Beginning teachers: Beliefs and classroom actions

The current national priority for systemic approaches to the reform of scie nce and mathematics education has led to unprecedented interest in research on the efficacy of science and mathematics teacher preparation programs. I n response to this priority, a focus on collaborative approaches to educati onal reform and to research on educational reform resulted in a national co llaborative research consortium of insitutions of higher education. The con sortium was formed to investigate the following question about secondary sc ience teacher education: What are the perceptions, beliefs, and classroom p erformances of beginning secondary teachers as related to their philosophie s of teaching and their content pedagogical skills? The research design and instrumentation yielded detailed descriptions that elicited knowledge and beliefs held by beginning teachers about science, the nature of teaching an d learning, and their philosophy of teaching. An analysis of video portfoli os of beginning teachers provided classroom-based evidence of their perform ance in both subject matter and pedagogical dimensions of teaching. Among t he findings from this 3-year exploratory study were that teachers graduated from their teacher preparation programs with a range of knowledge and beli efs about: how teachers should interact with subject content and processes, what teachers should be doing in the classroom. what students should be do ing in the classroom, philosophies of teaching, and how they perceived them selves as classroom teachers. Beginning teachers described their practices as very student-centered, Observations of these teaching practices contrast ed starkly with teacher beliefs: While teachers professed student-centered beliefs, they behaved in teacher-centered ways. Undertaking intensive, coll aborative studies such as the one described in this article, is the beginni ng of efforts through which the science and mathematics education communiti es can strive to address the needs of students, teachers, teacher educators , and other stakeholders working to establish a common vision for excellent instruction and systemic, long-lasting reform. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.