Preservice Science Teachers’ Opportunities for Learning Through Reflection When Planning a Microteaching Unit

Figures & data

Table 1. Opportunities for learning originating during moments of reflection.

Example	Moment of reflection	Opportunity for learning
1	Change in perspective concerning whether to decide on content or purposes as the first step in planning	Planning may start with deciding purposes.
2	Change in perspective concerning how to account for students’ age when deciding content and purposes during planning	Planning should be based on students’ age.
3	Change in perspective concerning how to situate a particular unit in a larger teaching context	What is planned for has consequences for subsequent planning and also needs to take into account earlier planning.
4	Change in perspective concerning how to transform methods from other courses and other subjects to fit new purposes	Teaching methods can be adopted and modified to suit new purposes.
5	Change in perspective concerning the need to consider classroom interactions in planning	Planning gives rise to new problems that also need to be solved.
6	Change in perspective concerning the choice of topic and content to become successful as an university student	How to be strategic when working with parallel assessments in a campus course

Note. Examples 1–5 constitute actual opportunities for learning about planning, whereas Example 6 constitutes a missed opportunity, involving instead potential learning concerning how to act efficiently as a university student.

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1.	Mia:	But … well, as we said, children are interested in animals. We can take, I mean, think about food … meat consumption.
2.	Björn:	Mm.
3.	Mia:	So this … uhm … like this: “Is it right to” … hah hah, how to say it? “Chickens in few square meters?” Or like this, what do you call it … “chickens in such small factories?”
4.	Björn:	Okay, so we’re into animals now?
5.	Anne:	But I believe that no one, this is not a question that you can reply to by saying “yes.”
6.	Mia:	No but, you can say … or if it’s cheaper [interrupted].
7.	Björn:	Maybe we need to look at this another way, maybe we got a bad angle. Maybe we should begin with thinking about what we … we might alter which aims we want to use also from the curriculum?
8.	Mia:	Mm.
9.	Björn:	Maybe we don’t need to make use of this “Students need to reach a decision...” [a previously selected purpose]?
10.	Mia:	No, we might take something else.
11.	Björn:	We can, maybe we might twist and turn things a little and then maybe we find something else. It might be easier to start with the syllabus first?
12.	Mia:	Yes.
13.	Björn:	And then, thereafter select … content? I don’t know … uhm [starts to read the curriculum].
14.	Lena:	You mean to select content after that?
15.	Björn:	Yes, select … later.

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16.	Elin:	No … but look into lektion.se [a Swedish website: lesson.se] then, check if we can … get some inspiration.
17.	Freja:	Then I’ll look into “biology” … [reads the syllabus on her laptop] “sustainable development,” “healthy meat,” “organic meat,” “take care of your arena,” and “about the rights of public access.”
18.	Elin:	So it [the microteaching task] has to include “man, nature and society”?
19.	Freja:	Yes.
20.	Elin:	In interaction for sustainable development [reads from the guidelines], so...
21.	Freja:	Yes.
22.	Andy:	I was thinking about the emission of carbon dioxide, we’re working with that right now … the analysis of life cycles. Maybe we can use that one here too?
23.	Elin:	Something like that or?
24.	Andy:	Because that’s still “man, nature and society.”
25.	Elin:	Mm, that’s also true.
26.	Freja:	Someone else should look into this too.
27.	Albin:	I can look. [Gets the laptop from Freja.]
28.	Elin:	What are you thinking about now? [Asked to Freja]
29.	Freja:	I was thinking about checking if … uhm … by looking at the syllabus, we might get some inspiration. What’s this? Is this the … task or? [Looks at the guidelines.]
30.	Andy:	It’s this conversation that we’re doing right now.
31.	Freja:	Or should we start from this one [points at the written guidelines]? Just decide … what students do we want to meet?
32.	Andy:	The thing is, we have to know about our activity to be able to make use of this one.
33.	Freja:	Or we just decide. This might be a class of 25 pupils, half of whom have mothers tongues other than Swedish and … I don’t know.
34.	Elin:	I … uhm … are we going to describe the class?
35.	Freja:	Yes, we have to describe … their age … But anyway, I want, I think it’s easier to base what to do on this one [points to the written guidelines] and just make a decision, okay? Because right now it’s more like “What are we going to start with?” We have so much, there’s so much. The theme is so big.
36.	Andy:	Yeah, it really is!
37.	Freja:	If we start with deciding: Who are the students? Are they Grade 4 or Grade 6? Have they got any knowledge of this or don’t they have a clue?
38.	Andy:	But the thing is, we have to find out the activity first to be able to [decide which students] …
39.	Freja:	But … or we decide activity based on who the students are because that’s what it looks like in reality. It’s not as if one finds out an activity as well as selects a class of students.
40.	Andy:	Nope.
41.	Freja:	But we can always alter this if we should find a superior activity—“No this might actually better suit a Grade 6 class!”
42.	Andy:	Yes.
43.	Freja:	Then we have to alter.
44.	Elin:	Mm, that makes things much easier for us.
45.	Freja:	Exactly. What do you think, shall we … Grade 4, then we really can start with something quite simple. But with a Grade 6 we have to go more in depth?

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46.	Mika:	Uhm, problem solving …
47.	Lea:	Yes.
48.	Mika:	“How can we” … uhm … “How can we help each other here at school, not dispose so much? Maybe we can” … We might do like this … “We who think it’s stressful to eat—we make sure that we wait for everyone to finish their meal, before we rush out.”
49.	Bengt:	Yes.
50.	Mika:	Or just “That was 20” … just saying something … “Yes. but we have to reduce it to 15.” So there will be no competition, more like a joint goal.
51.	Lea:	You can investigate what happens to the food waste disposal in school. If it turns into biogas or if it becomes compost or if it will be burnt or somehow … [Pause for a second]
52.	Anders:	Is … this, what we’re doing right now, going to be part of a larger context dealing with our waste?
53.	Mika:	The content will increase, adding meat … all sort of stuff will enter into this.
54.	Lea:	Waste technology systems and things like that. It has to be decided what [interrupted].
55.	Mika:	But I think that these two tasks will answer well for 20 minutes.
56.	Anders:	Yes, yes, absolutely! I was thinking more of the big picture.
57.	Bengt:	There’s more than enough …
58.	Lea:	And then continue with waste disposal as a next step.
59.	Anders:	Yes exactly, and prior preknowledge and [interrupted].
60.	Mika:	For example, that they have worked with life-cycle analyses we might say. That they have made reports about different … well someone with concern of plastic, with meat or … fish or something like that. And now they have come to an end, which also was an aim, where they have the knowledge about how life cycles work and so … that they’re able to reach a decision. And they’re doing this … concerning how to handle food and … well, how to find solutions thus they have knowledge about all kinds of cycles and … well. Now they’re reaching decisions on how to reduce … or what we’re going to do with the waste.
61.	Lea:	Yes, and that they already … they already know that there’s a problem with … that we’re disposing so much food. With ecological footprints and [interrupted].

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62.	Sean:	It could be someone who writes a letter like to your friend.
63.	Vicki:	Yes.
64.	Lars:	Mm, well … if we have 20 minutes for this, then it feels as we might want an activity or … not a game but something you know to …
65.	Vicki:	Not only stand there for 20 minutes, talking …
66.	Lars:	And then like this: “Write a letter,” leaving them in …
67.	Sean:	But like … uhm … I mean sort of but not leaving the students on their own but, you know, something more complex … or something more fun. But the question is what it might be?
68.	Vicki:	Damn, this is harder than I thought!
69.	Lars:	I’m thinking of our Swedish [i.e., a previous course in home language], do you remember that circle model, you wrote a letter together, you wrote by yourself … You know, something emerging gradually …
70.	Sean:	Mm.
71.	Lars:	Do you understand [turns to Sean], do you remember?
72.	Vicki:	What Swedish?
73.	Sean:	Circle … letter, circle writing … nah.
74.	Lars:	No, it’s just like you build it on this model. Getting to know how to write an argumentative text you should first look at one. Then you wrote together. And after that you wrote by yourself … Genre wheel—that’s what it was!
75.	Vicki:	Don’t even remember that.
76.	Sean:	Can that be done based on environmental issues?
77.	Lars:	Yes, you know, with the same idea so to say.
78.	Sean:	Mm. Imagine that you’re to hand over stories to each other and the story might start like this: “Yes, but we are having a situation where … a little polar bear on the ice.”
79.	Lars:	Yes, that you start in something like this … and then … It can also be just as we did now and then we give them a situation like: “But now this is happening, how does the story continue?” And then after that the next one gets to write. Or simply: “You have your family living here and there and they work with this but then this happens and what are you going to do about …?” We can, it might be a role play if we split them into different, and they get to represent different like … It can be the endpoint of a SSI [SocioScientific Issues]-case: “You are the factory that produces, you are the consumers who buys, you are...” In that way, we get different perspectives of it.

Table

80.	Lars:	Do we want any special structure to the value clarification questions? Because if everyone says “yes,” well then? … So that we somehow get a discussion going.
81.	Sean:	Yes.
82.	Lars:	Maybe one method could be saying like this: “Well, all of you in this group, say something” … or something like that …
83.	Sean:	“Say something!”
84.	Lars:	“Say something!” Otherwise it will become like this: “Who pushed ‘YES’?”...and then ‘Nah...’ No one will …"
85.	Sean:	“When I look at you, I can see that you answered ‘NO’!”
86.	Lars:	“Can someone who pushed ‘YES’ say what they’re thinking?” … sort of …
87.	Vicki:	Yes.
88.	Sean:	Yes, but … Exactly!
89.	Lars:	We can do like this: “What kind of arguments, do you think, are useful when answering ‘YES’” and “What kind of arguments, do you think, are useful when answering ‘NO’”? Then they have to, well they don’t have to [interrupted].
90.	Sean:	Like trading places …
91.	Vicki:	But … I’m thinking … Does that get a discussion going?
92.	Lars:	No, maybe not.
93.	Vicki:	Because then, they might just drop it.
94.	Sean:	Yeah.
95.	Vicki:	Not because this sounds bad but I’m thinking if we want …
96.	Lars:	We want to engage them, but when you’re working with a large group it can be hard, you know … to be able to discuss all together, like that!
97.	Sean:	Yes.
98.	Lars:	It might be better to discuss in smaller groups then or?
99.	Sean:	Yes. It might be like … when to reach a decision, you’re in a lack of time, so you’re not able to [interrupted].
100.	Vicki:	Think!
101.	Sean:	Or … we could just do it in a way where we: “We give you this question now, so that you can discuss it, in your your groups … later.”

Table

102.	Ann:	Then we still will have … a written document. The question is what topic we should choose then? … It’s good if it’s linked to school, because then we know that it is … sort of authentic for them and … What were these questions?
103.	Kim:	Questions?
104.	Ann:	No, but these … written in the syllabus … they should … sorting, reduced use of chemicals, saving energy, eco-labeled food, less transports, digital storage … No, I don’t know …
105.	Erik:	No, but … Now I think that I should take this bugger [syllabus]. Should bring forward …
106.	Kim:	I’m looking through this [syllabus].
107.	Ann:	Can’t I have one … chemistry.
108.	Kim:	I’m looking through biology now, but I can look into another if …
		[Longer break—everyone reads]
109.	Erik:	Damn, I feel completely blank in the head!
110.	Ann:	Oh, I don’t know … I’m thinking of several … you know I’m thinking of all modules [SocioScientific Inquiry Based Learning] … getting confused.
111.	Kim:	Yes, I feel like that to, having all those different, in my head at the same time.
112.	Ann:	Or we choose food for this one, and something else for the module … No, we’ve already talked too much about that.
113.	Erik:	On the other hand, the module feels easy you know … I have to say, the module feels less important … it’s just a seminar assignment so to say …
114.	Kim:	Yes!
115.	Erik:	This one … it feels as if … there’s higher priority on this one as well.
116.	Ann:	Yes, it’s more important that this one turns out good, you know, it must also be possible to reflect on it, I mean, the written part.
117.	Erik:	Yes! So there must still be some substance there.