Dorothy Simpson taught mathematics for 15 years before she started teaching physics at Mercer Island High School near Seattle. Now retired, she is serving as a volunteer at a local elementary school with special interest in providing support for the science units used there. In this chapter, she notes that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for classroom teachers to do the kind of research that university people do. Teachers do not have enough time or resources for an in-depth research project. There is no one to hold a video camera; there is no time to transcribe conversations with students. What Dorothy proposes is that classroom teachers think of research as intentional reflection on their own work. Intentional reflection means reflection during time set aside for that purpose when teachers can make notes or write in a journal. One outcome of her intentional reflections was an article published in the November 1997 issue of The Science Teacher, reprinted here, about the collaborative conversations that she facilitated in her high school physics classroom.
Details
Type Book ChapterPub Date 1/1/2007Stock # PB214X_9