Chemical Education Journal (CEJ), Vol. 10, No. 2 /Registration No. 10-12/Received April 26, 2008.
URL = http://chem.sci.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/cejrnlE.html

Creating a Best Practice of Thoughtful Classroom - The Story of A Chemistry Master Teacher

Ng Soo Boon, PhD

e-mail: sooboonngyahoo.com

The search for best practice is a major concern of all education service providers. The general belief is these best practices can be emulated by other teachers. A case study has been conducted on four Malaysian master teachers teaching the Revised Secondary Science Curriculum (RSSC), specifically the Physics, Biology and Chemistry subjects. Master teachers are experts instituted by the Ministry of Education Malaysia in the respective subject areas. It can be logically deduced that their teaching could qualify as best practice. The study is of the qualitative paradigm and exploratory in nature. These master teachers or participants of the study were involved in the revision of Science Curriculum carried out by the Curriculum Development Centre, Ministry of Education Malaysia. They were also involved as master trainers for the orientation courses conducted to prepare teachers to use RSSC which was implemented throughout the country in the year 2002. The RSSC advocated the concept of thoughtful teaching. Being heavily involved with the formulation of RSSC, it would be interesting to study if these master teachers practiced thoughtful teaching as they implement the curriculum. Long term observations and interviews were the two main methods of data collection engaged in this study. This paper focuses only on the Chemistry master teacher. However a brief comparison with the Physics and Biology master teachers would be made. The outcome of this study revealed that the Chemistry master teacher developed his own idea of thoughtful teaching. Major principles of thoughtful teaching and learning given by RSSC were adhered to but not the prescriptive models given in RSSC and the related curriculum materials. The gap between what is given by the curriculum materials and the actual practice is apparent. In developing thoughtful teaching, the master teacher was influenced by his preference and personal characteristics. In the case of the Chemistry master teacher his preference is developing strategies of learning. It then seem logical to suggest that to close the gap between intended curriculum and the enacted curriculum, opportunities of communication between the curriculum planners and practicing teachers need to be provided. There is a need to establish relationship between teachers' original ideas and the new ideas suggested by the intended curriculum. This also mean that best practice cannot be emulated wholesale but served only as an exemplar where ideas can be adopted and adapted.

BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Schools need to be promoted as "home of the mind" where power of thought is developed and process of thinking is the main content of curriculum and instruction (Costa, 1991). The need to create thoughtful schools and subsequently thoughtful classroom is perpetuated and compounded by the demand of thinking and skilful workforce anticipated in the 21^st century for the global community as well as for the nation (Mahathir Mohamad, 1991; Swartz & Parks, 1994; Wilen, 1998: Zainal Abidin, 1993; Sharifah maimunah, 2007). It is quite disheartening to know that in many cases including Malaysia there is a conspicuous absence of attention to promoting thinking, inquiry and literacy of thoughtfulness in the actual school classrooms (Beyer, 1988; Brown, 1991; Jemaah Nazir Sekolah Malaysia [Malaysia School Inspectorate], 1999; Kuhnelt & Stradler, 1977; Newmann, 1990 b; Perkins, 1992; Sharifah Maimunah, 2000; Tobin, Tippins & Gallard, 1994). In Malaysia, many of the science lessons including Chemistry lessons were still very much teacher-centered and didactic (Jabatan Pendidikan Wilayah Persekutuan, 1997; Md Shah Bachik, 1999; PPK, 2000; Jemaah Nazir Sekolah Malaysia, 1999; Sharifah Maimunah & Lewin, 1993). In lieu of this, in the year 1999, a new Chemistry curriculum was developed by the Ministry of Education Malaysia. This new curriculum envisaged that Chemical content knowledge is acquired through actively engaging cognitive skills and scientific processes in hands-on and minds-on activities and not through passive lecture method. Thoughtful classroom is created ultimately.

Effective curriculum with its content of what and how does not assure good classroom instruction (Saylor, Alexander & Lewis, 1981), two teachers with contrasting teaching behaviours may produce different learning effects using the same curriculum. Actual educational outcome is the result of both what to teach and how it is taught. This 'how to teach' is generally referred to as the model of teaching. Models of teaching are the "product of the teachers who have beaten a path for us and hacked out some clearings where others can begin their inquiries" (Joyce, Weil & Calhoun, 2000, p.6). The search for exemplary teaching models has generated the area of study on best practice. It is believed that exemplary teaching model can be emulated by others.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF STUDY
Macdonald (1965) propounded that there are four systems working in a classroom: curriculum, teaching, instruction and learning. Curriculum is the course of study; instruction is the actual interaction in the classroom; teaching is the "unique patterns of experiences, values, attitudes, etc., of a given teacher" (Macdonald, 1965, p.5) which affects teaching behaviour; learning on the other hand is the "unique experiences, values, attitudes, etc., of each individual learner" (Macdonald, 1965, p.5) which affects learning. Tracing the thought processes of teachers who are facing curriculum change and examining their interactions with the new curriculum documents to produce classroom instruction is a study of the interfaces between these systems. Through day-to-day instruction, these teachers are the most important instrument for the success of any curriculum innovation (Swartz & Parks, 1994). Although the objectives and activities of any curriculum innovation are targeted at students, in actual fact, teacher always acts as a mediator. How the students experience the new curriculum is mediated by the variety of decisions made by teachers (Remillard, 1999). These decisions are governed by teachers' understanding of the curriculum and consideration of other factors. Remillard (1999) used the word 'enacted curriculum' to describe this implemented curriculum. Enacted curriculum is the actual outcome of any curriculum innovation. To Macdonald (1965), classroom happenings needs to be understood and explored in its actual perspective based on the interaction of the four systems. In this study, the theoretical underpinning of Macdonald is adopted to discover the teaching model.

Hawkins (1966) observed that the best teaching is always well ahead of existing theoretical models; even though theoretical models purport to explain and prescribe instruction. Good teaching owes much to apprenticeship, on-the-job inquiry, discussion, and trial-ceaseless trial. In other words, good teaching practices or teaching models were not always built upon or preceded by a theoretical framework, at least not to the knowledge of the practitioner. Therefore it is logical to deduce that perhaps a more viable and meaningful research strategy is of first identifying outstanding exemplars of effective teaching and analysing what is it about these teaching approaches/models that make them works, followed by efforts of developing theoretical framework in consonant with the pedagogical practise (Hawkins, 1966; Shulman, 1970). Various studies have since been carried out where the focus has been shifted from the majority of teachers to cases of effective teachers or programs (Galton & Eggleston, 1979; Yager, Hidayat & Penick, 1988). Loughran (2001) supported this development of cases by inviting readers to link the account in the case with their own experience. He expressed his confidence that with their accumulating rich contextual knowledge, teachers can be good judge of which outcome could be repeated in their classroom and which could not (Loughran, 2001), in other words, teacher reflects and learns through reading of such cases of exemplary teachings.

METHODOLOGY OF STUDY
This study adopted a qualitative case study paradigm which is exploratory in nature. Case study methodology was chosen because the aim is to examine a contemporary phenomenon from the perspective of teacher, where an in-depth understanding of what the teacher think and do is necessary. Methods of data collection included individual interview with the participant, group interview with participant's students, observation of participant's teaching, questionnaire and participant's thinking journal.

In a case study, the boundary of the unit of study (Merriam, 2001) has to be delineated and its occupant identified. In this study, the occupant in the bounded system is the Chemistry master teacher who has taught Chemistry for 24 years, was involved in the curriculum revision of RSSC, production of training materials for orientation courses and subsequently appointed as resource teacher for RSSC (this Chemistry master teacher would be referred as the participant hereafter). Being a master teacher (guru pakar), the participant has exhibited exemplary performance in teaching of Chemistry. He was selected and appointed by the Ministry of Education through stringent procedures of evaluation. Master teachers are given a higher salary scale compared to the rest of the teachers. Choice of master teachers was made for this study since literature had indicated that outstanding or expert teachers are frequently related to teacher who can affect students to think (Newmann, 1990a, b; Onosko, 1992).

Collection of data ended only when saturation of data was observed, this took approximately 10 months for the participant. Within this duration, the participant was observed six times. The last observation was made 7 months after the previous observation due to some unforeseen circumstances where the participant was not available to be observed. Each observation was conducted on a double-period lesson lasted 80 minutes. Each lesson was video-taped and audio-taped recorded by researcher using a handy video-camcorder and two audio-tape recorders. All the tapes were subsequently transcribed verbatim.

There were two categories of interviews conducted: semi-structured and unstructured. Two semi-structured interviews (each of approximately 2 hours) were carried out in the initial stage of data collection concentrating on participants' understanding of the RSSC, thoughtful learning and other related issues which was raised through participants' response. The unstructured interviews were conducted after each observation of participants' teaching lasting an average of 1 1/2 hours each immediately after the lesson. Issues brought up during these interviews were related to instructional events or behaviour of teachers or students during the lesson observed. However, often it encroached into participant's beliefs and conceptions of thoughtful teaching which were brought up through the semi-structured interview. This kind of interview is equivalent to Patton's (1980) "informal conversational interview" which 'relies entirely on the spontaneous generation of questions in the natural flow of an interaction' (Patton, 1980, p.198) where the persons being talked to may not even realised that they were being interviewed.

Group interviews with participant's students were conducted to seek their opinion of the thoughtfulness of participant's teaching as well as their opinion of characteristic of thoughtful teachers. Two group interviews were conducted, one with each of the participant's class. Each group interview lasted approximately an hour and each group consists of 5 to 6 students. During these interviews, reference was made to the lessons observed by the researcher. Students' interview is good for triangulation and provided insight into other perspectives of the participant's teaching.

Questionnaires were given to participant months before interview and observation to probe participant's initial perception of thoughtful learning and understanding of the curriculum design in the RSSC before he implemented it in school. Participant was also given a thinking journal to record his thinking throughout the period of data collection. Response from this thinking journal was not encouraging. Participant confided to the researcher that he prefer to talk verbally to researcher.

Validity and reliability of study were ensured through triangulation, long term observation, member's check, peer examination and keeping an audit trail. Analysis of data and synthesis of findings were conducted through three stages; these were open coding, axial coding and selective coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Constant comparative method was used as the analytical technique throughout the three stages of data analysis. What researcher has done was creating the participant's model of conception towards creation of thoughtful classroom. Input for this model came from interviewing him and his students as well as observation of his teaching. The analysed data was examined by the participant himself and refined through further discussion with him.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The purpose of this study is to inquire into a master Chemistry teacher's understanding of the concept of thoughtful learning in the RSSC and to investigate his application of the concept in his teaching practices to create an exemplary thoughtful classroom.

This study is designed to answer the following research questions:
i). What is the master Chemistry teacher's conceptions of teaching towards creating thoughtful classroom?
ii). How is the Revised Secondary Chemistry Curriculum being manifested in the classroom?

FINDINGS
The participant of this case study is Lim. In a qualitative study, categories evolved through the critical and creative analysis of data collected. Adopting the coding procedure and paradigm model developed by Strauss and Corbin (1990) for grounded theory, it was discovered that the major factors influencing Lim's creation of a thoughtful classroom are his personal characteristic, his beliefs about teaching and learning, as well as his interpretation and manifestation of teacher's role. The role that he played in his thoughtful classroom is that of a leader-director, facilitator-prober, motivator and autonomy provider. His most prominent personal characteristics discovered through observation and interviewing are systematic, enthusiastic, and confident. Triangulating the different sources of data as well as through axial coding and selective coding where relationship between categories established and the core category with the central story line determined, Lim's model of thoughtful teaching was built. The section below is the condensed story of Lim's creation of a thoughtful classroom.

Lim's creation of thoughtful classroom
Lim is a Chinese man in his early fifties, clean shaven and of medium built. He walks briskly and talks fast. He is a busy man, always on the move attending to meetings in the school and out of school. Lim has taught Chemistry for 24 years. His present school is in a town South of Peninsular Malaysia. Students in this school are of diversified family background and made up of the three main races in Malaysia. Lim is a confident man. He talks with authority and knows his subject well. He spoke without reservation that he enjoys teaching, he enjoys being with students, seeing them "turn around", affecting them, this gives him great satisfaction.
Lim's focus was very much on learning. Based on his constant reference to issues of learning such as evidence of learning, learning output, learning attitudes, time effectiveness, researcher deduced that to Lim, in teaching towards creating a thoughtful classroom, a teacher needs to concern himself or herself primarily with imparting skills of "management of learning" among students as shown in Figure 1. His belief in the importance of expressing one's understanding in own words has resulted in him not giving notes to students but insisting that they made their own notes, taking responsibility in managing own learning by being fully aware of the need of practicing output learning either in written or verbal form. He believes that it is through this exercise of expressing oneself that one can truly understand the concept learnt. Lim's scope of 'management of learning' covers also cultivating learning attitudes such as reflecting upon what has been learnt before embarking on something new, making it a habit to document own learning through making summary of what have been learnt.

Another facet of management of learning is time management. Lim advised students to manage their time well, time for learning must not be sacrificed to carry out other school activities. Besides constantly giving advice, he also showed his allegiance and practice of time management in all the lessons observed. For all activities he gave to students, he would give a time frame, ranging between 5 to 10 minutes. Lim gave time frame to get students started on the activity and to set an estimated range of time for the activity. Time effectiveness in Lim's perspectives was not only about students finishing the work, but teacher achieving the task he has in mind and a training ground for students to manage their time. This was Lim's strategy, to save time; he was fully aware that students might not be able to complete the task within the time frame he gave. Shrewdly, Lim managed to let this time frame helped him to complete the lesson in time. That explains why he was always looking at his watch during lesson. According to him, decision of how long is the time frame is often mentally calculated on the spot and not pre-planned. This definitely needs an experienced mind.

Besides practicing his version of time effectiveness and directly giving advice to students on management of learning, how did Lim affect management of learning among students? Lim thought that clarity is the most important element in teaching. He prided himself in being told by many, students and teachers that his teaching or lecture was clear and well structured. Clear and well-structured lessons facilitated students to manage their learning. In another word, Lim was modelling himself in management of learning, learning must be well-organized and systematic, so Lim presented well-organized and structured lesson. This ideology did not come overnight but went through a time of reformation, a result of reflecting upon his teaching through the years. Lim's lessons were well-organised and structured, a reflection of his systematic personality. The following comment is from one of the researcher's note jotted down immediately after one of observation:

"Lim knew what to do, there was no hiccup or delay in terms of sequence of instruction, every bit of the lesson was well-packed, no time where students did not know what to do. Every part of the lesson seemed to fall in place nicely."

One way where Lim made his lesson systematic and structured was through the use of templates. He created template to facilitate learning, in one of the lessons that was observed ('electrolysis'), he used it frequently, sometimes using hand-outs, sometimes just using the blackboard. Besides using templates, to ensure clarity Lim always repeated the same point in many different forms using different approaches. Does it mean that Lim will always repeat concept a fixed number of time? To this, Lim answered:

"The number of repetition is not fixed, no. when you begin to notice students are not getting it, for example, you ask questions, they didn't answer, you have to put in another way, you cannot repeat exactly the same thing that you say, it will be boring."

Another important prerequisite or condition for inculcating the habitual management of one's learning is preparing the path to engage students, setting the ambience ready for internalisation. Lim believed that the way to engage students is by way of questioning. In the lessons observed, Lim asked a lot of questions and he made an effort to direct the questions to as many students as possible.

In coaxing students to take charge of their own learning, motivation is very important. In the lessons observed, Lim only occasionally gave encouraging words to students and acknowledges their efforts. However, students in the class seemed to be highly motivated, they answered questions promptly, they asked teacher questions when they were in a small group or individually, they were very active in class. During students' group interview, researcher too found them enthusiastic and motivated. When researcher brought out the issue of motivation during member's check, Lim provided researcher with other insights of what he thinks of motivation should be:

"Basically my students are motivated not by expression or words, what they see actually are sincerity, I monitor their progress. My students are very close to me, partly because of my interaction with them outside, I often asked them if their mark have gone up significantly, that they must be studying, those are things that actually motivate them, rather than in the classroom. In the classroom are mainly questions and answers. Maybe the bulk of motivation actually is found outside the classroom and they could actually relate to me very well, they actually come to me and say, well, this is something you have done for me, from what they said, I deduce that it is outside the classroom. They relate to me outside the classroom, even borderline students who are written off by other teachers."

It does seem logical that motivation could be outside the classroom; something which is not within the researcher's scope to record the data.

By putting management of learning, clarity and structured in teaching in the central stage, Lim systematically design lessons around these concepts. He described his teaching strategy as starting with the 'big picture', followed by 'transition' and finally 'reviews'. He placed great emphasis on 'big picture' because he "wants them to see the whole picture, the preview, the overview". 'Big picture' would reflect the final objective that teacher wanted to achieve through the lesson. 'Transition' is "the process to achieve the whole thing, a process before you actually come to the conclusion, it could be by experiment, discussion questioning technique".

In summary, being a pragmatic man, Lim places management of learning as the focus of teaching towards creating a thoughtful classroom. In preparing students to manage their learning, he ensured clarity and structure in his own teaching through a strategy of 'big picture - process - review'. To assist management of learning he engaged students fully in the learning and he motivated students through his constant care and concern for them. Figure 1 depicts his conception of thoughtful teaching.

Figure 1: Lim's Conception of Thoughtful Teaching

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In answering the research questions put forth through this study, researcher found herself confronting a novel situation. Participant of this study made up his own mind about what is a thoughtful classroom and implemented the curriculum according to this conception. Analysis of the participant's conception and instructional strategy discovered that broad principles stated in the curriculum material of RSSC concerning thoughtful learning and inquiry discovery approach was adhered to but not the suggested models or strategies with given and fixed steps and sequence. Participant detested following given sequence in his teaching, he preferred to think out his own ways. The broad and general guidelines given in the Curriculum Specification of RSSC provided him with the freedom to manoeuvre. He has in fact expanded his understanding of thoughtful learning to include idea of management of learning which is not stated in RSSC. Lim has added his own dimension into the concept of thoughtful learning. He has created his own model of thoughtful teaching.

In the bigger study involving four master teachers (one male Chemistry, one female Biology, one male Biology and one female Physics), data was collected through the same method and analysed through similar procedures. The findings were similarly intriguing, each of these master teachers displayed their own dimensions of thoughtful learning which were not provided in RSSC. By attributing the properties and dimensions of each of these conceptions, it could be deduced that the various ideas brought up through the four different conceptions of thoughtful teaching are in fact the various aspects or elements of thoughtful teaching. Each of these participants had directed their attention to different elements of thoughtful teaching guided by their preference and prominently displayed personal characteristics. The Biology female teacher strived to prepare the best possible environment and ambiance for thoughtful teaching, she is a very motherly person. The Biology male teacher designed his teaching around building up students' character, the other perspective of thoughtful, he talks philosophically and believes that education is not only about Biology. The Physics female teacher actively seek ideas to improve her teaching, her focus in on strategies of teaching, she strives for excellence.

The main conclusion that can be made from this study is that there are variations in the interpretation of the curriculum even among teachers who were involved in curriculum development. Participant of this study created his own conception of thoughtful teaching influenced by his personal characteristic as well as his prior beliefs about teaching and learning. It can be postulated that if further studies of similar nature are conducted on other teachers, other elements of thoughtful teaching might appear. This study has also indicated that the case study methodology adopted is a useful tool to help teacher conceptualise on their teaching models.

IMPLICATION OF FINDINGS
Findings from this study indicated that variation in interpretation of curriculum even among teachers who were heavily involved in curriculum development is inevitable. Since such idiosyncrasies of conception of teaching and instructional strategies will prevail anyway, curriculum should be built upon more comprehensive, bigger idea or principle and more theoretically founded to allow for flexibility in interpretations and not succumb to strict and rigid steps and procedures. Teacher needs to personalise these new curriculum ideas and assistance should be rendered to help them to concretise and conceptualise their ideas. Sessions of brainstorming during orientation courses prior to implementation of the curriculum can be conducted to let teachers bring out their views on what do they think of the curriculum innovation (where general, basic or underlying principles of the curriculum innovation have been given first); for example, how thoughtful learning can be achieved, much like what the researcher was doing with the participant. Teachers' conceptions of the idea could be built up slowly through probing and discussion. Through this way, curriculum planners could subtly introduce new ideas too. The main idea is to let teachers feel that the conception come from them, it is theirs and their ideas are worthwhile. At the end of the sessions, various conceptions or strategies might emerged; if all of this leads to achieving the same objectives, it should all be accepted and used as samples.

Among the factors affecting the creating of thoughtful classroom is personal characteristic. Particular personal characteristic enhances particular instructional approach. It is because Lim is a systematic person, therefore he teaches the way it is. This being the case, personal characteristic could be considered a necessary component in any instructional approaches. Changing the teacher's characters is not something easily done. However, teachers can be enlightened on this matter, they need to realise and acknowledge that their personal characteristic plays a part in deciding how to teach and in determining the effectiveness of their teaching. They need to know what are the personal characteristics needed for the particular instructional approach. If they are convinced of the usefulness of a certain educational idea and they have a will to pursue it, perhaps they might slowly be encouraged to change their personal characteristic. Curriculum developers and teacher trainer need to take cognisance of this factor. It would be beneficial for teachers too if this factor of personal characteristic is discussed during professional development courses.

The bigger study on master teachers' implementation of RSSC has managed to produce four distinct cases of teaching. Each has a story to tell. Each story is different. The unique individuality of each case pointed towards the worthiness of developing cases of teaching. With enough cases developed it could well be a great reservoir of knowledge on practice of teaching. Teacher's trainers, curriculum developers or other relevant parties could definitely benefit from this practice of developing cases. By making these "personal practical knowledge" explicit, teachers are also taking control of their own self development (Day, 1999).

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