Samson NashonUniversity of British Columbia | UBC · Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education
Samson Nashon
Doctor of Education (EdD)
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61
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Introduction
Students' metacognition; students' ways f knowing in the sciences; contextual teaching and learning pedagogies.
Publications
Publications (61)
Self-regulated learning (SRL) and culturally responsive teaching (CRT) research, although from different viewpoints, both show instructional practices that enhance student engagement. This study examined the integration of self-regulated learning promoting practices (SRLPPs) and culturally responsive pedagogical practices (CRPPs) in the classroom c...
Research shows that culturally diverse students are often disengaged in multicultural classrooms. To address this challenge, literatures on self-regulated learning (SRL) and culturally responsive teaching (CRT) both document practices that foster engagement, although from different perspectives. This study examined how classroom teachers at schools...
In this chapter, we report on outcomes of our long experience investigating student mathematics and science learning and teachers’ teaching in Kenya. We use an example of a case study that investigated student learning and consequent influence on teachers’ teaching to exemplify how student learning can transform the way teachers teach. Features or...
This paper reports on K–12 teachers’ perspectives about their experiences of facing religious oppositions while teaching science in elementary and secondary classrooms in a large urban city in western Canada. The study stems from a larger doctoral research, which drew on the principles of a qualitative case study approach and employed phenomenograp...
In Kenya, student performance in sciences and Mathematics is still low compared to artoriented disciplines. The poor performance has affected not only the Girl child’s interest in these disciplines but also the number of girls that take STEM-oriented programs at tertiary levels. Several mitigating measures have been enacted although the situation h...
Further research is needed on how to foster students’ engagement in today’s 21st century multicultural learning environments. What we know is that students’ perceptions of classroom environments, including of learning activities (e.g., as interesting, enjoyable, important, and supportive), are related to their engagement in those contexts. Also, st...
Multicultural classrooms contexts can pose challenges to students, and teachers, in relation to supporting students’ learning and success. Research on culturally responsive teaching (CRT) and self-regulated learning (SRL) both identify pedagogical practices that support student engagement and learning outcomes; however, from different perspectives....
One goal in undergraduate science education is to facilitate skills that help students become equipped to participate in research. Although not all students will go on to become researchers, the skills that are key to independent research are essential for any mature learner. Participating in research necessarily requires one be to be critical, sol...
Analysis of key findings of a study that investigated six Ugandan teachers' perceptions of contextual influences on sexuality discourses revealed that while there is some form of sex education in schools and while teachers are very enthusiastic about its implementation, it is largely constrained by conflicting social stances held by various stakeho...
This study investigated Kenyan science teachers’ pedagogical transformations, which manifested as they enacted and experienced a reformed contextualized science curriculum in which students’ learning experiences were critical catalysts of teacher change. Twelve high school teachers voluntarily participated in the study and were interviewed about th...
This paper explores how a learning theory enriched a collaborative teacher
inquiry discourse where lesson study was adopted as the educational action
research model to promote teacher professional development. Four Grade 9–10
biology teachers in Singapore drew from variation theory to collaboratively plan
and teach new genetics content as part of t...
This exploratory qualitative study reports on the perspectives of students belonging to campus clubs at one Canadian university who conduct advocacy activities on issues that relate to Africa. Our study focuses on a particular social action (advocacy) that takes place in a particular social site (university campus), with the aim to critically exami...
The potential of a theory of variation-framed learning study, a teacher professional development approach, to help teachers overcome curricular and pedagogical challenges associated with teaching new science curricula content was explored. With a group of Singapore teachers collaboratively planning and teaching new genetics content, phenomenographi...
Attempts to make classroom science relevant to the real worlds of students can be enhanced by understanding their ways of learning and knowing. This study, which investigated East African (EA) students’ ways of knowing in science discourses, discusses the development, validation, and application of an instrument to assess EA students’ disposition f...
Analysis of views from a select group of Kenyan science teachers regarding the effect of student learning experiences on their teaching after implementing a contextualized science unit revealed that the teachers' (a) literal interpretation and adherence to the official curriculum conflicted with the students' desires to understand scientific phenom...
Despite the centrality of the informal manufacturing sector (Jua Kali) to the Kenyan society and its richness in scientific phenomena, there is no strong link between activities in the Jua Kali and school science. And, although there has been an ongoing public discourse in Kenya to industrialize, this hope is unlikely without connecting classroom s...
This paper reports on an instrumental case study that employed narrative and teacher change methodological and analytical frameworks to investigate Kenyan science teachers' views of the effect of student learning on their teaching. Interpretation of the teachers' views revealed that they: 1) gained an increased awareness and understanding of their...
Science, engineering and mathematics-related disciplines have relied heavily on a researcher's ability to visualize phenomena under study and being able to link and superimpose various abstract and concrete representations including visual, spatial, and temporal. The spatial representations are especially important in all branches of biology (in de...
This paper reports on a study that employed a case study approach to investigate students' science learning processes in a problem-solving discourse by focusing on the question: how are student self-efficacy, metacognition, learning and analogical communication related? The study engaged high school physics students in solving novel physics problem...
In Uganda, curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS has largely depended on public and private media messages about the disease. Media campaigns based on Uganda's cultural norms of communication are metaphorical, analogical and simile-like. The topic of HIV/AIDS has been introduced into the Senior Three (Grade 11) biology curriculum in Uganda pre-conceptions...
This paper reports on a study that employed metacognition and social cognition theoretical frameworks to explore and interpret students' views of their cognitive roles and the nature of the mechanisms that they considered influenced and mediated their learning within small group contexts. An instrumental interpretive case study methodology was used...
This paper reports on the development, self-critique and evolution of research methods for interpreting and understanding
students’ metacognition that were developed through the Metacognition and Reflective Inquiry (MRI) collaborative study. The
MRI collaborative was a multi-year, multi-case, research study that investigated the elusive nature and...
This paper reports on a study that investigated students' metacognitive engagement of in both out-of-school and classroom settings, as they participated in an amusement park physics program. Students from two schools that participated in the program worked in groups to collectively solve novel physics problems that engaged their individual metacogn...
The teaching of science, especially at pre-college and teacher education levels has undergone tremendous transformation over the years: from teacher-centred transmission to student-centred approaches rooted in constructivism. Whereas constructivism has been charged with all manner of shortfalls, it still can be of benefit to the way physics instruc...
The development and evaluation of science students' metacognition, learning processes and self-efficacy are important for improving science education. This paper reports on the development of an empirical self-report instrument for providing a measure of students' metacognition, self-efficacy and constructivist science learning processes. A review...
The term scientific literacy is defined differently in different contexts. The term literacy simply refers to the ability for one to read and write, but recent studies in language literacy have extended this definition. New literacy research seeks a redefinition in terms of how skills are used rather than how they are learned. Contemporary perspect...
In recent years, participation rates in the British Columbia (BC) provincial physics exams have been low, compared with chemistry and biology. A qualitative study employing questionnaire and interview methods sought the views of teachers and students of senior science courses on why this is the case. Data analysis revealed that students’ decisions...
Students in small rural schools in British Columbia face barriers to accessing senior science courses. A case study employing questionnaire and interview methods sought the perspectives of principals, teachers, and students in the affected schools on this issue. Interpretive data analysis revealed the following barriers as key factors that affect s...
If issues in the history and philosophy of science and those related to science, technology and society are generally accepted
in policy, how ought these be handled in practice? Mandate in policy does not guarantee implementation in practice. Indeed,
HPS and STS have for decades been marginalized in the curriculum. Subject areas designated to teach...
It is recognized widely that learning is a dynamic and idiosyncratic process of construction and reconstruction of concepts in response to new experiences. It is influenced by the learner's prior knowledge, motivation, and sociocultural context. This study investigated how year 11 and 12 physics students' metacognition influences the development of...
Low enrolment and motivation are key issues in physics education and recently the affective dimension of learning is being studied for evidence of its influence on student attitudes towards physics. Physics Olympics competitions are a novel context for stimulating intense emotional experiences. In this study, one team of students and their teacher...
Interactive Lecture Experiments (ILE) have been used in the introductory physics course at the University of British Columbia for over two years. During the Fall of 2006 a systematic study was conducted using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS), Force Concept Inventory (FCI), physics open-ended exam problems and focus group...
We describe Interactive Lecture Experiments (ILE), which build on Interactive Lecture Demonstrations proposed by Sokoloff and Thornton (2004) and extends it by providing students with the opportunity to analyze experiments demonstrated in the lecture outside of the classroom. Real time experimental data is collected, using Logger Pro combined with...
This paper is about a study into the nature of analogies recorded from three Form 2 (Grade 10) classes in Kenya, instructed by three physics teachers. Through a case study method involving classroom observation, several analogies were recorded and analysed. These analogies were predominantly environmental (drawn from students socio-cultural environ...
This study provides insights into the nature of the analogies deployed by Kenyan physics teachers and generated by students in class. The analogies looked at (both teacher‐ and student‐generated) were largely environmental (drawn from students’ socio‐cultural environment), anthropomorphic (life and human characteristics ascribed to analogues), and...
As part of attempts to find out why few high school science students take Physics 12, this case study sought University of British Columbia (UBC) science teacher educators' perspectives on the topic. A survey method employing questionnaires and interviews as part of the study was used to elicit science teacher candidates' perspectives. Forty-five t...
Analogy is a widely used instructional tool in science. Because of the many abstract concepts the subject embodies, analogy use is particularly common in physics education. Analogies differ in character depending on who constructs them, the context in which they are used and the grade level being taught. This study describes the analogies that phys...
This paper reports on a case study that investigated conceptual difficulties experienced by one physics teacher teaching unfamiliar content in a Thai high school and the consequent effects on her pedagogy. Naturalistic inquiry data collection methods including classroom observation, teacher interview, and examination of instructional materials were...
One of the greatest tensions in teacher education programs is that the expectations of the students and of the teacher educator are commonly different. One reason is that teacher educators may have difficulty in accessing a true picture of the skills and knowledge (conceptual framework) the students bring to the classroom. Preservice senior science...