SCIENCE TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT THE INTENDED AND ACTUAL IMPACT= S

HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOU= T THE INTENDED AND ACTUAL IMPACTS OF STANDARDS-BASED REFORMS

Joseph W. Sha= ne, Shippensburg Univers= ity of Pennsylvania

Abstract

In this qualitative inquiry, I characterized relationships between high school scie= nce teachers’ beliefs about teaching, about standards-based reforms, and,= in particular, about Indiana’s Academic Standards for Science (IASS). Focus group interviews with 23 teachers from urban, rural, and suburban districts in Indiana were the primary data-collection method and both hermeneutics and narrative= representation guided the inquiry by defining my role as the voice of the participating teachers, by locating the teachers’ beliefs within their specific contexts, and by representing the results in a storied form unified by plot= s. Based on the analysis, I concluded that (a) a triad consisting of affective, preparative, and scient= ifically oriented dimensions could be used to characterize the participants̵= 7; beliefs about teaching, (b) teachers with affective or preparative beliefs took neu= tral stances toward IASS, (c) scientifically oriented teachers believed IASS contradicted their work, (d) those with affective-prep= arative philosophies were willing to compromise their autonomy and curricular depth= in order to implement IASS, and (e) teachers almost universally recommended broader, flexible standards to allow more autonomy in making curricular decisions, to better reflect scientific inquiry in their classrooms, and to promote continuity across the high scho= ol science curriculum.

Significance and Objectives of t= he Study

In 2000, the Indiana State Board of Education adopted Indiana’s Academic Standards for Science (IASS), a policy document derived primarily from the American Association for the Advancement of Science̵= 7;s (AAAS) Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 1993). This was in accordance with the state legislature’s general mandate to write standards which were “world-class, clear, concise, jargon-free, and by grade-level” (Indiana Department of Education [IDOE], 2007). At present, the high-school versions of IASS are primarily content standards (Ravitch, 1995) listing the topics to include in traditio= nal subject areas such as biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science. Stand= ards for pedagogy – how to teach – and classroom-based performance standards (Ravitch, 1995) for gauging students’ success on specific t= opics were not mandated at the time of this research. All public school science teachers in Indiana are required to align their existing curriculums to the= se content standards and state-level oversight= takes two forms: (a) science questions integrated into Indiana’s Statewide Testing of Educational Progress (ISTEP+) and (b) pending end-of-course assessments (ECA) for high school science classes (IDOE, 2007).

<= /span>Previous research suggests that disparities often exist between the intentions of educational policies such as standards and the manners in which those polic= ies are interpreted and implemented by classroom teachers and district administ= rators (Cronin-Jones, 1991; Hill, 2001; Moss & Schutz, 2001; Ogawa, Sandholtz, Martinez-Flores, & Scribner, 2003; Sandholtz, Ogawa, & Scribner, 20= 04; Spillane, 1998, 2004; Spillane & Callahan, 2000). This corpus of prior research s= ets a clear precedent for applying qualitative methodologies to characterize teachers’ beliefs about educational policies. Desimone and Le Floch (2004) and Fenstermacher (2002) suggested that such research was necessary = in our current, policy-driven environment, whereas Pajares (1992), Bryan (2003= ), Cuban (1992, 1999), and Halliday (2002) have argued more generally for teachers’ beliefs as an essential construct in educational research. Adams and Krockover (1998), An= derson and Helms (2001), and Collins (1998, 2004) echoed these sentiments within t= he contexts of science education policy and standards-based reforms.

Since teac= hers are largely responsible for implementing change in the classroom, the consisten= cy between their beliefs and the goals of educational policies should be addre= ssed whenever policies are drafted, implemented, and evaluated for efficacy. In this study, I examined the beliefs that group= s of high school science teachers in Indiana had about science teaching and about both general aspects of standards-based reforms and, in particular, IASS. The following research question guided these efforts: What are Indiana high sch= ool science teachers’ beliefs about the intended and actual impacts of standards-based reforms?

Theory G= uiding Practice: Philosophical Hermeneutics and Narrative

As discuss= ed in the next section, focus group interviews provided data that were consistent with my goal of describing the participants’ beliefs about teaching a= nd about standards-based reforms. My roles in the research process included moderati= ng focus group discussions, interpreting the teachers’ responses, and communicating my interpretations of their beliefs in a fair and meaningful = way. Thus, my role was ultimately that of a spokesperson or voice for groups of = high school science teachers in In= diana.

As such, I argue for Gad= amer’s (1976, 1996, 2000) philosophical hermeneutics or the “art of understanding” as an appropriate theoretical framework. Philosophical hermeneutics arose from Gadamer’s critique of early twentieth-century scholars in the human sciences (Gei= steswissenschaften) who sought to emulate the perspectives and methods of those in the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften): objectivity, universality, and prediction. Gadamer argued instead that the human sciences should focus on integrating the perspectives of the observer= and the observed en route to understanding the local, historical contexts within which phenomena occur. Philosophical hermeneutics describes understanding as an event, mediated by language, between an interpreter and that which is interpreted. These linguistically mediated, or dialogic, understandings apply to interpretatio= ns of texts, works of art, and everyday conversations between people. = In the education literature, Gadamer’s writings have been applied to Hallida= y’s (2002) comparisons between philosophical hermeneutics and Lakatos’ philosophy of science, Garrison’s (1996) synthesis of Dewey and Gadam= er to produce a notion of democratic listening, Stewart’s (1983) descrip= tion of interpretive listening within the field of communication education, and Brooks’ (1982) integration of hermeneutic principles into art educati= on research.

&= nbsp; Polkinghorne (1988, 1995) provided similar arguments to those of Gadamer and suggested t= hat researchers in the human sciences present the results of their inquiries in narrative, or storied, forms structured around one or more plots which unify the data into a whole. A narrative analysis seeks to produce stories from t= he various elements of data rather than treating the data as stories from which researchers extract generalizable assertions. The emplotted narrative represents the data in a comprehensive, fair, and plausible manner while building to one or more conclusions or denouements within the text, inviting alternative interpretations, and suggesting a course of action. This holist= ic thinking via narrative analysis, Polkinghorne (1988, 1995) argued, reflects= the fundamental nature of human understanding. Similar statements have been mad= e about hermeneutic inquiry (Moss, 1994) and about narrative representation of qualitative data, particularly with respect to teacher-centered educational research and policy studies where power differentials exist between policy makers and those responsible for implementing policy in actual classrooms (= Clandinin & Connelly, 1986, 2000; Conle, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003; Doyle, 1997; Elbaz-Luwisch, 1997; Fenstermacher, 1997, 2002; Goodson, 1997).

My study was designed to= elicit the beliefs that 23 high school science teachers in = Indiana had about science teaching and= about the corresponding impacts of specific standards documents such as IASS and Benchmarks. The primary sources of data were focus group interv= iews that were, like all conversations, dialogic and hermeneutic phenomena. It w= as also appropriate to account for the schools and districts where the teachers worked, the people with whom they worked on a daily basis, and the specific characteristics and expectations of IASS. This contextual information was essential for gaining insights into their beliefs about standards and the corresponding impacts on their work. Thus, = the goals for the research were consistent with both Gadamer’s philosophi= cal hermeneutics and narrative representation of qualitative data.

Participants, Data Collection, and Narrative Representation

To enhance sampling variability, I solicited the participation of science departments = from “suburban,” “rural,” and “urban” distri= cts within Indiana, using categories established by IDOE (2004). Three high schools were eventu= ally chosen for this study for which there was significant variation with respec= t to geographic location, school population, ethnic profiles of the student body, socioeconomic status (SES) as measured by free- and reduced-lunch statistic= s, scores on standardized testing (ISTEP+), student migration or mobility patterns, size of the science departments, and degree of specialization of = the science teachers.

Twenty-thr= ee teachers eventually agreed to participate in the study – out of a potential sample population of 33 teachers – as a result of approxima= tely six months of solicitation including my attendance at department meetings, individual appointments, and correspondence via e-mail and telephone. In th= ese proceedings, I use the pseudonyms “Suburban,” “Rural,R= 21; and “Urban” to ensure confidentiality.

I obtained information about the teachers’ educational and professional backgrou= nd at the beginning of the first interview session of what turned out to be a two-year data collection period. In the remainder of this section, I outline the school (IDOE, 2004) and teacher profiles, I describe the two interview protocols that guided the focus group sessions, and I summarize the manner = in which I transformed the various data sources into a single narrative.

Suburban High Schoo= l is located less than 50 miles from a major metropolitan area. More than 1800 students were registered at the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year: 94% white, 2% Hispanic, 1% black, 1% Asian, and 1% multiracial. Ten percent of = the student body received a free or reduced-price lunch and recent testing data indicated that Suburban’s students scored above state averages on all components of the previous year’s ISTEP+ exam. Eighty percent of the class of 2002 had gone on to attend a two- or four-year college; a figure t= hat was stable for the five previous years. Between 2003 and 2004, eight studen= ts transferred out of Suburban while 18 students transferred in. Suburban had = 13 science teachers with levels of experience ranging from one year to over 30 years. The 10 teachers who participated in this study tended to specialize = in one subject area.

Rural High School is located in a small town approximate= ly 50 miles from Suburban. In 2003-2004, slightly less than 500 students were enrolled: 96% white and 4% Hispanic. Twenty-two percent of the student body received a free or reduced-price lunch. Recent ISTEP+ data indicated that t= hese students scored above state averages in all disciplines, and that these sco= res have increased over the past three years. Sixty-seven percent of the gradua= ting class from 2002 attended a two- or four-year college, which is consistent w= ith previous years. Seven students transferred into Rural during the 2003-2004 academic year while no students transferred to other districts. All three science teachers at Rural= High School agreed = to participate in the study.

Urban High School is one of several high schools located within the limits of a large Indiana city. At= the beginning of the 2003-2004 academic year, more than 2000 students were enrolled: 68% black, 25% white, 5% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and 1% multiracial. Seventy-four percent of Urban’s students received a free or reduced-p= rice lunch and recent data from the ISTEP+ exam indicated that Urban’s students performed below the state average on all components of this exam. Seventy-five percent of the class of 2002 attended a two- or four-year coll= ege, which was a significant increase from past years. During the 2003-2004 scho= ol year, 227 students transferred out of Urban, with approximately half of tho= se students moving to schools outside the district. During the same time period, 174 students transferred into Urban. Seventeen science teachers were employed at Urban, 10 of whom volunteered for the study. Like Suburban’s science teachers, they tended to specialize in one subject area.

I conducted two rounds of focus group interviews (Morgan, 1993; Patton, 2002; Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990) with three to five teachers per session at their respective schools. Semi-structured interview protocols guided the fo= cus group sessions and included descriptions of the general purpose of the research, the teachers’ roles as participants in a focus group, my ro= le as moderator, the specific, research-related prompts and questions, and teachers’ critiques of the focus group sessions.

With respect to the research-related prompts and questions, we examined six gene= ral areas. The first session included the teachers’ experiences with stan= dards at their schools, their beliefs about how those experiences impacted their work, their beliefs about what standards were originally designed to do, and changes that they would recommend to the current standards. The follow-up sessions inquired about their personal roles in and goals for science teach= ing and the relationship between their roles, goals, and IASS. The initial and follow-up interview protocols are shown in Figures 1 and 2.

= 1. Purposes of the study and what the study is not designed to do.

= a. = To describe how you are integrating standards into your curriculum.

= b. To describe what you believe standards are designed to do.

= c. = To describe what impacts standards are having. =

= d. To lend insight into the standards movement in Indiana.

= e. = The study is not designed to be an evaluation of how effective teachers are with integrating standards.

= f. = The study is not designed to be an evaluation of how consistent their actions are with the goals of the state, local district, or school.

= 2. Description of their roles as participants.

= a. = Tell your story as honestly and completely as possible.

= b. Build upon each other’s responses.

= c. = Ask for clarification from either me or fellow participants.

= d. Inform me about ways to improve the interview protocol.

= 3. Guidelines for their participation in a focus group.

= a. = Speak as clearly as possible and one at a time.

= b. The goal is a focused group discussion rather than a series of separate conversations.

= c. = Paper is provided if you would like to take notes or to write something you want = to inform me about confidentially.

= 4. Description of my role as the moderator of the focus group.

= a. = Take care of details: scheduling, audiotapes, paperwork.

= b. Ask clear questions to maintain focus on relevant issues.

= c. = Protect your confidentiality and confidentiality of the school.

= d. Provide feedback as to success in addressing relevant issues.

= 5. General wording of major questions and probes.

= a. = Describe for us the activities you have been involved with to incorporate standards = into your work.

= b. In what ways are standards impacting your work?

= c. = What do believe are the goals of educational standards?

= d. In what ways are these goals being achieved?

= e. = What do you believe are the future of educational standards?

= f. = What changes would you recommend to the educational standards?

Figure 1. Initial focus group interview guide

1. Purposes of follow-up interview.

= a. = To extend some ideas from the previous interview.

= b. To describe what you believe about teaching, teaching science, and your role a= s a science teacher and how standards relate to these beliefs.

= c. = To solicit your recommendations as to how I should disseminate the research.

&nb= sp;

2. Provide time to write responses on the During/Post interview notes sheet.

a. Have teachers label sheet with the words roles, goal= s, and relationship to

standards.

b. Ask teachers to write words they use to describe their rol= e as a science

teacher= .

c. Ask teachers to write their goals for science teachi= ng.

d. Ask teachers to write the relationships between their roles, goals, and

IASS.

e. Provide time to record individual responses.

3. Discuss and clarify responses from written comments.

a. Ask teachers to explain their written responses.

b. As before, build upon explanations of others and ask for c= larification.

c. What words do you use to des= cribe your role as a science teacher?

d. What are your goals for science teaching?

e. What is the relationship between the standards and your ro= les and &nb= sp; = goals?

f. What should I do with this research? With whom should I share the = &nb= sp; results?

4. Ending the session.

a. Comment that this will likely be the final meeting for research

&nb= sp; purposes.

&nb= sp; b. Solicit any final comments that they would like to make.

c. Thank them for their participation.= &= nbsp; &nbs= p;

Figure 2. Follow-up focus group interview guide

I audiotap= ed and transcribed each session and, from these data, I wrote chronological case records for e= ach school, which consisted of condensed versions of the interview transcripts = coupled with commentary from my six research notebooks. I then constructed a one-pa= ge summary table (Bertrand, Brown, & Ward, 1992) for each teacher based on= the research-related prompts and questions shown in the interview protocols. Us= ing these summary tables, chronological case records, school and teacher profile data, IASS, and Benchmarks, I constructed a single narrative to represent the voices of the 23 participants in a fair and comprehensive manner. Four expe= rienced qualitative researchers audited the narrative to check for accuracy, comprehensiveness, and comprehensibility.

The narrat= ive was approximately 40 pages and it included a minimal amount of excerpted interview data. I developed the plot in an “inside-out” fashion beginning with th= e relationships between the participants’ personal teaching philosophies and standards-based reforms, continuing with their respective school contexts, = and ending with their visions of standards which extended beyond their personal philosophies and current school environments. Figure 3 is an outline of the narrative and, since it is beyond the scope of these proceedings to present= the entire narrative, I expand upon the outline and summarize the conclusions in the next section.

= ;

1. Personal Teaching Philos= ophies and IASS: Neutral to Contradict= ory

Relationships.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; a. Suburban’s biology teachers.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; b. Rural’s science teachers.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; c. Chemistry, physics, and earth science teachers.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; d. Urban’s biology teachers.

&nbs= p; 2. Students and Administration: One Distinction and One Pattern.

&nbs= p;

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; a. Urban High School.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; b. Suburban = High School.

&nbs= p; c. Rural High School.

3. Visions of Standards and the Nature of Compromise.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; a. Teachers willing to compromise.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; b. Teachers reluctant to compromise.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; c. Teachers’ recommendations for changing IASS.

Figure 3. Outline of narrative rep= resentation

Summary and Conclusions

In this research, I transformed the interview transcripts and supporting docum= entation into a single narrative to demonstrate how I came to understand the data an= d to communicate this understanding in a fair and comprehensive manner. As with = any narrative analysis, my conclusions were embedded within the story rather th= an being presented as ex post facto assertions. Given the space limitations of these proceedings, however, I si= mply offer six conclusions from my analysis and provide several corroborating excerpts.

First, I argue that a three-part typology can be used to adequately and comprehens= ively describe the participants’ personal beliefs about teaching. For the purposes of this study, I propose the terms scientifically oriented, affective, and preparative as a triad that charac= terizes both similarities and differences in teaching philosophy. Teachers with scientifically oriented philosophi= es tended to describe their work as portraying the dynamic nature of science, science as a way to solve problems, and science as a way to understand relationships between concepts, classroom observations, experiments, and everyday experiences. For example, Tom, a biology teacher at Suburban High Schoo= l, gave the following description:

A goal would be to help guide stude= nts as they do science is one thing I wrote down [during the beginning of the f= ollow-up session] and to guide them to the point where they can think and they can b= egin to answer questions using scientific methods…To actually be asking a question and then to set out to research what is know about it to begin wit= h at this point and then take the next step and try to figure out, OK, how can I= add to that body of knowledge of what’s known about?

By affective, I refer to those philos= ophies that focus on students’ emotions, preferences, or interests. In one c= ase, Arlen, a biology colleague of Tom’s, viewed his role as that of a counselor to his students:

One thing I do stress in my class i= s my students are first. This has nothing to do with biology. My students come w= ay before biology does. I think in today’s society, we need more of that= . I’d like to see a view of a school where every teacher was a counselor instead = of the counselors being in a situation where they’re tied down to a bunc= h of paperwork and don’t get a lot done. I’m thinking if you had something like that you could eliminate large percentages of substance abuse and some other things that go on. That’s first. Along the way and, you know, the more they know you care about them, the more they care about what= you know.

Preparative describes teachers who view their work as preliminary to something else, be= it a pending classroom or standardized exam, the next course, college, a future career, or participation in society. As an example here, consider Ted, a bi= ology and general science teacher at Urban High School:

First of all, I think of how to implement the standards and then I decide what to teach. I think that’= ;s my role as a classroom teacher and also then to evaluate and then to identi= fy strengths and weaknesses. And then the last two here I give a little more attention to and that’s to encourage and develop career interests. I think that’s one of our goals that we really need to focus because wh= at are we here for? We’re here to help society improve itself and make it better. And also I think another goal that we have as educators is to inform the students so that they become self-sufficient and contributors to societ= y. Self-reliant, self-sustaining contributors.

Second, I suggest that this triad applies across the three geographically and socio-economically diverse school environments and across the significant r= ange of teaching experience exhibited by the participants in this study. A Venn diagram in Figure 4 illustrates the distribution of the 23 participating teachers within the triad. As shown, nine teachers demonstrated specificall= y scientifically oriented philosophi= es, while four others coupled scientific philosophies with the preparative and affecti= ve dimensions. Three teachers had strictly affective beliefs whereas four showed clear p= reparative philosophies. The remaining three teachers blended affective and preparati= ve dimensions.

Figure 4. Distribution of teachers within the triad of teaching beliefs (R, U, and S superscripts indicate the school in which each teacher practices).

It is wort= hwhile to note that no single dimension of teaching was endemic to a particular sc= hool and no correlations existed between the teachers’ philosophies and th= eir years of classroom experience. Therefore, I suggest that my subsequent conc= lusions are generalizable to the three participating schools.

Third, in general, I found that teachers who described their roles in and goals for science teaching in affective o= r preparative terms tended to take a= neutral stance toward the impact o= f IASS in that IASS neither directly supported nor detracted from their work. = Perhaps it is not surprising that Arlen did not emphasize IASS in his teaching due to his affective role as a counselor. = For him, IASS were largely unnecess= ary since textbooks had previously defined course content:

To me, it’s silly to have= the standards when we’ve already been told here are the textbooks you can choose from for the state of = Indiana and then the school board says here are the school books you can use. OK, s= o if we’re using that book, they’ve already said that book is sufficient. <= /span>

Approximat= ely half of the participating teachers took a genuinely neutral stance toward I= ASS. These teachers tended to view standards as the context or framework for the= ir teaching rather than as a central element of their teaching.

Fourth, teachers who were classified as more scientifically oriented believed that IASS conflicted with or contradicted what they were trying to achieve in their classrooms. Hans, a physics teacher at Suburban, lamented that IASS overemphasized content to the detriment of more process-oriented scientific skills:

You’re not serving your students well by teaching everything there [in IASS] in an artificial way. That’s one thing that bothers= me about the standards is that they’re so content oriented rather than s= kill oriented. I think as scientists, we want the students to be able to gather data, to analyze data, to graph it, to write mathematic models or just the ability to take an experiment from the beginning to the end and be able to = draw conclusions and develop basic models of understanding. Those broader ideas = of science are just totally lost in the content details of the standards.

Like Hans,= scientifically oriented teachers of= ten remarked that their work with Indiana’s science standards conflicted = with the less-is-more, inquiry-based approach to instruction, which they believed reflected genuine scientific activities and which was supported by both educational research and national science education documents such as Benchmarks. For the scientifically oriented half of our group, IASS emphasized isolated facts rather than general and interconnected themes of science.

Fifth, I suggest that teachers with primarily affective or preparative philosophies ten= ded to believe that consistency within and between schools and preparation for tes= ts, college, workforce, and citizenship were worth compromising some of their personal autonomy or decision-making ability and trading curricular depth f= or breadth. Emilie, a second-year biology teacher at Urban with an affective philosophy, argued that standards were necessary to provide a similar education to students from different socioeconomic backgrounds:

Now, I may personally think tha= t I could do a better job coming up with the standards, but it [IASS] gives me a come-back place. = Am I being consistent to my professional responsibility to teach biology to high school students?...When you take biology, this is what you should know at t= he end of it. And so, whether you are rich and you live in this area or you’re poor and you live in this area or you’re middle and you = live in this area…no matter what your background is, you should get this e= ducation.

For the mo= re scientifically oriented teachers, = however, to compromise meant to make reluctant sacrifices in their ability to inspire students by sharing areas of personal expertise; to accurately portray scie= nce in their classrooms; and to promote deep and lasting understanding of a sma= ll number of essential concepts. Tom, the scientifically oriented biology teacher from Suburban, thought that IASS might actually harm students in the long term:

Truth of it right now is I prob= ably spend more time worrying about standards than I should. I think a lot of our standards came from the industrial world and wanting this standard base of knowledge, but I think it’s interesting to me. If you truly have the standards do what they seem to be intended to do is turn out this homogeneo= us biology student. All of a sudden you have lost all of the diversity that was where new ideas are going to come from. I just have this internal conflict going on that if we distill this [I= ASS] down to this list, we have killed a lot of the good ideas that might have c= ome out. Maybe it’s my ecology background saying we’re extinguishing diversity here and that’s not a good thing any way you look at itR= 30;I think if we really all just decided to do what it seems like the state want= s to do and to teach this checklist, I think we would actually do damage to the students we turn out.

Sixth, and finally, I note that the 23 teachers almost universally recommended few= er, more general standards to accurately reflect elements of their teaching philosophies; to provide more flexibility in meeting their students’ needs; to promote areas of personal expertise; or to develop continuity acr= oss the high school science curriculum. Even those teachers who strongly suppor= ted IASS made such recommendations.

Implications for Standards-Driven Reform Environments

In her arg= uments for national standards in all subject areas, Ravitch (1995) suggested that content standards, specifying what students should know, were the sine qua non – or indispensa= ble part – of education reform. Once written, Ravitch (1995) recommended = that exams, textbooks, teacher training, and professional development activities= be aligned to those content standards. Indiana has certainly enacted many of these recommendations, especially with respec= t to establishing content standards for high school science courses and piloting ECA’s aligned to those standards. Based on the results of this resear= ch, however, I have some concerns about the implications of the current emphasi= s on content standards in Indiana<= /st1:State>.

Content standards, by themselves and by definition, cannot reflect the broad range = of teaching philosophies that were encountered in this study. Content standards and, in particular, IASS are not designed to be philosophical documents. Based on their responses, however, = I argue that approximately half of the 23 participating teachers believed that IASS had largely negative impacts = on their goals for and roles in science teaching. Thus, IASS may not be philosophical by design, but they appear to have philosophical implications for many of the teachers in this study, particul= arly those with scientifically oriented<= /i> philosophies.

Ravitch (1= 995) also recommended that schools and teachers be given a significant amount of freedom “to do things their own way” as long as high student ac= hievement is their top priority. Again, based on the results summarized in the previo= us section, I argue that the participating teachers did not believe that they = had such freedom. Even the teachers who supported the intended goals of IASS – statewide curricular consistency and preparation for college and the workforce – tended to recommend broader standards to provide more flexibility and autonomy.

Neither Ra= vitch (1995) nor IDOE (2007) suggested that content standards drive every aspect = of teaching and learning. IASS, for example, are not intended to be a prescriptive curriculum (IDOE, 2007), but rather a document that teachers can adapt to their current course structure= s. I suggest that teachers’ reactions to IASS, however, are more complex than might be expected, and that many believe they are compromising their beliefs about teaching by adapting to Indiana’s science standards, although I doubt these effects were intentional.

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