A sustainable teacher training: approaching more science content and inquiry

How can teachers change the way they teach so students get access to more features of inquiry based science teaching and learning? Four teacher educators and researchers worked with five teachers from two schools, to develop tools to analyze teaching sequences. The teachers’ lessons were video-taped on two occasions at least with several weeks in between. The films were analyzed and various didactic issues discussed in seminars with the researchers and the teachers. After the first lesson feedback, the teachers were given the challenge to make a teaching sequence paying regard to his/her reflections on our seminar and our analysis of the first lesson. We report a case study in which a teacher, Roy, develops his teaching in several respects such as dialogic communicative approaches, writing, and science content. We compare and analyze two of his lessons: the first on Electricity and the other on the Water Cycle. The teacher Roy is able to create interesting lessons in which argumentation and debate are included. With the second lesson Roy showed awareness of the significance of the science content in the dialogue, and he gave a greater subject-matter depth compared to the first lesson, as well as a wider variety of scientific ways including experimental work. The science content was, however, superficial and vague in both lessons. The difficulty of meeting the students in dialogue occurs when the teacher’s own knowledge is insufficient. The teacher’s awareness of the importance of dialogue in the classroom combined with a greater depth of subject focus, lead to learning opportunities for students that are of benefit for both language and science skills