The conclusions drawn by the researcher seem both reasonable and important. There is a large corpus of literature that addresses the importance of teacher beliefs and instructional practice, and the researches have included many references to earlier work and seminal research. One particular strength the study—as discussed in the conclusions section—is that teachers sometimes hold conflicted views about instructional and educational approaches even when they are strong proponents of educational reform in their field.The grounded theory methodology was well executed and the fact that an additional research question emerged from the study shows how the qualitative research approach facilitated important interactions among the data sources, the participants, and the researchers. The researches have done a thorough job of relating the data—for instance, by providing quotes from the participants' responses—to the theories that emerged during the analysis of the data.
¶ … Fidelity Between Science Teachers' Beliefs and Instructional Practice
Mueller, J.C. And Zeidler, D.L. (1998). A case study of teacher beliefs in contemporary science education goals and classroom practices. [Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching at the 71st conference in San Diego, California, on April 19-22, 1998].
The research uses a case study methodology and, as such, a sampling frame is not particularly relevant. That said, the selection of subjects for the case study did follow an empirical path. First, the researchers were interested in learning about the perceptions of science teachers who were open to educational reform issues. This led them to the Coalition of Essential Schools and the member school Souhegan High School, an institution that describes itself as a learning community focused on adapting their instructional practice to the needs of their students. Second, the science teachers at the high school responded to a survey that helped the researchers to pinpoint the strength of conviction to the declared science goals that they held as practitioners. Third, based on the survey outcomes, the researchers approached three science teachers and gained agreement that they would participate in the study, grant multiple in-depth interviews, and permit multiple observations of their classroom teaching.
B. Methodology & Instrumentation
Interviews were conducted with the study participants to explore several research inquiries. One important purpose of the interviews was to conduct member checks with the interviewees about the accuracy of the observations in the classrooms . A focus of the interviews was probing the beliefs that the study participants held with respect to science education goals and the relationship between their actual instruction and their beliefs about science education. In other words, the researchers were interested in the degree of fidelity between beliefs and praxis. Additional important goals pursued through the interviews were to ensure participants understood the assessment objectives and to verify categorical definitions in order the maintain links to the research questions. The researchers employed the use of a guide for scoring classroom instruction in the development of their semi-structured interviews. The study included focused classroom observations, in-depth interviews, ongoing categorical analysis of field notes, reflexive journals -- a form of memoing -- and video tapes of the science teachers engaged in instruction.
C. Data Analysis
The researchers thoroughly addressed trustworthiness (a construct used in qualitative research instead of reliability and validity, which are appropriate for positivist inquiry) in their treatment of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Data was collected over sufficient periods of time to assure redundancy in the narrative accounts. Triangulation was built into the methodology, and member check procedures were used to verify the researchers' interpretations of interview content. An audit trail in the form of a reflexive journal was used.
D. Analysis Adequacy
Overall, the description of the qualitative research methods is thorough and sufficiently descriptive for anyone knowledgeable in grounded theory or naturalistic methods of inquiry. Although a reflexive journal is a generally accepted convention in qualitative research, it does not take the place of an audit that is conducted by researchers who are independent of the study, and whose task it is to demonstrate the linkages between the interpretation of the data sets and the conclusions drawn by the researchers. In this regard, the analysis is not as strong as it could have been, particularly given the small number of participant accounts from which a review sample would have been selected.
E. Results
The science teachers who participated in the study showed strong evidence that they value the goals of contemporary science education. The researchers were able to construct a solid list of the beliefs held by the science teachers that align with science instruction best practices and learning objectives. Further, with regard to the sub-question two, the science teacher participants appeared to prefer goals with that align with the current thrust in science education over older curricular and instructional goals.
F. Results Adequacy
The analysis of the strength of conviction measure was conducted by calculating weighted means. Also, the researchers examined the relation between prior goals and current goals by comparing the weighted means of the paired goals. The data were not clear in instances where the science teachers participating in the study indicated that they held beliefs in the past goals. The research did not appear to achieve clarity in all of the goal pair analyses on the index used to measure association on strength of conviction.
G. Conclusions
The researchers concluded that their case study of science teachers in Souhegan High School demonstrated that the teachers' beliefs about modern science instruction were routinely embedded in their praxis -- that is, a strong degree of alignment and fidelity was observed. Several themes emerged from the study, two of which are related to instruction in general and have less to do with science education explicitly. That is, the science teachers who participated in the study struggle with the scope of the science curriculum -- generally electing to teach fewer topics in depth -- and they disagree with the heterogeneous approach to science instruction that places students of all abilities and experience in the same classroom.
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