Becoming a secondary science teacher

1
Becoming a secondary science teacher

• Sarah Smart
• IPSE, London Metropolitan University

2
Becoming a Teacher
Gaining knowledge

• Learning and practising skills

Relevance
Reflecting
Emotion
Relationships
Identity
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Identity

• Negotiated, shifting, ambiguous (Sachs 1999)
• Something used, an argument (Maclure, 1997)
• The negotiation of ways of being (Wenger 1998)

4
Early teacher training

• For some research participants, becoming a
  teacher becoming a teacher seems to mean
  actualising an already identified potential,
  whilst other trainees appear to perceive a
  necessity, at least intitially, to undergo a
  transformation of self in the endeavour to
  become, or change into, a teacher Hobson and
  Malderez 2005, p

5
Relevance

• Clear practical utility in familiar or imagined
  teaching contexts

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Identity and relevance

• Create teaching identity
• Feel accepted as a teacher
• Focus on performance
• Anxiety over classroom management and workload
• Attention to pupil learning

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Methods

• Interviews with science teachers
• 12 in 2nd yr of teaching (after PGCE)
• 14 in 1st yr of teaching (after PGCE)

• 12 during/at the end of the PGCE
• 2 during GTP

• 5 in first and second year of Teach First

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Interviewees

• Mary

• Mohammed

• Penny

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Science teacher identity Mary

• a nice teacher in a scabby school

I dont really enjoy teaching physics and given
the opportunity would not do it. But I dont
think thats ever going to happen in any school
these days unless you get off to a nice grammar,
which I dont have any plans to do.
10
Science teacher identity Mohammed

• I thought Well I need to give something back
  to the community I knew I was going to go
  I was going to come to an inner city school

We dont have the option of taking the kids out
somewhere unfortunately so that is the only
frustrating bit for both the kids and the teacher
I guess. I cant imagine being taught like that
myself having already had the experience on going
out to field trips and stuff.
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Science teacher identity Penny

• there was a massive focus on inner city schools
  and dealing with really troubled kids which
  wasnt really what I wanted to do. I wanted to
  teach quite high level biology

Im happy to teach biology its more what I
love but I do worry that it will stop me from
getting a job in the future.
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Identity and relevance Mary

• It comes out of a Kings funded theory that, and
  also that providing these logical patterns in
  science would actually improve attainment across
  a school because youre giving kids skills to
  figure things out for themselves and so it is
  based very much on theory

I found HEI very like teachers are
professionals, lets teach the theory and all of
the stuff behind it rather than encouraging you
with real life teaching situations
13
Identity and relevance Mohammed

• Well I wanted to follow my favourite teacher
  Classroom management was so disciplined and
  everyone knew exactly what to expect and she was
  so fair and funny which helped to pass the time
  and I wanted to do that but add all the bits that
  HEI taught me, all the techniques etc.

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Identity and relevance

• Does this help me to be the kind of teacher I
  want to be?

Can I see how this applies or might apply to the
classroom or other school situation?
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Discussion

• What was your experience of becoming a teacher?
  Should discussion of teacher identity play any
  part in formal/informal ITT?

• What works in creating relevance?

• Is the school identity vs subject identity
  a problem?

• Does the range of science teaching arrangements
  pose a problem for ITT How might this be
  addressed?