Praxeologies and Institutional Interactions in the Advanced Science Teacher Education

PhD-defense by Klaus Rasmussen

The Department of Science Education announces the public defense of the Phd dissertation "Praxeologies and Institutional Interactions in the Advanced Science Teacher Education" by Klaus Rasmussen. The supervisor was professor Carl Winsløw, and the project was funded by the Lundbeck Foundation.

The defense takes place in the Auditorium of Geological Museum (access through main entrance, go to first floor). The defense is followed by a reception hosted by the department. Please contact PhD secretary Nadja Nordmaj if you have any questions regarding the defense.

Assessment committee: Associate Professor Robert Evans (Chair, IND, KU), Professor Marianna Bosch (U. Ramon Llull, Spain), Docent Niklas Gericke (Karlstad U., Sweden).

Abstract

The present thesis consists of six papers that address three important aspects in mathematics and science teacher education: ‘Integrating two or more teaching disciplines’, ‘learning from practice’ and ‘interaction between institutions’. These aspects are studied in combination as they have unfolded in the context of developing and implementing a Danish education programme called the Advanced Science Teacher Education (ASTE), that aim to educate lower secondary school teachers,
who among other things are to excel at interdisciplinarity.
The essence of integrated teaching is elusive and existing research have mainly attempted to pin down its nature by attempting to categorise and compare different forms of integration. This study takes another approach by using the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic to trace the comprehensive web of influences, which are at the core of actual disciplinary interaction. This approach makes it possible to explain why and how certain notions are able to bridge the disciplinary divides. The papers in the thesis deal with curriculum development, and with concrete ideas as to how teacher educators could carry out teaching conductive to learning disciplines in conjunction. In particular the inquiry process of Study and Research Paths (SRP) is experimented as a promising design to bring about disciplinary interaction. SRP is internationally a very recent design, entirely new to Danish teacher education, and the thesis add to the knowledge of its merits.
‘Learning from practice’ is mainly dealt with in the setting of lesson study, a format which is gaining importance in the Danish educational community. Through lesson study in ASTE it is shown how a number of usual didactic tasks in mathematics teaching at Danish lower secondary schools is practiced and theorized. This is realised by analysing the reflection session inherent to lesson study, where the particular institutional setup in ASTE provided an unmatched venue for the elaboration of didactic knowledge. The gain in didactic knowledge is both particular and general, and to the benefit of pre-service teachers, mentoring teachers, teacher educators and university researchers.
The study of interacting institutions in ASTE is inseparable from the other aspects, as focus is on the processes which shape the nature of integrated curriculum and courses. Preferences held at each institution, and presumptions held of other institutions, played a significant but often unrecognized role in curriculum development and inspired actual elements of teaching. To handle the complexity of disciplinary and institutional interaction, the thesis proposes an extension to the model of didactic co-determination, and describes a possible reference model which fit interdisciplinary issues.

PhD-thesis: Praxeologies and Institutional Interactions in the Advanced Science Teacher Education (pdf)