Biology Teachers' Lived Experiences in Place by Tomo Nishizawa B.Sc.H., Queen's University ...

Biology Teachers’ Lived Experiences in Place by Tomo Nishizawa B.Sc.H., Queen’s University, 2011 B.Ed., Queen’s University, 2012 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction © Tomo Nishizawa, 2017 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Biology Teachers’ Lived Experiences in Place by Tomo Nishizawa B.Sc.H., Queen’s University, 2011 B.Ed., Queen’s University, 2012 Supervisory Committee Dr. David Blades, Supervisor Department of Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Michelle Wiebe, Department Member Department of Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Richard Kool, Outside Member School of Environment and Sustainability Royal Roads University iii Abstract A phenomenological inquiry of five place-aware biology teachers was conducted to determine how teachers’ lived experiences in place influence their pedagogy, if at all. High school biology teachers from one public and private school in Victoria, British Columbia were recruited through volunteer sampling. Through in-depth interviews, journal writings and artefacts representative of lived experiences of place, teachers were invited to share their lived experience narratives of places of meaning and teaching experiences of place. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment phenomenology, a case-by-case thematic analysis was first conducted per informant, followed by analyses of commonalities across informants as appropriate. It was found that teachers shared similar experiences in different places of meaning: a sense of mystery that there is always something to be revealed, an experience of the vastness and complexity of places, a sense of care for nature as the Other and a feeling of fondness for places as shared through close family and community members. However, the degree and manner in which such experiences transferred into teachers’ pedagogies differed, as some teachers demonstrated a stronger intentionality of place-consciousness than others. The study highlights the humanness of teachers and the unique styles that individual teachers bring into their practices. I suggest that the complex and multidimensional notion of places as revealed through the study opens possibilities for holistic approaches in science education, with a focus on embodied, caring consciousness for the places that we inhabit. Keywords: science teacher education, teacher identity, place, phenomenology, environmental ethics, caring iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee .................................................................................................................. ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Stories of Place ........................................................................................................................... 1 Place and Science Education ...................................................................................................... 6 Overview of Chapters ............................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 15 Trends in Science/Environmental Education ............................................................................ 15 Science, Technology, Society and Environmental (STSE) education. ................................. 15 Environmental education. ..................................................................................................... 20 Defining Place ........................................................................................................................... 25 Dichotomous notions of place. ............................................................................................. 25 Towards an understanding of experience in place. ............................................................... 27 Phenomenology ......................................................................................................................... 29 Phenomenology of place. ...................................................................................................... 29 Embodiment phenomenology. .............................................................................................. 33 Science Teacher Identity ........................................................................................................... 36 Trends in teacher identity research. ...................................................................................... 37 Value of reflective inquiry. ................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 3: Methodology ............................................................................................................... 45 Hermeneutic and Embodiment Phenomenology ...................................................................... 45 Research Context and Rationale ............................................................................................... 46 Ethics ......................................................................................................................................... 48 Data Collection ......................................................................................................................... 48 Journal entries. ...................................................................................................................... 49 Interviews. ............................................................................................................................. 49 Artefacts representative of lived experiences. ...................................................................... 50 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 50 Context of Analysis ................................................................................................................... 52 Chapter 4: Results ......................................................................................................................... 56 Theme 1: Experience of Mystery .............................................................................................. 56 Personal experience of place: Mystery of natural and cultural worlds. ................................ 56 Teaching experience of place: Exploratory learning in the real-world. ................................ 60 Theme 2: Seeing the Whole and the Particular ......................................................................... 63 Personal experience of place: Experiencing the whole. ........................................................ 63 Personal experience of place: Experiencing the particular. .................................................. 63 v Teaching experience of place: Understanding the whole. .................................................... 65 Teaching experience of place: Understanding the particular. ............................................... 67 Theme 3: Environmental Ethics ................................................................................................ 69 Personal experience of place: Care for nature and humans. ................................................. 69 Teaching experience of place: Care for nature and humans. ................................................ 72 Theme 4: Human Ethics ............................................................................................................ 74 Personal experience of place: Sharing a way of being. ........................................................ 74 Teaching experience of place: Understanding Others’ ways of being. ................................ 77 Chapter 5: Discussion ................................................................................................................... 80 Revisiting the Research Question ............................................................................................. 80 Implications for Science Education Research and Pedagogy ................................................... 85 Interconnections between nature and culture. ....................................................................... 85 “Seeing” through an embodied approach. ............................................................................ 89 Ethical ways of being in the world. ...................................................................................... 94 A Vision for Science Teacher Education ................................................................................ 100 Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................................ 105 References ................................................................................................................................... 108 Appendices .................................................................................................................................. 121 Appendix A: Letter of Invitation for Participants ................................................................... 121 Appendix B: Participant Consent Form .................................................................................. 123 Appendix C: Journal Entry Prompts ....................................................................................... 126 Journal entry prompt 1. ....................................................................................................... 126 Journal entry prompt 2. ....................................................................................................... 126 Appendix D: Interview Questions .......................................................................................... 128 Interview questions 1: Experience in place of meaning. .................................................... 128 Interview questions 2: Teaching experience of place. ........................................................ 128 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Flying into the Tundra Ecosystem Research Station in the Northwest Territories. Picture taken from a floatplane. .............................................................................................. 1 Figure 2. Andromeda on a rich, mossy bed near the Tundra Ecosystem Research Station. ........... 2 Figure 3. Sana’a International School of Yemen located on terraced farmlands. The school resembled a Deweyan school. ................................................................................................. 4 Figure 4. Snorkelling and collecting algae samples in the mangroves of Curaçao. A student shows me an algal sample for identification. .......................................................................... 5 Figure 5. The treachery of images (Magritte, as cited in Sylvester, 1992) ..................................... 9 Figure 6. First Nations baskets passed down David’s family. David used these baskets to share his stories of his encounters with the First Nations people. .................................................. 59 Figure 7. A marine aquarium that Ella helped to build in her school to connect her students with the marine environment of local Victoria. ............................................................................ 61 Figure 8. Amy’s “sanctuary” in local Victoria. She shared how purple starfish population declined in this area due to wasting disease associated with rise in water temperature. ...... 71 Figure 9. A painting of David’s family house in Malakwa, British Columbia. ............................ 75 Figure 10. A silhouette of a caribou in the arctic tundra. Picture taken near the Tundra Ecosystem Research Station. ................................................................................................................. 107 vii List of Tables Table 1 Timeline and overview of data collection from December 2016 to February 2017 ........... 48 viii Acknowledgements There are many people that have made my journey possible. First, I would like to thank my five teacher participants who dedicated their time to openly share their life stories with me. Your passion and commitment to teaching has inspired me to become a compassionate, reflective and open-minded teacher. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr. David Blades, for sharing his knowledge and wisdom throughout my journey. David, you have opened my horizons about what it means to teach and challenged me to inquire deeply into myself about what it means for me to become a biology teacher. I would like to thank my department member, Dr. Michelle Wiebe, for her constant encouragement to follow my passion and for her insightful suggestions on my paper. I thank my external member, Dr. Richard Kool, for the many conversations and constructive feedback that helped me to broaden my perspectives on environmental education. I extend special thanks to Dr. Todd Milford and Dr. Kathy Sanford for helping me to navigate through my various interests and for being a mentor to me beyond the scope of my graduate courses. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their constant love and support. In particular, I thank my mother, Midori Nishizawa, for teaching me to see the world; my brother, Yui Nishizawa, for teaching me to question; and my partner, Kyle Armour, for teaching me to believe in possibilities. Your love, wisdom and kindness is more than what I could ever ask for. ?????????????????????????????? 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Stories of Place There is a place that I frequently recall in my mind; that of the vast, open landscape in the Northwest Territories that instilled within me a sense of wonder and awe for the arctic tundra. In the summer of 2011, I had the opportunity to participate in a plant ecology research project at the Tundra Ecosystem Research Station to investigate the effects of climate change on terrestrial biogeochemistry in the low arctic. Three hundred kilometers northeast of Yellowknife, one hundred and fifty kilometers away from the closest T??? ch? indigenous community and fifty kilometers to the closest medical centre at the Ekati Diamond Mine, I found myself at a small campsite amongst the stretches of land and ice. The Tundra Ecosystem Research Station hosted an average of five researchers in any given week from various Canadian institutions and field workers from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources from the Government of Northwest Territories. Bi-weekly, a float plane brought in a different group of researchers as well as a set of local Yellowknife newspapers, fresh fruits and vegetables to replenish our diminishing supply (Figure 1). Figure 1. Flying into the Tundra Ecosystem Research Station in the Northwest Territories. Picture taken from a floatplane. 2 It is there that I was enchanted by the vastness of the arctic. While the “tundra,” derived from the Finnish “tunturia” means treeless plain (University of California Museum of Paleontology, 2004), I learned over time that this quiet landscape was anything but barren. At my feet, moss and lichen abounded in rich shades of red, orange and green in the undulating valley of the tussocks (Figure 2). On our forty-minute hike to the field sites, we encountered arctic ground squirrels (affectionately called “sik-siks” amongst the Inuit people), in addition to the occasional red fox, caribou, ptarmigan, bald eagle and peregrine falcon. There was a perpetual stillness in the air that was sometimes interrupted by a melancholic call of the yellow-billed and red-throated loons, or by a herd of caribou on their migration path, maintaining a mysterious wonder of the landscape that I felt I could never quite fully comprehend. At the field sites, we were fully exposed to the elements of the weather. Being above the tree line with no human made shelter within close walking distance, we patiently waited for the rain to drench us upon seeing a storm cloud ahead. Figure 2. Andromeda on a rich, mossy bed near the Tundra Ecosystem Research Station. Most of all, I remember the sky after the rain. Commercial airplanes flew above us as we worked, leaving a series of interweaving contrails in the cerulean sky. With childlike naivety, I