Abstracts - Earli

and validation of such tools is a critical step in advancing research on understanding and changingteacher practice, An example that uses those factors that are generally believed to be critical tosuccessful Middle Years teaching and learning is provided. The first section reviews the literatureon effective teaching practice, draws out the common themes in the literature on effective MiddleYears teachers, and argues that these themes support the construction of a Component Mappingtool specifically for Middle Years teachers. This Component Mapping technique is essentially astructured clinical interview with a Likert-type format where responses to questions within theinterview are recorded on a rating scale. Hence the data are ordinal and need to be transformedinto an interval scale. This transformation can be effected by using Item Response Theory.However, given that the report of the Component Mapping exercise is critical to its impact onteachers and their practice, the second section of the paper suggests ways in which such a mappingcan be reported in order to make teacher practice explicit comprehensible, and readily sharedbetween practitioners. Although this technique is not new the reporting format that can beconstructed, from the IRT analysis provides an innovative approach to understanding teacherpractice. The paper concludes with an example using data from the IMYMS project that showshow the IRT analysis, and the reporting format derived from it, can be readily interpreted bypractitioners and researchers alike. This example uses data gained in Victoria, Australia.The role of subject cultures in middle years pedagogySusie Groves, Deakin University, AustraliaA prior condition for improvement in any subject is agreement on the nature of effective teachingand learning. While constructivist learning theories, and socio-cultural theories based on the workof Vygotsky, have underpinned two decades of research into student learning in both mathematicsand science, these theories have taken rather different forms. The Improving Middle YearsMathematics and Science (IMYMS) project is investigating the role of mathematics and sciencesubject cultures in mediating change processes in the middle years of schooling. The project has itsroots in the Science in Schools research project (SiS), which developed a successful strategy forimproving teaching and learning science based on two major aspects: the SiS Components — aframework for describing effective teaching and learning in science — and the SiS Strategy — astrategic process for planning and implementing change. The IMYMS project is exploring theextent to which the SiS Components and Strategy can transcend subject boundaries by workingwith four clusters of schools from urban and rural regions in the Australian state of Victoria. Basedon reviews of the literature on effective teaching and a series of interviews with fifteen effectiveteachers of middle years mathematics, the SiS Components were redeveloped to produce theIMYMS Components of Effective Teaching and Learning. These Components formed the basisfor a Component Mapping process through which teachers rated their practice on a five-pointscale. This paper explores similarities and differences between mathematics and science teachers’perceptions of their practice revealed through the IMYMS component mapping process. Resultsshow that secondary science teachers rated themselves significantly higher than mathematicsteachers on a third of the 27 sub-Components, with mathematics teachers rating themselves higheron only one sub-Component, while there was very little difference in the responses of primaryteachers. Extended summary– 815 –