Making Practice Visible: A Collaborative Self-Study of Tiered Teaching in Teacher Education

In this article we document the impact of tiered teaching on making the complexity of pedagogy transparent when teaching science education to pre-service primary teachers. Teaching science methods classes together and researching our teaching has enabled us to reframe our assumptions and move beyond the simplistic and misleading idea that teacher education is the modeling of exemplary practice. This self-study has evolved over three years. We were faced with the tension between modeling exemplary practice to teach science education and science content and making our teacher education practices explicit to our students. Tiered teaching has allowed us to manage this tension. Four major themes emerged from this self-study: the cost of tiered teaching; the shift in priority to less science education and more teacher education; our own growth in expertise; and the transformation of our practice.