scientists talking to students through videos

JUNJUN CHEN and BRONWEN COWIE

SCIENTISTS TALKING TO STUDENTS THROUGH VIDEOS

Received: 15 October 2012; Accepted: 11 March 2013

ABSTRACT. The benefits of connecting school students with scientists are welldocumented. This paper reports how New Zealand teachers brought scientists into theclassrooms through the use of videos of New Zealand scientists talking about themselvesand their research. Two researchers observed lessons in 9 different classrooms in which 23educational videos were shown to students from years 2 to 11 (aged 6–17 years). Sevengroups of primary students and 4 groups of secondary students participated in interviewsafter classroom observations. Eight additional secondary teachers participated in 7 focusgroup discussions; 4 additional primary teachers participated in 1 focus group discussion.Data were analysed thematically using an inductive approach. This analysis uncovered 4major functions for the use of videos of scientists talking about their work: bringingscientists into the classroom, scientists talking about science with local relevance,scientists explaining concepts using a multitude of modes and scientists as authenticalternative authorities within the classroom. Taken together, the findings demonstrate thatthe use of video clips of scientists talking about their work can be an effective andefficient way of engaging students in learning about science and scientists.

KEY WORDS: classroom research, educational technology, image of scientist, scienceeducation, video

INTRODUCTION

Internationally, there is abundant evidence of a decline over time ofstudent interest and engagement in school science in general and in thefurther study of the science subjects in particular (Osborne & Dillon,2008; Tytler, Osborne, Williams, Tytler & Clark, 2008). Indications arethat science education in New Zealand is experiencing the samechallenges (Bolstad & Hipkins, 2008). Two reasons are given for thisdecline—students find school science irrelevant and they have a limited/negative view of science and scientists (Demirba, 2009; Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development, 2007). It seems that studentsoften hold to a stereotypical image of scientists as white middle-agedmales who are somewhat eccentric and work alone. That this is notalways the case points to the potential value of involving scientists inschool science education. However, it is difficult due to the time,planning and costs involved for scientists to visit science classrooms as aregular event. Advances in school Internet access and ICT facilities hold

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education (2014) 12: 445Y465# National Science Council, Taiwan 2013

out the possibility that students can engage with scientists via web-basedmedia and resources. This paper reports on an aspect of a study that isinvestigating teacher use of a web-based resource—the Science LearningHub (SLH; http://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/). The Hub has been developedto make the work of New Zealand scientists accessible to New Zealandteachers so that they can make science more relevant and interesting for theirstudents. The videos were developed through cooperation between NewZealand scientists, web content developers and educational researchers. Thefollowing considerations guided the Hub video development: the videosneeded to be about scientists who worked in and science that was takingplace in New Zealand, the content needed to link to core concepts at anappropriate level in the New Zealand science curriculum, the videos neededto open up possibilities for teachers and students to understand the role ofscience in society and their everyday lives, and the videos needed to focus onissues that were of interest and relevance to students from a range of culturaland community backgrounds. Consequently, the web site includes a numberof ‘short and sharp’ videos of scientists talking about their own cutting-edgeresearch and its applications in society along with their personal stories ofhow they became scientists. In this paper, we report on teacher and studentviews of the impact of these videos on student ideas about scientists andscience.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Students’ View of Scientists and Themselves in Science

There is a substantial body of research that indicates students have arestricted view of what scientists do, what they look like, the sorts ofpeople they are and who can become a scientist. This is of concernbecause student alternative conceptions regarding how science works, andthe life and characteristics of scientists, can result in students opting out ofscience (Eccles, 2005). Scholars working within an agenda of science forall have found that students who cannot ‘see themselves in science’ limittheir engagement with science (Aikenhead, Orpwood & Fensham, 2011).As Brickhouse, Lowery & Schultz (2000) point out, attempts to enhanceteaching will come to nothing if students cannot “see themselves asthe kind of people who would want to understand the worldscientifically” (p. 443).

Students develop their ideas about who can be a scientist and whatscientists do through TV programmes, and fiction and non-fiction and

JUNJUN CHEN AND BRONWEN COWIE446

http://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/

textbooks (Schibeci & Lee, 2003). Students also build up theirimages of science and scientists based on their classroom experiences.In the classroom, material that foregrounds the history of science aspart of a focus on the nature of science can reinforce the notion thatscience is male-dominated (Cooper, Cowie & Jones, 2010) andscientists are ‘eccentric old men’ who work alone. On the other hand,many historical stories emphasise characteristics such as curiosity,hard work and persistence, which are congruent with how scientistswork. Fortunately, research evidence shows that students’ views ofscience and scientists are amenable to change (Laursen, Liston, Thiry& Graf, 2007). The challenge is to provide opportunities for studentsto learn about the actual characteristics of scientists so that they cometo appreciate that scientists are people like them and that they oftenwork in teams and solve problems collaboratively (Eccles, 2005). Astudy by France & Bay (2010) has shown that a significant numberof students are interested in scientists’ lives and that students aremore likely to express an interest in science careers after visits withscientists. Students were influenced by scientists’ passion for science,which encouraged them to make links with who they were andconsider new possibilities for future careers. It appears that studentlearning of science is enriched when they have access to a broadrange of role models and science careers.

Scientists Interacting with Students and Teachers

A number of educational initiatives have been developed over the last twodecades to link scientists to the educational community as a means ofinforming teaching, engaging students and inspiring student career choice(Falloon & Trewern, 2013; Rennie, 2012). These include award initiativessuch as Nuffield Science Bursaries, scientist and school cooperation,teacher–scientist networks, field days and mentor/apprentice schemes(Morrison & Estes, 2007). The study by Scherz and Oren (2006) is oneexample of a project that sought to link students with scientists in aneffort to expand their understanding of who scientists are and what theydo. Students in the Scherz and Oren Study took on the role of journaliststo explore a scientific subject of interest to them. They read backgroundmaterial, went into the field and visited laboratories/factories to observeand interview scientists, and then reported their findings to other students.As a result of these experiences, students changed their preconceptionsand stereotypes of science in the workplace to reflect more informed andpositive conceptions of the different science-oriented occupations

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available to them. The Scientists in Schools in Australia is anotherexample (Rennie, 2012). This project aimed to bring the practice of real-world science to students and teachers, to inspire teachers and students inthe teaching and learning of science, and to enable scientists to act asmentors/role models for students, broadening awareness of the types andvariety of careers available within science and increasing scientists’engagement with the community. The project has garnered a positiveresponse from scientists, teachers and students. Other similar projectsinclude the European Union’s CarboSchools and GLOBE environmentalmonitoring projects (Wormstead, Becker & Congalton, 2002).

Efforts have also been expended to increase teacher and studentinteraction with scientists in New Zealand. For example, a day-longsenior secondary school student science educational programme isoffered by the Liggins Institute and National Research Centre (France& Bay, 2010). This focuses on recent scientific discoveries and themethodologies used to collect evidence. It allows students to meetresearch staff and to use some of the technologies. The findingsindicate that these interactions benefit teachers, students and scien-tists. Writing more generally about the New Zealand context, Bolstad& Hipkins (2008) assert that young people (particularly in theirteenage years) enjoy seeing and hearing first-hand accounts ofscientists’ careers and the kinds of everyday activities that thesecareers involve. Hearing about another person’s journey to scienceseems to be important in helping young people to imagine differentpossible futures for themselves, particularly if they feel some personalconnection with the storyteller.

Research has shown that working with scientists can contribute to anincrease in teacher content knowledge, understanding of the nature ofscience and the work of scientists, and to more effective translation ofknowledge to their students (Dixon & Wilke, 2007; Wong & Hodson,2009). The teachers in a study by Feldman, Divoll & Rogan (2007)described scientists as mediators who helped them understand and workwithin the two constructs of ‘scientist’ and ‘science teacher’. Connectionwith a scientist can help teachers cross their self-defined boundariesbetween scientific inquiry as practised by scientists and the sciencecontent presented in classrooms and to better translate these processes totheir students. In turn, this helps students better understand scientificpractice and content (Hughes, Molyneaux & Dixon, 2012; Wong &Hodson, 2009).

From these examples, it can be seen that the benefits of interactionwith ‘actual’ scientists are substantial. However, most students are


unlikely to have an opportunity to interact with scientists and theirwork (Bolstad & Hipkins, 2008). It is difficult for scientists to visitclassrooms or students to visit laboratories on a regular basis. Issuessuch as distance, the need for long-term planning, cost effectivenessand the demands on scientists’ time have to be addressed (Falloon &Trewern, 2013).

‘Virtual’ Scientists Interacting with Students and Teachers

Apart from interactions with ‘actual’ scientists, teachers and students canwork with scientists via the use of a range of visual technologies (Braund& Reiss, 2006; Gluckman, 2011). For instance, teachers can use videos ofscientists as part of regular teaching sequences. Research indicates thatvideos are useful for showing science trials and experiments that are toodangerous, difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to conduct in aclassroom (Brunvand & Fishman, 2007; Kearney, 2002; Olympiou &Zacharia, 2012). When they are carefully designed, videos can be used toadd meaning and relevance to abstract spatial, temporal and causalphenomena and/or concepts (Quellmalz, Timms, Silberglitt & Buckley,2012). Videos have the advantage that they can be paused, rewound andreplayed as needed. This increases the opportunities teachers have tofocus and guide students to attend to events that might go unseen in realtime (Tversky & Morrison, 2002). Students can to listen again toscientists’ explanations to help clarify and deepen their understanding.Just as importantly, videos offer students and teachers multimodal ratherthan text-based opportunities to learn and/or teach science. Videos canembed diagrams, photographs, text and animations to express and explainideas and practices. They can depict scientists providing an animateddescription and discussion of their work. A number of classroom studieshave illustrated the benefits of considering science teaching and learningas multimodal practices (Kelly & Brown, 2003; Jewitt, 2008). Kress,Jewitt, Ogborn & Tsatsarelius (2001), for example, provide a detailedaccount of science teaching as a multimodal activity. The teacher in theirstudy used gestures, diagrams, pictures and a physical model inconjunction with descriptive science talk to explain how blood circulates,which provided students with more than one opportunity and more thanone way of making sense of the circulation of blood. In science educationin particular, where we are dealing with phenomena that are, for the mostpart, abstract, the integration between verbal and concrete pictorialinformation can be particularly important (Yarden & Yarden, 2011).Very little research has investigated the use of videos as a means of


bringing ‘virtual’ scientists into the classroom. The impact and implica-tions of this is the focus of the remainder of this paper.

THE RESEARCH STUDY

In New Zealand, the national curriculum recommends the use ofmultimedia techniques to provide new and different forms of supportfor learning (Ministry of Education, 2007). Peter Gluckman (2011), thePrime Minister’s science advisor, has called for increased school–scientistlinks on the basis that they can add value to student learning and increasethe opportunities students have to access authentic contexts. The SLHweb site was developed to provide teachers with access to New Zealandscientists and their work. It includes more than 500 short (around 3 min)videos of scientists talking about their work and themselves. This paperreports on how New Zealand science teachers utilised the Hub videos ofscientists talking about their work. It is part of a larger study designed toinform Hub development and evaluate the impact of use. The tworesearch questions were:

1. How were Hub videos of scientists talking about their work used inNew Zealand science classrooms?

2. What do science teachers and students in New Zealand think was theimpact of using Hub videos of scientists talking about their work?

The research team encouraged the teachers to use Hub materials, butthe study was not an intervention study. Tabak (2004) distinguishesbetween an endogenous research design that investigates the use ofmaterials and practices that are already in place in the local setting and anexogenous research design where instructional materials, activity struc-tures, or instructional strategies that have been developed for the purposesof the research project are used. In her discussion of design research,Tabak cautions against study designs that foreground the exogenousdesign in ways that may leave the endogenous design outside of theresearchers’ lens. In this study, researchers attended lessons only whenthe teachers chose to invite them in to see the use of Hub materials. Thisdecision was grounded in a desire to understand how the participatingteachers chose and used the Hub materials as part of their planningroutine and how they interweaved them with other teaching resources intheir classrooms. Evidence of endogenous teacher practice was consid-ered important because the Hub materials are not designed as off-the-shelf


units but rather to support teacher pedagogical design capacity (Davis,Beyer, Forbes & Stevens, 2011), that is, capacity to use curriculummaterials effectively.

Research Participants

Nine teachers and their students were involved in classroom observations;eight secondary and four primary teachers participated in focus groupdiscussions. Over the period of 19 months, the nine teachers invited theresearchers to observe 23 uses of videos in 23 lessons. The studentstaught by these nine teachers came from one Year 2, one Year 5, twoYear 7, one Year 8, two Year 9, one Year 11 and one Year 12 classes.Students aged 5 – 12 years are in primary school and students aged13 – 17 years are in secondary school in New Zealand. Seven groups ofprimary students and four groups of secondary students participated ininterviews. Twelve teachers, who had not been part of the classroomobservations, took part in the focus groups. Eight were secondary teachersand four were primary teachers. The secondary focus group met seventimes and the primary focus group met once. All teacher participants helda Bachelor’s degree and all teachers from the secondary school sector hada science degree. They were all familiar with the use of videos.

Multiple Data Sources

The researchers collected qualitative data in the form of videotapes,audiotapes, observations, field notes, individual interviews, focus groupdiscussions, and copies of teaching materials and student work tothoroughly capture what had happened in the classroom (Fasse &Kolodner, 2000). Eight semi-structured student interviews and six semi-structured teacher interviews were conducted after the classroomobservations. They focused primarily on video use and the impacts ofthese uses. The focus group discussions were audio-recorded.

Data Analysis

To address the research questions, data from classroom observations weretreated as a primary data source and other sources of data treated as asecondary source. The analysis procedure comprised the following steps.First, each lesson was summarised in terms of tasks, time, activity, sub-activity and resources used (Moreland, Cowie, Otrel-Cass & Jones, 2010).These summaries were made immediately after each lesson based onresearcher field notes and the video recording data. An inductive thematic


analysis (Patton, 2002) was conducted to analyse the video useproportion of the lesson. Four major themes were identified: videosbringing ‘scientists’ into the classroom, scientists talking aboutscience with local relevance, scientists explaining concepts using amultitude of modes and scientists as alternative/authentic authoritiesin the classroom. Other sources of data were also examined forevidence of the themes, and this evidence was integrated with thatfrom the observations. Searching for convergence among multiple anddifferent sources of information to form the themes enhances thevalidity of data analysis (Creswell & Miller, 2000). The videorecording sequence categorisation was member checked (Lincoln &Guba, 1985) with teachers to ensure the sequences did, in their view,reflect the identified themes.

FINDINGS

This section outlines the four themes of impact noted above. All namesare pseudonyms. Representative classroom episodes and comments fromteachers and students are used to illustrate the themes.

Bringing ‘Scientists’ into the Classroom

The teachers in all eight focus group discussions and in post-lessondiscussion after 20 teaching sessions commented that the video clips ofscientists talking about their work and lives served two importantfunctions: (1) expanding student understanding of who scientists areand (2) inspiring students’ future career choice.

Expanding Student Understanding of Who Scientists Are. The scientistsin some of the Hub video clips shared their personal stories includingwhy they became a scientist and what it is about the particular fieldthey are working in that fascinates them. In the video, Testing theAerodynamics of Elite Cyclists, a female scientist shares that shebecame involved in aerodynamics because of her personal interest insports. When Sally, a Year 5 teacher, played this video in a unit onmovement, her students showed special interest in this sharing. Sallycommented,

On the videos from the Hub, the scientists are really fantastic. That’s probably the mostpopular thing so far with my children. Because it takes away from just being informationto learn, they see it as a person exploring. ‘This will work and this won’t work’. They looklike someone who could be passed in the street. (Primary Teacher Focus Group, June)


Another teacher, Ben, noted that it was influential that scientists wereshown working together towards a particular goal, thereby countering thelone scientist myth.

When talking about how to do the things, there is another person doing it. It’s quite visual, notsomebody sitting there and thinking about the things. It shows people actually act together forwhatever purpose there might be. I really like that aspect. (Secondary Teacher Focus Group, June)

Students from a post-lesson focus group from a primary schooldescribed how seeing scientists working together and seeing thescientists’ passion for their work influenced them.

Before, I was thinking that scientists work alone, wear lab coats, are serious, wear glasses,have no outdoor lives. But after watching the videos, I know they are common people, justlike us …you could see their passion about science, and this inspired me to learn aboutmore science. (Primary Student Focus Group, April)

These comments indicate that this student amended their view ofscientists as a consequence of viewing a video of a scientist talkingpassionately about their work.

Inspiring Students’ Future Career Choice. Teachers considered that seeingand hearing scientists talking about their personal experience and work couldinfluence how their students thought about their own career choices into thefuture, includingwhether theymight become a scientist. A teacher, Grace, at theupper secondary level, who had shown videos from the SLH during the school‘career week’ to build students’ understanding of scientists’ work and inspiringtheir future career choice, commented,

They want to start to understand the jobs that they might want to do. So it’s not onlyrelevant to day-to-day life, they think about their future. They can see the whole picture inclass of what they intend to live in the future. (Secondary Teacher Focus Group, May)

The primary teacher focus group agreed with this point of view. Oneupper level primary teacher, Mia, reported,

In Y7 and Y8, we are teaching about careers. I quite like to have a little video wheredifferent scientists or different people are talking about how scientists pursue their career.This becomes more personal for the kids. My students enjoyed the videos and were quitekeen to have a bigger picture for their future. (Primary Teacher Focus Group, June)

Secondary students held a similar view. For example,

…After watching the video (Becoming a Rocket Engineer), I know New Zealand needsrocket scientists and positions are available here. I am interested in rockets and spacescience. I may become a scientist in the future. (Secondary Student Interview, April)


These data provide evidence that teachers and students appreciate thevariation among those who are scientists, including the differences intheir everyday and science interests, and they find the passion scientistshave for their work compelling. This suggests that students meeting witha virtual scientist can have a similar impact to their meeting with an actualscientist in terms of the scientist being a role model and inspiring studentsto see themselves in science (Rennie, 2012).

Scientists Talking About Science with Local Relevance

The videos from the SLH web site link New Zealand cutting-edgeresearch to current issues in New Zealand as a strategy to make sciencemore relevant to students. Teachers made reference to this in all eightfocus group discussions. There were 19 comments relating to localrelevance in post-observation interviews. Taking the video Air PollutionStudy and Air Movement Models as an example, a scientist explains howhe had been asked by the government to estimate some of the costs of airpollution in Christchurch and to detail how pollution affects people’shealth (Christchurch suffers from air pollution because of a substantialproportion of its citizens use coal-burning fires). Mavis used this videoclip in a lesson on air pollution in her Year 7 class. Mavis commented thatstudents learning content with local/personal relevance engaged theirinterest in science and opened up possibilities for further investigations.

New Zealand things [in the video] are more attractive and far more interesting to kids.When I showed the video about Christchurch, they could relate the science to themselvesor other relevant things ….Catching their interest was not my only purpose for using thisvideo. I expected that the class would do some investigation of this problem. (PrimaryTeacher Interview, May)

One of Mavis’s students related that the connection with their personaland social lives was important to them.

I like to know more about New Zealand science research, because I feel it is close to meand it actually happens. So you get something to connect to. They may make things betterthrough what they do, like the video that showed Christchurch. They understand howmuch it is going to cost, and how they can actually get it to work. (Primary Student FocusGroup, May)

A teacher, Kara, who taught a unit on UV in New Zealand commentedthat it was easier for students to understand content when it was linked tolocal contexts. It was her hope that this would increase her students’interest in science and that they would use what they learnt in class intheir lives:


The level of UV in New Zealand is really high and may hurt them. They use sunscreenevery day, but they may not know why they should use it. The lessons have provided thereasons. You can see that they were keen to do the experiments to understand the effectsof UV in different situations …what I want is to teach them things close to their lives sothat they can easily understand and be interested. Later they may use them [these things]in their lives not only in their classrooms and they may start to like science. (SecondaryTeacher Interview, March)

Both students and teachers in this study responded well to scienceideas with demonstrated relevance to local settings and issues. However,no data were collected to verify that students understood concepts moredeeply when the role they played in familiar contexts was highlighted.Other classroom studies by the Chen and Cowie (2011, 2012) have shownthat student understanding was developed when concepts were embeddedin locally relevant contexts.

Scientists Expressing Concepts Using a Multitude of Modes

Videos allow for the multimodal presentation of ideas. Teachers in alleight focus group discussions and in 23 teaching sequences and all theinterviewed students/student groups thought that the ideas expressedusing a multitude of modes had a number of advantages over othertraditional lectures. These were illustrated when Mary employed a videoclip, Digestion of Food, to introduce the digestive system to her Year 8students. In the video, a scientist describes the digestive system structureand how food is processed as it moves through each organ. Mary showedthis video three times. The first time was to help students form a generalidea of what the digestive system looks like. When Mary replayed thevideo, she paused it at pertinent points to reinforce the relevant scientificterminology. Next, she handed out a diagram of the digestive system andhad the students label the different components. Finally, Mary played thevideo to reinforce the terminologies. She asked clarifying questions sothat the students could check their work. The students found this activityengaging and were heard to use science terminologies as they talkedtogether during the labelling task. Mary valued multimodal presentationof ideas in the video. She considered that it helped her students achieve a‘higher level of learning’ because the students were introduced to ideasthrough a range of modes that represented different aspects of the sameconcept.

The digestive video is a really good example. There’re lots of big words in it. Newvocabularies, I didn’t even know how to pronounce some of them. We started talkingabout the system and get kids to visually demonstrate it in the diagram. Do you remember


they put words on the diagram [on the video]? They heard it, saw it, said it, did it, andlearnt it. Also they taught their partners. That’s the higher level of learning. When they didthis, they learnt the most. (Primary Teacher Interview, August)

Mary’s students considered that they understood concepts morecomprehensively and more deeply when they engaged with them via avideo rather than by reading a book or listening to a teacher.

S3: If you look at a book, it does not give a full experience, not a whole picture for thecontent [of how the digestive system works]. But the video will explain the whole process.S4: I understood the digestive system. I never knew that deeply about it. I knew bodyparts but not all of them. And I didn’t know, like, how the food goes through it. (PrimaryStudent interview, August)

As with the aforementioned multimodal literature (Kelly & Brown,2003; Jewitt, 2008), both teachers and students appreciated the presen-tation of concepts using a multitude of modes and media.

Scientists as Alternative Authorities Within the Classroom

Teachers in each focus group and from all the observed teachingsequences reported that they used the Hub video clips of scientiststalking about their work to introduce new ideas and issues to the students.Teachers considered that this “changed the classroom dynamic” for thebetter because “neither teachers nor students want to have the teacher atthe front of the classroom all the time” (Joe, Secondary Teacher FocusGroup, May). In addition, having another person introduce ideas meantthat a teacher could step away from their usual authoritative role aspresenter of information and adopt a more neutral position as a facilitatorof discussion. One teacher, Leo, explained,

By having a third person introduce this topic, I have found it much easier to manage adiscussion as the emotional reaction can be vented at this unknown person on the videowho doesn’t have to interact with every lesson and in the school grounds. You can getstudents to critique the strong opinions of others and encourage them to be critical and toconsider other viewpoints and stances that they might not otherwise be willing to engagewith. (Secondary Teacher Interview, June)

A striking classroom example of the impact of having a third personintroducing ideas occurred when Sandy showed the video Cow BoneResearch to her Year 11 chemistry students. It described New Zealandresearch into the possibility of using cow bone as a bone replacementwhen a diseased bone is surgically removed from a person’s body andhow the body can colonise and absorb the bone substitute into healthybone tissue. After watching the video, Sandy asked her students “What is


your response to this video?” and “Would you consider this technique ifyou required a bone transplant?” Using the video allowed Sandy topresent a science point of view and left her much freer to orchestratediscussion around the pros and cons of the possibilities it offered.

Apart from Sandy, other teachers also described the value of studentaccess to other sources of information, emphasising that this meantstudents were ‘not limited’ by what the teacher thought. Jane, a primaryteacher, commented,

The information comes straight from the horse’s mouth. That it comes from scientistsgives added authenticity. It’s definitely more valuable than hearing me tell them about itall the time in class. I mean, not that the kids mind it generally, but it’s nice, nice to haveanother authoritative source of information to come into classroom, especially the videos.This is really valuable, as they are not limited by what the teacher ‘thinks’ they can do.And you know, it’s really convenient to use. (Primary Teacher Interview, June)

The data here indicate that scientists presenting ideas via a video opensup an opportunity for teachers to facilitate more democratic discussionsabout science ideas and practices. The teacher can step back as a thirdparty to encourage student engagement without needing to introduce andor impose their views.

Students indicated that they trusted what the scientists on the videoshad to say because “science is their expertise”. A secondary studentexplained,

When looking at scientists talking on the video, it’s not my teacher or my peers talkingwith me. You can trust them because they are science people, science is their expertise,and they are knowledgeable. They have got fantastic stuff and really expand myknowledge. (Secondary Student Focus Group, April)

A number of teachers commented that they found the videos usefulfor their learning. By watching the video, Mary learnt about scienceresearch and developed the confidence of pronouncing the specialistscience words.

Even I don’t know some pronunciations [of terminologies]. I have never heard them. Butby using the video, students don’t know you are unsure …scientists on the videos alwaystalk about recent science research. I have learnt from them. (Secondary Teacher Interview,August)

Daisy, a primary teacher, expressed a similar but deeper point of view.

I have found that hearing the scientists talking [has] given me confidence to take mychildren deeper into science learning as I feel I am well supported. My knowledge hasgrown immensely too. The scientists on the videos know their subject so well that they are


able to succinctly explain ideas and concepts. The videos enable us to rewind and watchand listen again and again, enabling us to develop our understanding of the explanationand to have learning conversations as a class to reach those understandings. (PrimaryTeacher Interview, May)

This section has illustrated that teachers and students from theprimary and secondary levels endorsed the video clips as anadditional source of knowledge.

DISCUSSION

A considerable body of research indicates that having scientists visit theclassroom has a number of benefits (see for example Rennie, 2012).However, very little research has investigated the use of videos as ameans of bringing ‘virtual’ scientists into the classroom. The findings ofthis study indicate that ‘virtual’ scientists visiting classrooms can achievemany of the same aforementioned outcomes as student interactions withactual scientists, but there are some unique features. Three benefits ofbringing scientists into classrooms by video are discussed.

Students ‘Seeing Themselves’ in/for New Zealand Science

Jewitt (2008) points out that videos can help students leave “one world ofexperiences for another” (p. 260). The teachers and students in this studyindicated that student views about what it meant to be a scientist werechallenged and expanded by their viewing of the Hub videos. Thesefindings align with those in the study by Sharkawy (2012) who found thatprimary level students’ images of scientists and scientific work wereexpanded when they engaged with stories featuring scientists fromdiverse sociocultural backgrounds. Students reported that they valuedevidence that scientists are the kind of people they could pass in thestreet. Students, particularly the older students, were interested in thescientists’ lives and life histories. They were captivated by the scientists’passion for their work. Some students indicated that they were challengedto reconfigure/reconceptualise what it means to be a scientist in relation toways of working and the local and social benefits and applications ofscience, which encouraged them to consider science as part of theiridentity and future career (Brickhouse et al., 2000; France & Bay, 2010).Put another way, the videos served to increase the role models andpossibilities the students had to draw on when they thought about howscience might link to their lives, thereby increasing their affiliation with


science (Fensham, 2009) and hopefully sparking their intrinsic motivationto engage in science lifelong.

Student commentary indicated that the impact of seeing and hearingscientists talk about their work was amplified because they were NewZealand scientists talking about how their scientific work contributed tothe well-being of local communities and the environment. This impactwent beyond that of expanding their image of scientists and inspiring theircareer choices. Both teachers and students intimated that when sciencehas local relevance, it can evoke an emotional engagement (Scott,Mortimer & Ametller, 2011) and provide students with a tangible reasonto learn the science (Elster, 2009). The close linkage with the NewZealand context encouraged students to think about what was happeningin the environment around them. Harlen (2008) has pointed out that,when students engage with science in a familiar context, this can promptthem to pursue and consider the implications of these ideas in otherbroader contexts. At the same time, students’ deeper conceptualunderstanding of science explanations can enhance their sense ofconfidence and familiarity within everyday contexts. These outcomesare important when the goals of science education include student use andaction on scientific ways of thinking in their daily lives (Aikenhead et al.,2011). All this suggests that the selection of the scientist and their workfocus is important when the aim is to help students make connections andsee personal and social relevance in the science they are learning. Tytleret al. (2008) argue that “students need to see that the work of the scientistand the engineer is at the centre of solving human problems and involvesworking with people”. They also assert that “school science needs to offera vision which shows that it is the physicist or the engineer who is goingto make the major contribution to providing alternative energy sources,animal- and environmentally-friendly food production, new methods ofeliminating disease, and solving the challenges of global warming”(pp. 84 – 85). To conclude, teachers using the videos of scientists talkingabout their work influenced the image students had of scientists andstimulated some students to ‘see themselves in science’ in a way thataddressed the challenge to science education in New Zealand andworldwide. Locally relevant contexts can be used to engage studentsand, as appropriate, encourage them to apply their learning.

Student and Teachers Learn from Scientists Through Videos

A second benefit is that the videos supported students’ and teachers’science learning. Students learnt about how scientists work—the types of


topics they work on, the complex procedures they use and how theypronounce scientific terminology and ‘talk science’ (Lemke, 1990). Inwhole-class and group discussions, the students were then able to ‘talkscience’ with confidence, which is an important aspect of learning andbeing competent in science. Some videos, such the Digestive Systemvideo, display specialist science words on the screen, using them to labeldiagrams. When this was the case, students could see and hear the wordstogether. They experienced science and science learning as multimodalpractices. Both students and teachers appreciated this multimodality andheld a positive view of it as stimulating student interest and promotingstudent understanding (Barak & Dori, 2011; Hoffler & Leutner, 2007).This process was supported by teacher use of structured tasks and probingquestions that helped to focus student attention on salient concepts andrelationships introduced through multimodal means (Yarden & Yarden,2011). To sum up, watching the videos was a multimodal experience thatcaught students’ ears, eyes, and emotions and provided them with morethan one opportunity to encounter and make sense of science ideas.

Teachers reported that they learnt from watching the scientists on thevideos. What they gained included subject content knowledge andspecialised terminologies, how to pronounce science-specific words,ideas about the nature of science and a deeper understanding of scientists’work, and access to new opportunities for presenting science to theirstudents and engaging them in discussion about content. These gains aresupported by other studies reporting on cooperation between teachers andscientists (Dixon & Wilke, 2007; Pop, Dixon & Grove, 2010; Wong &Hodson, 2009), albeit in this instance the gains arose from (repeated)viewing of short videos of scientists rather than direct engagement withthem.

Scientists as Alternative/Authentic Authorities in Classrooms

A third benefit reported by the teachers in this study was that their usingthe educational videos of scientists talking allowed them to step backfrom the role of classroom authority. The students in the study viewed thescientists in the videos as more knowledgeable and trustworthy, withsome students saying that they were more convincing than their teachers.Students having access to alternative authoritative source of informationallowed the teachers to adopt a more facilitative role and focus theirenergy on strategically supporting classroom discussion. This action wassaid to be efficacious, especially for sensitive topics such as the cow bonetransplant. Student reflections on the cow bone lesson signalled their


awareness of the ethical and moral dimensions of the transplant issue,which is important when teaching with socio-scientific issues (Ziedler,Sadler, Simmons & Howes, 2005). The teachers noted that they needed tothink carefully about how they orchestrated such discussions and alsohow they might help students understand that the nature of science andthe role of debate.

According to teacher and student comments, videos that bring virtualscientists into the classroom change the ‘classroom dynamic’ withoutreducing the teacher’s responsibility to think carefully about how to managetheir classes to achieve a better learning. The videos did not replace theteacher, but rather provided an alternative and, in the opinion of somestudents, an authentic source of authority in the classroom. Because thevideos were short, teachers could easily replay them as a whole. Teacherscould pause a video to ask and answer questions and, therefore, were readilyable to check student understanding. By showing the videos more than once,teachers could provide students with multiple opportunities to make sense ofexplanations, actions, diagrams and so on. In this way, the videos ofscientists talking provided new opportunities for teachers to engage theirstudents in discussion about and with science. Teacher use of a video of ascientist talking about sensitive matters such as this might be particularlyvaluable when teaching about socio-scientific issues.

Implications for Teacher Use of the Hub Videos

Each of the teacher focus groups and all the classroom study teachers, onat least one occasion, discussed the benefits of the Hub videos in relationto the themes described above. The role of the videos in providing amultimodal representation of ideas and students being able to see and hearlocal scientists talk about their work and their aspirations for their work’slocal impact/contribution was important. Other benefits derived from theshort duration and digital nature of the videos. This meant that the videoscould readily be included amongst other tasks aimed at building studentengagement with and experience of ideas. More than this, they couldeasily be paused, fast-forwarded and replayed to focus on or skip overparticular sequences and ideas without disrupting the overall flow of alesson, which may not be the case when showing a 30-min video in a 50-min lesson. All this meant that it was comparatively easy for a teacher tobring a scientist into their classroom; they invited these ‘virtual’ scientistsinto their class on a regular basis.

There was evidence that students meeting with a virtual scientistthrough the SLH educational videos can have a similar impact to their


meeting with an actual scientist, as also shown in other research (Rennie,2012). ‘Short and sharp’ videos of scientists talking were an effective,time-efficient and convenient way of supporting student and teacherlearning and teaching, and student engagement in science as a regularteaching event, especially when compared with arranging for an actualscientist to visit the classroom. Future studies might focus in more closelyon the nature and impacts on student engagement and learning fromteacher use of the Hub videos as part of teaching sequences for differenttopics. Considerations such as the criteria that teachers have used in theselection of videos that prove engaging for their class, the use of cueingand questioning techniques to guide viewing and discussion of videomaterials are also possible foci for further research. The value of using acombination of Hub videos and video conferencing with and or classroomvisits by scientists could be explored to determine what each approachcan provide that the other does not. This information would assistteachers to make more considered decisions about when to expend thetime and effort involved in interacting closely with a scientist.

In summary, this paper reports how New Zealand teachers broughtscientists into their classrooms through the use of short videos of NewZealand scientists talking about themselves and their research. Four majorpedagogical themes—videos bringing ‘scientists’ into the classroom,scientists talking about science with local relevance, scientists explainingconcepts using a multitude of modes and scientists as alternative/authenticauthorities in the classroom—were identified. Evidence from theparticipating teachers and students demonstrated that the use of videosof scientists talking about themselves and their work could be aneffective, time-efficient and convenient way of supporting teacherlearning and student engagement in and learning about science andscientists.

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Junjun Chen

Department of Education Policy and LeadershipThe Hong Kong Institute of Education10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong, SARE-mail: [email protected]

Bronwen Cowie

University of WaikatoHamilton, New Zealand


http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11422-012-9386-2

scientists talking to students through videos

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