Skills for diagnosing and solving research report

Assignment 2 Professional Profile (Investigating students’ understanding of a science concept)         50%

The aim of this assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to develop research skills for diagnosing and solving problems in the classroom. The assignment will also help you to prepare for your Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) at the end of your teacher training program (Master of Teaching). The suggested time for this assignment is 30 hours. This does not include the time spent at school because this is part of your practicum requirements. Your report should be about 2000 words.

1. Select a science concept that you are teaching or have taught during the practicum. You may use the topic of the lesson you chose for Assignment 1.
2. Teach a lesson that is focused on your selected science concept to a Science class in Years 7 to 10.
3. During and/or after the lesson, gather data on your students’ alternative concepts of the science concept you are teaching. (For this assignment, alternative concepts include ideas that are scientifically unacceptable, incomplete concepts, and naïve concepts). You may use any of the following data-collection procedures:
   • Conduct a class discussion of the student’s views of the science concept and note the different views that surface.
   • Ask students to write what they know of the concept or produce a drawing to represent the concept. You can then analyse the written/graphic products.
   • Analyse students’ answers to questions that you pose on the concept.
   • Ask students to construct a mind map (concept map) to depict their views of the concept.
   • Any other method of data collection.
4. Consult relevant academic literature to discover what researchers have reported on similar alternative conceptions and what suggestions they have offered on helping learners to progress towards more appropriate conceptions.
5. Plan a follow-up lesson to help your students to progress towards acceptable scientific concepts/perspectives. Write the lesson plan, which you will submit with this assignment. The lesson plan should not exceed 800 words.
6. Write a report on your research. Include in your report a justification of the decisions you made in the lesson plan. Your paper will contain the following:
   • An opening paragraph stating the concept for your lesson, the relevant syllabus outcome(s), a summary statement of your student’s views on the concept, and a brief description of your approach in the lesson plan [your taught lesson] to address the students’ main problem or alternative conception.
   • A description of your method of data collection and data analysis.
   • The results of your data collection
   • A brief discussion of your results. Refer to the literature to back your interpretation of your results by citing what other researchers have discovered or said about learners’ views on similar or related science concepts.
   • A description and justification of your teaching approach and the teaching/learning activities in the planned lesson [follow-up lesson]. Cite references to support the reasons you give to justify your choice of teaching approach and other decisions you have made in the lesson plan.