TY - BOOK

T1 - What can the teacher education learn from preservice science teachers’ experience of participating in Copenhagen Honours College?

AU - Christensen, Grethe Beiskjær

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This PhD project explores what teacher education learn from the experiences of preservice science teachers enrolled in the honors programme Copenhagen Honours College (CHC). CHC is described as a talent program with the aim to improve science teaching in schools and the participating teacher students are expected to become ‘beacons for science teaching’. It is an add-on programme to the regular teacher education, it adds 30 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) to the last two years of the four year teacher education. The student experience is explored by using a constructivist Grounded Theory Method with research on transfer of learning as the point of departure. The project has followed participants from the first two cohorts of CHC. As the Grounded Theory Method is abductive, the focus of the project has followed the data. The exploration of the student experience provide valuable insights to how a programme such as CHC can affect student engagement and career plans of preservice teachers but the study also suggests limited influence from CHC regarding what the new teachers transfer from the teacher education to the teaching profession. The first cohort had an initial experience of being part of an engaging community of peers who had a shared value of getting the most out of their education. The community proved to be fragile however and appeared to lose its importance due to a combination of factors such as the complexity of student life and the experience of a confusing structure in the program. The insights from this part of the project are useful in the debate about how to improve student engagement in general and at the teacher education in particular as it provides both suggestions for means to foster engagement through community but also reasons why such a community might lose its importance if not nurtured. Another prevalent theme in the data was the students’ thoughts for the future and the choices they made during education in relation to their possible future selves. The choice to sign up to CHC was by some respondents considered as a means to expand their opportunities upon graduation and only one respondent considered teaching a lifelong career. This part of the project is useful in the debate about teacher shortage, as it provides insights to how teacher students reflect on their future and how they think life as a teacher is going to be – and how long they think they will stay in the profession. A dominating theme was a perceived lack of opportunity for professional development. The last part of the project revolves around the experience of entering the profession as science teachers who have been framed as ‘beacons for science teaching’ during teacher education. The new teachers were all hopeful in terms of implementing new ideas in science teaching but the conditions they faced differed. The research provides insights to how alignment between conditions in schools and teacher education can foster transfer of learning between education and profession and thus be a means to change the way science is taught. This part of the study find such an alignment between the teachers who qualified from the Advanced Science Teacher Education (ASTE) and a recent change in exam at lower second level. The ASTE teachers further experienced being supported by their management when suggesting changes to the current science teaching practice. A teacher with a different profile faced misalignment, as the school assigned a class in a science subject they were not educated to teach. The findings further indicate that a community of practice, which had formed during the teacher education, proved valuable for the ASTE teachers in supporting their beliefs about the best way to teach science.

AB - This PhD project explores what teacher education learn from the experiences of preservice science teachers enrolled in the honors programme Copenhagen Honours College (CHC). CHC is described as a talent program with the aim to improve science teaching in schools and the participating teacher students are expected to become ‘beacons for science teaching’. It is an add-on programme to the regular teacher education, it adds 30 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) to the last two years of the four year teacher education. The student experience is explored by using a constructivist Grounded Theory Method with research on transfer of learning as the point of departure. The project has followed participants from the first two cohorts of CHC. As the Grounded Theory Method is abductive, the focus of the project has followed the data. The exploration of the student experience provide valuable insights to how a programme such as CHC can affect student engagement and career plans of preservice teachers but the study also suggests limited influence from CHC regarding what the new teachers transfer from the teacher education to the teaching profession. The first cohort had an initial experience of being part of an engaging community of peers who had a shared value of getting the most out of their education. The community proved to be fragile however and appeared to lose its importance due to a combination of factors such as the complexity of student life and the experience of a confusing structure in the program. The insights from this part of the project are useful in the debate about how to improve student engagement in general and at the teacher education in particular as it provides both suggestions for means to foster engagement through community but also reasons why such a community might lose its importance if not nurtured. Another prevalent theme in the data was the students’ thoughts for the future and the choices they made during education in relation to their possible future selves. The choice to sign up to CHC was by some respondents considered as a means to expand their opportunities upon graduation and only one respondent considered teaching a lifelong career. This part of the project is useful in the debate about teacher shortage, as it provides insights to how teacher students reflect on their future and how they think life as a teacher is going to be – and how long they think they will stay in the profession. A dominating theme was a perceived lack of opportunity for professional development. The last part of the project revolves around the experience of entering the profession as science teachers who have been framed as ‘beacons for science teaching’ during teacher education. The new teachers were all hopeful in terms of implementing new ideas in science teaching but the conditions they faced differed. The research provides insights to how alignment between conditions in schools and teacher education can foster transfer of learning between education and profession and thus be a means to change the way science is taught. This part of the study find such an alignment between the teachers who qualified from the Advanced Science Teacher Education (ASTE) and a recent change in exam at lower second level. The ASTE teachers further experienced being supported by their management when suggesting changes to the current science teaching practice. A teacher with a different profile faced misalignment, as the school assigned a class in a science subject they were not educated to teach. The findings further indicate that a community of practice, which had formed during the teacher education, proved valuable for the ASTE teachers in supporting their beliefs about the best way to teach science.

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - What can the teacher education learn from preservice science teachers’ experience of participating in Copenhagen Honours College?

PB - Department of Science Education, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen

ER -