TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF "TEACHING IN THE MAKING:" EXPLAINING INSTRUCTIONAL DECISION MAKING BY ANALYZING A GEOLOGY INSTRUCTOR'S USE OF METAPHORS

There is a need to enhance science and geoscience literacy. Effective instruction allows students opportunity to build their own models, test them, make their own arguments, and discern reliability of the claims and arguments of others, to experience “concepts in the making.” Attempts at designing and importing such instruction have shown limited implementation fidelity, even with attached professional development. Up to present, attempts to understand the problem of implementation sought to focus on the context of the teacher (beliefs, knowledges, and motivations) to explain teacher practice, and results indicate great complexity. Maintaining a similar focus, this investigation analyzes a geology instructor’s use of metaphor, when talking about teaching, learning, and knowledge, to understand and explain the factors involved in his instructional decision making.

Eric (pseudonym), a geology professor, implemented a curricular intervention in two successive introductory geology classes. However, Eric selected and amended only particular facets of the intervention. The research utilizes classroom observations and multiple audio recorded meetings with Eric to understand why he chose and amended certain parts of the intervention and not others. Results show that Eric described his teaching in terms of two metaphors: the puzzle metaphor and the fieldtrip metaphor. The metaphors paralleled each other in terms how Eric saw his role, his students’ role and the role and the nature of knowledge, and therefore influenced what and how he taught. This study suggests that curriculum designers need to look past “ready-made teaching” and take instructor context into consideration to iteratively design curricular interventions (or teaching in the making) and analyzing for the use of metaphor may be an effective way to discern that context.