Middle school teaching

This qualitative case study examined how middle school science teachers
conducted collaborative inquiry and reflection about students’ conceptual understanding,
and how individual teachers in the middle school science group acted and made
reflections in response to their collaborative inquiry. It also examined external influences
that affected the teachers’ ability to engage in collaborative inquiry. Observational,
written, and interview data were collected from observations of teachers’ face-to-face
meetings and reflections, individual interviews, a focus group interview, and online
reflections. The results of this study revealed that collaborative inquiry is a form of
professional development that includes answering curricular questions through
observation, communication, action, and reflection. This approach was developed and
implemented by middle school science teachers. The premise of an inquiry is based on a
need with students. Middle school science teachers came to consensus about actions to affect students’ conceptual understanding, took action as stated, and shared their
reflections of the actions taken with consideration to current and upcoming school
activities. Activities involved teachers brainstorming and sharing with one another,
talking about how the variables were merged into their curriculum, and how they
impacted students’ conceptual understanding. Teachers valued talking with one another
about science content and pedagogy, but did find the inquiry portion of the approach to
require more development. The greatest challenge to conducting collaborative inquiry
and reflection was embedding teacher inquiry within a prescribed inquiry that was
already being conducted by the Sundown School District. Collaborative inquiry should be
structured so that it meets the needs of teachers in order to attend to the needs of students.
A conducive atmosphere for collaborative inquiry and reflection is one in which
administrators make the process mandatory and facilitate the process by removing an
existing inquiry.

The purpose of this study was to determine if middle school student scientific understanding could be predicted by the variables: standardized 5th grade score in science, standardized 5th grade score in mathematics, standardized 5th grade score in reading, student attitude towards science, socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. The areas of the comprehensive literature review were trends in science learning and teaching, research in the K-12 science education arena, what factors have influenced K-12 science education, scientific understanding, what research has been done on K-12 scientific understanding, and what factors have influenced science understanding in the K-12 arenas. Based on the results of the literature review, the researcher of this study examined a sample of middle school 8th grade students. An Attitude Towards Science Survey (SATS) Simpson & Oliver (1990) and a Survey of Scientific Understandings (Klapper, DeLucia, & Trent, 1993) were administered to these 116 middle school 8th grade students drawn from a total population of 1109 who attend this middle school in a typical county in Florida during the 2010- 2011 school year. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to test each sub-hypothesis and to provide a model that attempted to predict student scientific understanding. Seven null sub-hypotheses were formed to determine if there were significant relationships between student scientific understanding and the abovementioned variables. The results of the tests of the seven null sub-hypotheses showed that the sub-hypothesis that involved socioeconomic status was rejected, which indicated that the socioeconomic status of a family does influence the level of scientific understanding of a student.