Barbara S. Spector

Abstract: The current national priority for systemic approaches to the reform of science and mathematics education has led to unprecedented interest in research on the efficacy of science and mathematics teacher preparation programs. In response to this priority, a focus on collaborative approaches to educational reform and to research on educational reform resulted in a national collaborative research consortium of insitutions of higher education. The consortium was formed to investigate the following question about secondary science teacher education: What are the perceptions, beliefs, and classroom performances of beginning secondary teachers as related to their philosophies of teaching and their content pedagogical skills? The research design and instrumentation yielded detailed descriptions that elicited knowledge and beliefs held by beginning teachers about science, the nature of teaching and learning, and their philosophy of teaching. An analysis of video portfolios of beginning teachers provided classroom-based evidence of their performance in both subject matter and pedagogical dimensions of teaching. Among the findings from this 3-year exploratory study were that teachers graduated from their teacher preparation programs with a range of knowledge and beliefs about: how teachers should interact with subject content and processes, what teachers should be doing in the classroom, what students should be doing in the classroom, philosophies of teaching, and how they perceived themselves as classroom teachers. Beginning teachers described their practices as very student-centered. Observations of these teaching practices contrasted starkly with teacher beliefs: While teachers professed student-centered beliefs, they behaved in teacher-centered ways. Undertaking intensive, collaborative studies such as the one described in this article, is the beginning of efforts through which the science and mathematics education communities can strive to address the needs of students, teachers, teacher educators, and other stakeholders working to establish a common vision for excellent instruction and systemic, long-lasting reform. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 930–954, 1999

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the teaching and learning opportunities in a unit used to introduce aspects of the nature of science to preservice teachers within a Science/Technology/Society (STS) course.

TL;DR: In this article, a symbolic interaction study was designed to identify and discover key components about caring science teachers, and a key pattern that emerged regarding science teachers who are perceived to be caring is that they build a variety of relationships.

TL;DR: This article explored middle school students' perceptions of what factors facilitated their learning of science in the World of Water (WOW) program at the University of South Florida and found that the most important factors for science education were: (a) experiencing the situations about which they were learning; (b) having live presentations by professional experts; (c) doing hands-on activities; (d) being active learners; (e) using inductive reasoning to generate new knowledge; (f) exploring transdisciplinary approaches to problem solving; (h) interacting with peers and adults; (i

TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative emergent design study of two different Web-enhanced science methods courses for preservice elementary teachers in which an experiential learning strategy, labeled "using yourself as a learning laboratory,” was implemented.