Publication 2

Teachers’ Collaborative Reflections about School-Based Science Innovation.

Publication 2 of this compendium reports the results of the research Project EUDIST (European Development of Innovative Science Teaching), funded by the European Commission, DG Education and Culture, within the Socrates Comenius Programme 2.1. Ref: 106278-CP-1-2002-1-DE-COMENIUS-C21, from 2002-2005.

EUDIST was a project of research and development that emphasises the importance of school-based teacher professional development grounded on collaboration, reflection and feedback. In each country, pilot schools were purposefully selected, referred to as school-based collaboratives, according to pre-defined criteria for effective teacher education and curriculum practice in science education. In addition to the documentation of each of these cases of school-based development, within EUDIST participating teachers from different schools and national coordinators meet in a national Curriculum Workshop to exchange their experiences and deliberate on examples of good practice in school-based teacher education, curriculum design and school development. The CW scenario allows teachers to play an active role in a school-based discourse about experiences, purposes and ends of their work, implying a conception of democracy that emphasises discursive decision making of teachers and schools (Lang 2007). The CW’s of EUDIST were conducted in several steps during the first months of 2004. Out of these opportunities of collaborative reflection, deliberation, exchange and discussion, participating teachers generated practical outcomes for feedback. A national case study was elaborated by each coordinator to describe, analyse and interpret the whole experience, documenting teachers’

participation in different types of school-based innovation and in the CW series.

The Publication 2 included in this compendium is the published version of the Spanish case study within EUDIST. In the Spanish EUDIST project, teachers' reflections about the process of implementing innovations in science education at school have been supported and documented. Initial case-studies were conducted in four different schools around Barcelona where innovations in science teaching were

implemented. The originators and supporters of each innovation (educational researchers, teacher leaders or teachers themselves) responded to semi-structured interviews about: rationale, aims and expectations of the innovation; how the innovation was implemented and what kind of teacher preparation/support was offered. The deliberations and discussions of a representation of teachers per participating school during the CW’s were video-recorded to analyse teachers’ discourse. Other documents, such as teachers’ narratives, the outcome documents from the CW, and a post-CW feedback questionnaire were used develop the national case study. Out of this study, teachers’ perceptions of school-base innovation in Spain were found.

Regarding the research problem of this thesis, Publication 2 analyses briefly the particular school-based innovation scenarios of each of the participating schools to discuss to what extend they are effective professional development scenarios. In addition, Publications 2 analyses in bigger detail to what extend the particular design of the Spanish CW, adapted to this context, is in itself an interesting professional development scenario related to school-based innovation. In these settings, teachers’

participate in identity formation, reflect collaboratively and evidence empowerment.

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Chapter 3: Teachers' collaborative reflections about school-based science innovation in Spain.

Digna Couso and Roser Pintó

Introduction to EUDIST in Spain: teachers involved in innovations constructing their own voice

School-based reform demands from teachers that they originate, design, lead, participate actively, reflect on and be critical of school reform. This scenario challenges the professionalism of teachers in new ways. Knowledge about the school-based reform process is necessary for these teachers to guide future practice, but also for educational policy-making and professional development design that support this bottom-up approach. This knowledge is embedded in the practice of the “innovative” teachers who are currently struggling with school-based reform.

To help disembody this knowledge, the Spanish EUDIST project involves teachers and teacher leaders from schools where school-based reform is taking place and engages them in a collaborative reflective dialogue about school-based innovation: the Curriculum Workshop. The outcome is a collaboratively constructed “innovative” teachers’ voice focusing on the questions of what motivates school-based reform, what changes during the process and how this process can be effectively supported.

Apart from being a knowledge-construction scenario, the Curriculum Workshop in Spain has also a professional development dimension aiming to promote participating teachers’ networking and collaboration, reflection, deliberation and empowerment. Four metaphors for the teacher in school-based reform directed this approach: the teacher as a knowledgeable agent; as a social agent in a community of practice; as a reflective agent and as an impelling-reform agent.

The notion of teachers and schools at the core of curriculum reform, described in the literature with metaphors such as teachers as curriculum makers (Calgren 1999) and schools as knowledge creating institutions (Hargreaves 1999), is central to the EUDIST rationale. It is central to EUDIST also the intention to address both processes from a democratic approach, supporting the creation of a school culture of equality, collaboration and deliberation among different educational stakeholders. EUDIST in Spain stems from this conception of school-based reform and looks for successful examples of curriculum innovation initiatives in Spanish schools that align with its rationale and approach.

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The aim of the EUDIST project in Spain is supporting teachers to construct collaboratively their reflective voice about the process of bottom-up curriculum innovation. The construction of the voice of these "innovative" teachers in Spain is the construction of the perceptions of teachers who struggle with school-based curriculum innovation in a permissive, but not particularly encouraging, scenario. Our interest in their voice is twofold. From the educational research viewpoint, the "innovative"¹ teachers' voice captures the perceptions of experienced agents of bottom-up reform, which can offer new insights to guide future action. From a teacher education perspective, the process of construction of their voice in a scenario where networking and collaborative reflection is promoted becomes a professional development experience for the participating teachers.

The Curriculum Workshop (CW) approach, introduced previously in this book, is used in the EUDIST Spanish project to support this construction process.

Within the framework of the CW in Spain, teachers discuss the facilitating and constraining factors involved in putting into practice bottom-up innovations in their schools; they reflect about their experience and how they face the challenge; they discuss what they consider would support these initiatives and propose recommendations for future actions.

In the next paragraphs, the process of construction of the "innovative" teachers' voice (regarding school-based science innovation) that took place in the EUDIST project in Spain is described. To begin with, the Spanish educational context and the characteristics of the Spanish participating schools and innovations are introduced.

The Spanish Context in EUDIST: heaven or hell for school-based innovation initiatives?

There are many differences among educational systems across Europe, which implies that there are different scenarios for school-based reform.

Characterising these scenarios as they affect school-based curriculum innovation implies more than characterising their curriculum. Due to the fact that school-based innovation is bottom-up in approach and aims to have a school dimension, it poses a great challenge both to teachers and schools (as institutions). Therefore, all aspects of school organisation and teacher professionalism have an impact in school-based reform. Aspects such as teachers' education (the usual pre and in-service training that teachers receive);

teacher career prospects (the usual path teachers take in their careers, how long they stay in teaching); teachers' autonomy (the degree of freedom and

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responsibility teachers have for the different curricular decisions to be made);

school micro-politics (the power relationships within the school hierarchical structure), etc. set up very different scenarios among different schools across different countries. Some of these scenarios are more favourable to school-based curriculum innovation than others.

Characterizing the Spanish school in the wider way mentioned before is, in this sense, crucial for understanding the context in which school-based reform takes place in Spain. In Table 1 a short description of the most important aspects of the Spanish educational system has been attempted.

The educational scenario described in Table 1 for the Spanish school is that of a school which suffers from a contradictory situation regarding school-based innovation. Under the umbrella of a broad official syllabus, curriculum definition is expected to occur at the school level, allowing schools and teachers enough freedom and autonomy in the innovation of their teaching.

However, the lack of an effective school structure (some capacity of decision-making for teacher leaders) and of a culture of collaboration, in particular in the secondary school with subject-specific teacher profiles, makes it difficult for most of this curriculum innovation to have real "school dimension". In this sense, the general profile of curriculum development in Spain is narrow in scope and very individualistic. In other words: a lot of innovation is done but too often occurs inside the particular classroom or among little groups of teachers, having less impact than desirable in the global teaching and learning of the students of a particular school.

Curriculum decision-making

Curriculum structured in three levels of concreteness:

The first level is a broad syllabus established by the regional/national educational authorities. It includes a list of contents for a 2-year period of schooling for every subject and the list of learning outcomes² to be achieved.

The second level is asked to be prepared by schools, and it is a deeper curriculum definition based on these broad official guidelines.

This work is generally done by teachers in the corresponding subject departments.

The deepest level of concreteness of the curriculum is the actual teaching unit, done generally at the teachers' level. Despite some innovative teachers who select, design and/or prepare most of their teaching materials, the majority of teachers rely mainly on textbooks for this purpose.

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curricula

In primary school Science it is taught in an integrated way in the subject "Knowledge of the natural environment".

In lower and upper compulsory secondary school, science is taught in an apparently integrated way, including biological, geological, physical and chemical contents in the subject "Natural Sciences". However, due to the fact that secondary school teachers are specialised either in biology/geology or physics/chemistry, the implementation of the official curriculum of Natural Sciences is generally structured so that biological and geological content is taught one year and physical/chemical content in the next one.

General pedagogy

The Spanish school was subjected to a very deep organisational and pedagogical educational reform in the early nineties with the LOGSE³ law. This reform changed fundamentally the organisation⁴ and rationale of the secondary schooling system, which moved from being post-compulsory to compulsory until 16 years old.

This change in structure implied a comprehensive philosophy in compulsory secondary education which set enormous challenges for teachers, in particular regarding the role of content, assessment, classroom management, etc.(See Black and Atkin, 1996, for an account on this national reform).

Teacher pre-and in-service education

Primary school teachers are education graduates of the Education Faculty, after three years of general education study (no specialisation in science⁵).

Secondary school teachers have a background of four years of study in a particular discipline (physics, biology, history, language, etc.). After their graduation, they need pedagogical and didactical training to be eligible as teachers.

There is a permanent offer of short-term in-service training and support for specific pedagogical and didactical topics. For particular school projects, there is also the possibility of having advisory support.

Teachers' careers

Most teachers in the state school system are civil servants after passing challenging official examinations both in content matter, specific didactics and general pedagogy.

There is a very low drop-out rate from the teaching profession.

There is a lack of promotional possibilities within the school (See school-micro politics). Instead, to progress, teaching staff combine teaching with other jobs outside the school as teacher advisors, within the Education Department, etc.

3 Details of LOGSE can be found at:

http://www.boe.es/g/es/bases_datos/doc.php?coleccion=iberlex&id=1990/24172

4 Details of the actual structure of the Spanish School System can be found in the URL:

www.mec.es/educa/sistema-educativo/logse/siseduc.html

5 Only primary school teachers of Music, Physical Education, Special Education and Foreign Language Education are educated as subject specialist in the Spanish present University System.

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politics

Schools in Spain have a similar structure to schools in many other countries, including headteacher, heads of department, heads of Key Stages, tutors, etc. However these positions, in particular for state schools, do not necessarily correspond to positions of real power for decision making at the school level. They are considered to be mainly administrative positions that imply different responsibilities and tasks, but have generally the same status and power as the rest of the teaching staff. In many schools these positions rotate among the teachers. Sometimes the higher professionalism of some teachers (for instance, holding a teaching professorship, being a teacher trainer, doing action research, etc.) is used for selecting heads of department and other roles in the school hierarchy. However, due to the fact that state teachers are not selected and contracted at the school level but at the state level, in Spanish schools, teachers work in an almost flat hierarchical system.

Table 1: Summary of main aspects of the Spanish educational system.

This situation of the Spanish educational system has implications for educational action. For instance, it is difficult to enrol a school in an educational project without enrolling the teachers of the school individually.

This and other differences between the Spanish schools and most international educational systems can sometimes hinder making a cross-comparison. Just as an example, all the literature about the role of the principal or educational district administration in school settings has almost no meaning in the Spanish school context⁶.

The establishment of partner schools in the Spanish context: selection of examples of school-based innovations

Despite not facilitating school-based reform, the presented scenario of the Spanish school allows for it. In this sense, some initiatives of school-based curriculum reform that accord with the EUDIST view can be found. These are schools were teachers' struggle to achieve collaborative and deliberative involvement, in general aiming for long-term and wide-scope curriculum change. The number of these initiatives is scarce, but what can be learnt from them is very interesting in order to understand how they can be promoted and supported in the Spanish context.

In selecting the sample adequate for the objectives of EUDIST in Spain, it was necessary to contact schools and teachers which were implementing⁷

6 We are referring here to the state school system.

7 There are different meanings associated with the idea of “implementation” of curriculum reform, some of them related with the vision of the teacher as a technician that puts in practice what others have decided and designed. Following Fullan (2001), “Implementation consists of the process of

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innovations in their teaching of science in the direction of school-based reform.

At the same time, we wanted our purposive sample to be representative of the Spanish "innovative" school, that is, to include the different types of organisation of school-based innovation that can be found in the Spanish context.

All of the initiatives selected had in common a bottom-up approach, being either originated and/or run by teacher leaders⁸ or teachers with the support of external advisors. For those originators and/or supporters of the innovation⁹, the initiatives in which they were participating were in close contact with educational research and teacher education, being inspired or supported by advisory or teacher professional development opportunities. They also measured the possible interest of their initiative in terms of teachers´

involvement, educational quality of the initiatives and expectations of long-term change, these two latter in reference to science education literature and students' results.

The schools selected were required also to represent the diverse reality of innovative schools in our context. The range of schools was selected according to the following criteria: who originates and who supports the innovation process; what is the scope of the innovation (what sort of change is expected) and what is the scale of the innovation (for how long and how many teachers are involved). Following these criteria, the selection process looked for innovations with different sources of origin and support; different depths of the innovation initiative and diverse impact.

Selected school-based innovations range from top-down (School A) to bottom-up (Schools B, C and D) in origin and from currently being run by teachers (Schools A, B and C) to having advisory support (School D). Innovation in

putting into practice an idea, program, set of activities and structures new to the people attempting or expecting to change. The change might be externally imposed or voluntarily sought; explicitly defined in detail in advance or develop an adapted incrementally through use; designed to be used uniformly or deliberatively planned so that users can make modifications according to their perceptions of the needs of the situation.” (p.65) In this sense, implementation is for us a neutral work regarding the style of the reform, and here is used in the context of bottom up innovation, thus implying teachers putting in practice what they have decided and designed.

8 There is an extensive amount of research into the topic of teacher leadership from which several different definitions emerge. In this study, we do not stick to one particular definition due to the fact that we understand leadership to have a different meaning in different school contexts (Wasley, 1991). However, some notions of teacher leadership that emerge from the Wasley study of teacher leaders’ perception of their own role are meaningful for us: teacher leaders as having the ability “to share information and to influence others in matters related to curriculum and instruction”; “to go beyond the classroom to be current in research, and to be teaching advocates”; “to move forward toward a better system rather than simply supporting the existing system.”

9 Data taken from personal interviews of teacher leaders and teacher educators involved in the SBC’s. The originators responded to semi-structured interviews about the rationale, aims and expectations of the innovation; how the innovation was implemented and what kind of teacher preparation/support was offered.

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Schools C and D aimed at "superficial" changes in the sense of involving small modifications of current practice, whereas in Schools A and B innovations aimed at "revolutionary" changes in the teaching of science and the role of the teacher. Regarding impact, innovations with short-term and/or narrow-involvement (Schools B and C), to long-term and/or wide narrow-involvement in such changes (Schools A and D), were selected.

Profiles of the participating schools and the Science Innovations.

Initial case-studies were conducted in four different schools around Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). The school profiles are briefly described in Table 2. The descriptions of the innovations that were taking place in each of the schools are

Initial case-studies were conducted in four different schools around Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). The school profiles are briefly described in Table 2. The descriptions of the innovations that were taking place in each of the schools are

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