Epistemological Reflection on Science Teachers' Speaking in Calssrooms

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25590269
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Education on school subjects and activities
• Research Institution: Kochi University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: KAWASAKI Ken 高知工科大学, 工学部, 教授 (00116451)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 理科教師教育 / 認識論 / メタ言語 / 小中連携

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The present investigation is aimed at helping teachers to conduct epistemological reflection on their speaking in science classrooms. They are confronted with the language setting where they teach science in Japanese entailing a different worldview from the scientific worldview. This is sources of conceptual confusion about teachers’ scientific concepts. Unfortunately, very few science educators have not paid attention to this setting until now.
In order to help science educators to realize the conceptual confusion, their voice recordings of thirty science classes were compiled during these two years. A preliminary analysis reveals that teachers tend not to distinguish between particularity and universality although this distinction is essential for the scientific way of thinking. Thus, it is highly probable that teachers form scientific concepts not on the basis of the scientific worldview. Further analysis of the voice recordings will clarify how the Japanese worldview intervenes.

Free Research Field

理科教育学