing

rapidly, the quality is uneven.

We can learn from the conflicting facets ofnew teachers’ identities, to be self—
suflieient and wanting help. Induction programs need to connect to the needs Of new
teachers, by providing subject-specific (as well as generic) support in terms of feedback
and ample opportunities to share resources and discuss ideas. However, collaborative
opportunities are not automatically more than a forum in which to share resources.
Norms of working together need to be refashioned around bigger questions of teaching

science to students that are aligned with reform efforts, such as how to best help students

127

 

build knowledge, skills, and habits Of mind necessary for personal enrichment as well as
the abilities to engage in science-technology-society debates and be productive members
of global society (NRC, 1996; BC. Ministry of Education, 2006). New teachers (and
experienced ones) would benefit from ideas and discussions framed around science such
as what content is important and why; why particular strategies are promising for
teaching certain concepts; which assessments reveal student understanding and why; or
how to incorporate more meaningful student discussion. Ideally subject-specific support
could be an avenue for connecting teaching priorities and content and contributing to new
discourses of teaching, which pick apart myths and build norms of collaboration and

discussion among teachers.

 

Like Britzman (2003) suggests, such collaboration might entail contemplating
what theories or discourses we operate within, how they have been historically
constituted, if they are beneficial or harmful and for whom, and how we might think and
act differently. Likewise, Dewey (1929/ 1988) advocated a skepticism that draws from
the “practical reasoning” of Aristotle. Such reasoning comprised the study of the
structure of argument and the functions of those arguments, which could only be studied
on a case-by-case basis, i.e. including the context. Since Dewey, many others have
concluded that it is essential for teachers to recognize and examine their own theories
about teaching, Ieaming, knowledge, and roles of education. For example, Cochran-
Smith (2000) argues that teachers should “frame these questions [of knowledge, learning,
and outcomes] and teachers’ work as fundamentally interpretive, political, and theoretical

as well as strategic, practical, and local” (p. 18). This kind of support for new teachers

128

might not only assist them to be successful and survive in current conditions, but to have
the tools to change and improve those conditions as well (Feiman-Nemser. 2001).
Finally, my participants suggest that a central feature of a community designed to
support new teachers must have the norm, expectation and opportunity for new teachers
to be contributing members, as well as have access to accepted avenues to seek help and
resources. New teachers would benefit from participating in and witnessing the struggles
of more experienced teachers. Rather than being given a good worksheet or some nice
test questions, such resources must be accompanied by the work behind decisions about
curriculum. New teachers (and more experienced ones) would benefit from the time and

expectation to discuss their, priorities, purposes and practices.

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Chapter 7 Recommendations for (science) teaching

As Luft (2007) points out, even though beginning teachers’ practices and thinking
are conceptualized. constructed. and perhaps crystallized in the first years of teaching, the
importance ofthis period is often overlooked”. Luft argues that among the kinds of
research needed are studies that investigate the development of new teachers’ knowledge,
beliefs, thinking, learning and decision making and studies that situate new science in
teachers in the educational system and explore the interaction of new science teachers
and their contexts such as policies (e.g. new government tests or curriculum, or induction

programs) or student populations. The purpose of such studies should be to inform

 

II». "'|

policy decisions around new teachers such as fashioning induction programs. Thus, it is
my intent that what I have learned about the thinking and practices of these five new
science teachers in their different contexts can help to inform policies to better support
them. Whereas Luft and I are both writing about new science teachers, what she suggests
as well as much of the experiences, practices. struggles, commitments, concerns,
expectations. and policies that are explored in this study are common to teachers in
general. Thus, here I will recap what I believe we can learn both about supporting new

teachers in general and science teachers in particular.

Recognizing and understanding the priorities of new teachers in context

Part of the reason that I feel it is appropriate to write about new teachers in general

 

6 Part ofthe reason for the dearth of studies of beginning teachers is that new teachers are exhausted and
conspicuously lack time and are often advised not to take on participation in research because ofthis. In
my approach to this study, as I stated at the beginning. was to position myselfas some assistance to balance
the time I needed from my participants.

130

is that my participants most closely associated good science teaching with forming
relationships with students. They filtered science content through a lens of relevance
(mostly to everyday life) and interest for students. Thus they filtered science content
through a commitment to serving students, which makes sense since I argue that the
primary motivations for teaching had more to do with working with students and helping
people than the disciplines of science. Passion for the subject matter, while certainly
present. is not primary

This is at odds with much ofthe reform efforts in science education which focus
on how thinking about science content frames pedagogy, or on pedagogical content
knowledge (see Barnett, J. & Hodson. D.. 2001; Loughran.J., Mulhall. P. & Berry, A..
2004; Van Driel, J.H., De Jong, O., & VerIOOp, N., 2002; Zeidler, D., 2002) There has
been less attention paid to how science teachers develop their practices in response tO
their views of students — what they need to know about them. how to learn this, how and
what students should learn, and why — and the relationships they try to form with
students. This study suggests that connecting strategies for relationship—building with
students and strategies for teaching the sciences is an avenue that must be better explored
and utilized.

In addition, the newest teachers in this study relied more on their personalities and
passions to connect with students. This is in part a response to the cultural discourses of
teaching that circulate in popular media and myth. The more experienced teachers had
had time to develop priorities in their practices that they felt served students such as
having a variety of activities and assignments, clear expectations and multiple

assessments. In other words the practices of being organized and above all fair, helped

I31

 

the more experienced teachers develop relationships with students. The pedagogical
strategies for building relationships with students also depended on the student
population, with more emphasis on opportunities to get good marks in the suburban
context compared to Opportunities to pass a course in the urban context. In both cases an
emphasis on being fair or being flexible comes out of defining student success as success
in school, which is in line with the larger discourses of school, curriculum and testing, but
conflicts somewhat with ideas of good teaching revolving around relevance, interest and

curiosity. I will discuss this in more detail below.

Recognizing and understanding discourses and contexts of teaching

The framework ofdiscourses focuses on how thinking and actions are shaped by.
contribute to and challenge taken-for-granted ways of thinking, communicating, acting,
values and tools, embedded in social institutions. This focus helps me to ask what and
how taken-for-granted language, beliefs, practices, and institutions affect the way some
teachers envision the work of teaching science and their teaching practices.

In chapter five I discussed what I called the discourses of curriculum and of
testing and accountability (derived from theories and knowledge dominant in the larger
sociopolitical milieu, particularly economics in a nee-liberal political era). We might
think of the discourse of curriculum as educators taking for granted that the prescribed
curriculum is sacrosanct and defining student success, at least in part, by marks and
passing tests. It is understandable that despite feeling that the curriculum was too packed.
and decrying the culture of academic achievement, that in service to their students, the

teachers in this study were committed to engaging their students in all areas of the

132

 

curriculumand to helping them pass courses, complete assignments and do well on tests.
Opinions about the new grade 10 provincial exam were based on service or disservice to
students and thus mostly dependent on context and student population. Despite a
majority of complaints about the new exam, I did not find evidence that it had a lot of
impact on the way teachers taught, except for extenuating circumstances such as taking
over for another teacher or working with a unique population of students, both of which
had occurred in the urban setting.

In chapter six I examined the discourses of new teachers and the kinds of support 5
they sought and utilized. Given the frantic pace of teaching, especially in the first years.

the forms of support I witnessed and heard about mostly consisted of sharing ready-made

 

resources or sometimes developing resources together, sharing the work. This act of
sharing, even if it is just focused on exchanging tests and activities, opens the door (both
in the moment and in setting a new norm) for deeper discussion such as what aspects of
the curriculum best fit with their notions of good teaching, such as how to better teach a
unit so that the content is more relevant and interesting for students and their future lives
as citizens; or why certain test questions are useful in understanding how students make
sense of ideas, or why particular strategies are promising for teaching certain concepts.
Thus, a norm of working together does not automatically produce meaningful
collaboration in terms of questioning practice in light of priorities. but it could provide an
avenue for doing so. Below I will share some ideas of how to better connect priorities of

serving students and the needs of new teachers with science teaching.

I33

Possibilities for connecting the needs of new teachers and their students with science

The contribution of this study lies in the in depth understanding of what makes
these teachers tick, and how their convictions and practices interact (are constrained,
enabled, challenged. bolstered. etc) with larger discourses. Serving and forming
relationships with students is at the heart of their practices and identities as teachers.
Thus, the challenge for supporting them as science teachers is to provide avenues to
connect this core of their teaching practice to the teaching of science.

This means more than defining student success as getting good marks in a science
course. It means helping new teachers define student success in ways that fit with their
priorities for science teaching and not just teaching. These teachers have ideas of good
teaching in relevance, interest, curiosity and the processes of science that fits well with
reform documents and efforts in science teaching. The motivation behind these ideas,
however, is serving students, and less so in accurately representing the disciplines of
science. Thus, if support for their practices is framed as helping them serve students in
ways they feel are important, it is more likely to be generative. Engaging new teachers in
meaningful thought and discussion that has a real impact on practice has to speak to their
deepest priorities and convictions, as well as institutionally supporting the time and

resources for them to do so.
A greater focus on Science Technology Society Environment (S TSE)

Above, I argue that the discourses of curriculum and testing, encourage teachers

tO define student success in terms Of doing well on assessments, particularly tests and

134

exams. However, if they were to define student success in ways that fit with their ideas
of what students needed to learn or understand, success might mean being able to
evaluate claims, understand processes such as how our bodies function or how simple
machines make work easier, or consider ramifications of current practices in
biotechnology. Focusing too narrowly on curricular material that is testable (in the case
of exams, on standardized multiple-choice, matching, and true-false questions),
especially within an over-packed curriculum, reduces the likelihood that students will
engage in many aspects of science highlighted by these teachers as relevant (and
interesting) and in science education reforms, particularly the history and nature of
science, and the complex relationships between science, technology, and society (NRC,
1996; BC. Ministry of Ed, 2006).

Such aspects of science are singled out by these teachers because they are
particularly relevant in today’s world. 1 and many other scholars concur. Some of the
most significant issues citizens are and will be faced with involve science such as climate
change, loss of habitat and biodiversity, genetically modified organism (GMO’s), or
antibiotic resistance. It is probably more important for any individual to have the skills
and knowledge to critique scientific findings (e. g. claims of the effects of nutra-ceuticals)
and the technology developed out of science with regards to purposes and ramifications
(e.g. that seeds from Monsanto—engineered plants are infertile and what that means for
farmers’ and Monsanto’s productivity and profits). than to balance a chemical equation.

Likewise, other scholars (Roth, 2002; Pedretti & Hodson. 1995; May, 1992)
advocate what Roth (2002) calls “citizen science” (p. 4) where citizens need to know

aspects of science in order to act, such as how to critique science practices and policies

135

 

 

based on and in spite of scientific findings. This vision of what we might call science
literacy has a prominent place within science education policy documents in Canada,
such as B.C.’s curriculum guide. For example, B.C.’s science curriculum lists four over-
riding goals for science 8 to 10, the first of which is “students will develop an
understanding of the nature of science and technology, of the relationships between
science and technology, and of the social and environmental contexts Of science and
technology.” Following goals for developing scientific skills and knowledge, the fourth
goal suggests “students will be encouraged to develop attitudes that support the
responsible acquisition and application of scientific and technological knowledge to the
mutual benefit of self, society, and the environment” (B.C. Ministry of Education, 2006).
Similarly, the National Science Education Standards (NSES) in the US, from which
most state science curriculum documents draw, states one of its aims is to “guide the
science education system toward its goal of a scientifically literate citizenry in productive
and socially responsible ways” (NRC, 1995, p. H, italics added).

Thus a greater emphasis on the processes of science within society not only better
meets the goals of the BC. curriculum, it also better matches teachers’ ideas of good
teaching. A greater focus on STSE then seems a promising avenue to engage new
teachers in developing practices that fit with who they are as teachers and with reform
efforts in science education. Of course I should not paint all reform efforts in science
education with the same brush. What I highlight out of reform is in line with Carter
(2008) who notes that “the main purpose of science education should be to help students
understand and make critical judgments about science in ways that can enhance their

engagement to work for a more socially just. equitable, and ecologically sustainable

I36

 

world” (p. 628) in her essay re-conceptualizing science education in an age of
globalization. Similarly. Cunningham and Helms ( 1998) argue for and provide examples
of using sociological understandings of science to fashion pedagogical approaches that
mimic practices of real scientists — specifically networking. peer review and skepticism -—
to engender more authentic and inclusive teaching practices. Such examples of priorities
and strategies seem to be rich places for debate and experimentation that would be

welcomed by my participants. provided they had the support to do so. I.

Forms of institutional support

So what form should this greater focus on STSE take and how can it be

 

supported? Virtually every report and scholarly publication that addresses improvement
of instruction and Ieaming in schools, points to the teacher as the key. Research
reviewed in such publications share certain elements with regards to productive avenues
for the support and development of teachers’ practices. I summarize these as elements as
collaborative, subject-specific support that places practice in the larger context of the
purposes of schools, and builds norms of experimentation, mutual aid and leaves room
for informed dissent (Little, J .W., 1993). As I report in chapter six, the teachers in this
study concur that they desire more time to prepare for teaching and suggest that the time
be productively spent in collaborative, mutually- supporting discussions of curriculum
and sharing ofideas and resources. Reducing the teaching load for first year teachers and
possibly even for all teachers (and certainly those who act as mentors) seems a necessary
step. It is worth noting that in Ontario, a secondary teacher is full time teaching six

courses (where eight is a full-time student load) plus 15 blocks of on-call time. In BC.

137

full time is teaching seven courses out of eight. Thus, simply matching B.C. definition of
full-time to Ontario’s would help all teachers in BC, particularly the new ones. In
addition, it has been recognized time and again that faults in education systems stem from
failing to support teachers (part of that systemic failure are discourses of new teachers
that normalize surviving difficult work by largely by themselves), and that professional
development and induction programs which include these elements would be a wise use
of improvement funds (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 1998).

In her discussion of conditions in which teachers can teach, Darling-Hammond
(1998) notes the importance of structures that enable sustained relationships between

students and teachers. Such structures are atypical of high schools in both Canada and

 

ifi

the US, where teachers often teach between 150 and 200 students at one time. Yet, even
under these conditions, the participants in my study underscore the importance of
relationships with students and are largely successful of forming relationships with
students that are productive. What those relationships looked like were somewhat
different and dependent on teachers’ past experiences, convictions, and notions of their
roles in order to meet the needs of the students in their particular contexts, such as finding
a balance between coddling and providing flexible opportunities for ‘at risk’ youth, or
emphasizing being fair within a population of students who generally cared greatly about

their marks and performance.

Concluding thoughts

We must applaud these teachers for their commitment to students and the fact that

they do not see students as a constraint to their practices. We need to recognize and

138

capitalize on the resources they bring and find ways to better match their commitments
with science and science teaching. I believe this can be accomplished with a greater
focus on citizen science and new research into how to build new norms in science
teaching with this at the center. This will entail recognizing the discourses we Operate
within and the constraints and resources those provide and encourage. And it will require
institutional support. Both are possible if we are open to questioning why we do what we
do and we have the opportunities to build the tools with which to change our practices

and priorities.

 

I39

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