Dr. Nam-Hwa Kang Abstracts

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The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ and students’ perceptions of goals and learning outcomes when they experienced a reform-based curriculum. Qualitative data from interviews and observations were collected and analyzed. There was a general agreement between the curriculum and the teacher in learning goals for students. The congruence might be due to the teacher’s knowledge of reform principles, which must have enabled her to choose to teach the curriculum. The students’ perceptions of the curricular goals and learning outcomes were limited, most of the students perceived only science content as their learning goals. The students’ limited view was attributed to their phenomenon-based perceptions and/or ingrained traditional view of school science as content learning. The disparity between the curriculum goals and students’ perceptions could be due to the students’ lack of opportunity to experience reform curriculum and/or lack of experience in reflective thinking about their own learning. We also found a discrepancy between the teacher’s instructional goals and her evaluation of student learning outcomes. The discrepancy implied difficulties of actualizing the curriculum in implementation. Implications included developing a curriculum that was readily adaptable to normal teaching contexts but still could achieve its vision, providing teachers with opportunities to learn to properly adjust curriculum to their teaching contexts, and providing students with opportunities to learn about a reformed view of learning.

The purpose of this study was to understand high school science teachers’ conceptions of student learning by examining their evaluation of student learning outcomes as a result of problem-based inquiry curriculum, the types of evidence that they attend to, and relevance of school contexts. In traditional high schools and alternative programs, 17 high school science teachers (12 female, 5 male) taught a 10 to 15 week-long problem-based inquiry science curriculum and participated in this study. The teachers fairly agreed on learning outcomes in five areas including increased awareness and knowledge of the topics, inquiry and teamwork capacity, and increased active participation in learning. These findings indicated that the teachers promoted a view of leanring as transformation of participation such as students’ development as informed consumers of science or scientific inquirer. However, some distinctive patterns in their relative emphases on certain learning outcomes were also found. The teachers from alternative programs highlighted capabilities to work in teams and active participation in science learning whereas the teachers from traditional programs highlighted scientific inquiry and deeper understanding of content. Further research on the sources of teachers’ view of learning and the role of inquiry-based curriculum in developing teachers’ perspective on learning and teaching will shed light on ways to promote a new perspectives on learning in teacher education.