Chemistry teachers' narratives |
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The Nuclear
Submarine that Went Down, the Journey of the Chocolate
Bar to the Garbage Plant and the Boiler Deposits
that Looked Like a Sandwich
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| The above is the title and the subtitle of the licentiate thesis that I presented in May 2003. After four years of halftime research I could summarise the work in this way. Looking for how teachers in the upper secondary level create meaning in the abstract subject chemistry I had found that one way they do this is by using narratives or stories. In my thesis I give examples of such narratives and investigate the theoretical background to why narratives are such a useful tool. | |
The research journey took place in a research group as I have described under the heading The Research School. From the beginning the group consisted of ten teachers but later other researchers were included in the group. Gradually the "journeying" became more personal, as we choose our different research questions and the belonging research areas. For my own part I was lucky to receive some very generous grants for travelling, which meant that my research journey became a journey in reality. The year 2000 I participated in a conference on Chemical Education in Budapest, the year 2001 I went for a three weeks tour in Australia and attended a conference i Seattle, 2002 I attended the conference on Chemical Education again, this time in Beijing, and finally 2003 I attended the termination of the Research School in Budapest and a very exiting conference about history and philosophy in Science Education in Winnipeg, Canada. In between I have attended more local events as for example Research Days at the Institute od Education in Stockholm and a conference on didactics in Gävle. My research has developed parallel to the journeys. From the beginning it was difficult to grasp a special direction, everything was interesting and as soon as I started to read something new my project was changed. The research question and the focus of the project has changed. From the wish to measure the effect of changed experiments I looked into the significance of experiments in chemistry. Then I tried different ways of studying the meeting in the classroom, first and foremost by studying how applied chemistry gets into school chemistry. After the transcription of more than 200 pages of interviews, I ended up wanting to study how chemistry teachers work with meaning-making in the classroom by using narratives or stories, why they choose such a tool and how it is used in the shaping of the chemistry subject. Four years of halftime research was terminated in May 2003 by a licentiate seminar where the thesis was presented. My colleagues finished in about the same time and the formal termination of everything was a weekend tour to Budapest where we had the possibility to, individually and in group, evaluate our experiences of the venture. If you want to know more about the Budapest tour or something else you can use the links below. |
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| Below are links to other pages of the website: | |
| The
Research School Conference in Budapest 2000 Tour to Australia 2001 Conference in Seattle 2001 Conference in Beijing, China 2002 Conference in Gävle 2002 Licentiate seminar 2003 Conference in Budapest 2003 Conference in Winnipeg 2003 The future |
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