‘So basically I have to speak less and give students some freedom’: how committing to a value influences a teacher’s enactment of an inquiry-based science unit

ABSTRACT

Teachers’ practices and interactions with curriculum materials are influenced by a host of factors, which include their values. The mechanisms of this influence may benefit from elucidation. Here, we describe a case of a teacher enacting an inquiry-based learning unit (LU) as part of a school science enrichment programme. The teacher’s interactions with the LU appear to be influenced by her self-stated idea of giving students ‘freedom’. We track these influences through the course of the teacher’s planning, enactment, and reflection of the LU. Because of how ‘freedom’ guides her actions, we argue that it serves the function of a value. Furthermore, we contend that the teacher’s commitment to ‘freedom’ represents an exercise of her deliberative agency. This commitment to ‘freedom’ is supported by her interactions with her context, which include labelling of her preliminary ideas with the term ‘freedom’, being asked to choose between curriculum materials, reflective conversations with the researcher, and reframing the site of enactment. We also describe challenges that the teacher faces with respect to student guidance, resulting from her commitment to ‘freedom’. From this work, we suggest implications for the design of curriculum materials and teacher professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Values
• teacher education
• agency
• freedom

Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Sugra Chunawala for guidance throughout the preparation of the manuscript. We thank Dr. Subhojit Sen and Shephali Bose for their contributions toward developing the LU 'Is there protein in those grains?'. Finally, we thank 'Kishori' for taking the time and effort to participate in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The data used in this paper comes from a larger study. As part of the study detailed written and oral consents were obtained from the participants. The data was saved with pseudonyms and was anonymised before the analysis. The data consists of dialogues, several of which were bilingual in nature. The English translations were made carefully to remain closer to the actual dialogues and verified several times during the analysis by listening to the audio of the conversations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, under Project Identification No. RTI4001; Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, under the Vigyan Pratibha Project (No. R&D-TFR-0650).