ABSTRACT
The learning of the teachers involved in the research project, the Learning in Science Project (Teacher Development), is analysed in this chapter. The data were analysed to give an overview of the adult learning process as it relates to the teachers’ learning or teacher development in the study. The model, based on an earlier version (Bell and Gilbert, 1994) has three central features. First, it is possible to describe three main types of development for the teachers involved in the research-social, personal and professional development. Social development as part of teacher development involves the renegotiation and reconstruction of what it means to be a teacher (of science, for example). It also involves the development of ways of working with others that will enable the kinds of social interaction necessary for renegotiating and reconstructing what it means to be a teacher of science. Personal development as part of teacher development involves each individual teacher constructing, evaluating and accepting or rejecting for himself or herself the new socially constructed knowledge about what it means to be a teacher (of science, for example), and managing the feelings associated with changing their activities and beliefs about science education, particularly when they go ‘against the grain’ (Cochran-Smith, 1991) of the current or proposed socially constructed and accepted knowledge. Professional development as a part of teacher development involves not only the use of different teaching activities but also the development of the beliefs and conceptions underlying the activities. It may also involve learning some science.
