• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.432-446
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• 2007

The purpose of the study is to explore the science teaching orientations of secondary science teachers, and how they influence the planning and execution of reform-based lessons. Professional development workshop for constructivist teaching consisted of three different phases; five lectures, small group discussion, and preparing lesson plans. Four teachers who participated also executed their lesson plans in their own classroom. All workshops were videotape recorded. Classroom observations and interviews were conducted and recorded. Instructional materials were also collected for each science class. All data recorded were transcribed and analyzed. Based on the data collected from multiple sources, we identified each teacher's teaching orientations, and through this lens, we also tried to understand their classroom practices. We expected teacher-participants to implement constructivist science teaching. However, the differences among teachers in the course of actual planning and implementing activities for constructivist science was wider than we expected and even some teachers were unsuccessful. Teaching orientations can act as a filter for teachers when they decide whether to accept and apply new knowledge about teaching and learning to actual lessons or not. Even if a teacher plans a guided-inquiry lesson, her/his didactic teaching orientation could be revealed in actual classroom, and lead her/his class to other direction which is quite different from her/his original intention. Although the teachers participated in the same workshops in our study, they planned and executed differently and their own teaching orientations contribute substantially to their practice. Understanding the role of science teaching orientations could be an important step in addressing issues of diverse difficulties in supporting reform efforts in science.