Terms of use : Click here ‘ Operation Magpie ’ : Inspiring Teachers ' Professional Learning Through Environmental Science

Operation Magpie was a citizen science project that involved the community in collecting data about magpies. This article describes one aspect of the project from an education perspective. The study began with a collaboration of teacher educators, environmental scientists and a local radio station. After an initial workshop with 75 teachers, three teacher educators met regularly with 13 primary teachers who each volunteered to plan and teach a unit of work on birds. Meeting regularly in focus groups, the teachers shared their pedagogical strategies that supported students to connect with their local environment. Findings include the importance of focused professional learning for teachers through ongoing, needs-based support during the planning and teaching of the unit, and the innovative ways that teachers approached the unit. One unexpected finding was that teachers tended to identify student learning in terms of the English curriculum rather than the science curriculum. Conway (2005, as cited in Dempsey and Arthur-Kelly, 2007) reports that teacher professional learning should not only support teaching and learning activities within a school, but it should also ‘enhance teacher skills by addressing the gaps in those skills’ (p. 137). This article describes an approach to professional learning that engaged primary teachers in developing the confidence to plan and then teach environmentally based science. The approach complements one of the key tenets of the Teaching for Effective Learning Framework Guide (Department of Education and Children’s Services, 2010), which states that ‘Teachers learn together by sharing their thinking, practice, programs and responses to students’ work’ (p. 18). The professional learning program involved a small group of teachers meeting regularly to develop an inquiry-based approach to teaching, and it is the impact of the professional learning experiences that incorporated science, environmental education and connecting students to the natural world that is central to this article. An underlying principle of inquiry-based education is an emphasis on active learning and on developing the learners’ skills and abilities (posing questions, planning investigations, critical thinking), as well as on conceptual understanding (Bell, Smetana, & Binns, 2005; Address for correspondence: Yvonne Zeegers, School of Education, University of South Australia, St Bernard’s Road, Magill SA 5072, Australia. Email: yvonne.zeegers@unisa. edu.au 28 Yvonne Zeegers, Kathryn Paige, David Lloyd, & Philip Roetman Hofstein, Navon, Kipinis, & Mamlok-Naaman, 2005; Luera & Otto, 2005; MartinHansen, 2002). The approach used in Operation Magpie involved teachers and their students collecting data about birds, in particular magpies, in the school environment and local parks, and then submitting their observations to an online survey. The article begins with a short description of the status of primary science in Australian schools, and an outline of Citizen Science. This is followed by a summary of the study, which involved regular meetings with three groups of teachers to share their practices. The article concludes with key findings.