ABSTRACT

Background: Renewable energy curriculum reflects research, standards, and policy documents that emphasize both environmental literacy and engineering, technology, and science concepts. Students’ science achievement in this and other areas have been found to be predicted by their teachers’ content knowledge. Therefore, this study examined whether, and where, gaps in the content knowledge of pre-service teachers would be found when designing instruction on renewable energy technology for middle grades classrooms.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore pre-service middle grades teachers’ content knowledge for the design of instruction on renewable energy technology.

Design and methods: Thirteen pre-service science teachers in the final semester of a licensure program focused on grades 6–8 (ages 11–14) in the semester just prior to their student teaching experience participated. Structural coding was used to develop categories of instances of content knowledge in four artifacts related to their instructional design that was further analyzed and described.

Results: The content knowledge that was used by the pre-service, middle grades science teachers when designing renewable energy technology instruction fell within three content categories inclusive of six issues with knowledge areas.

Conclusions: The implications of this investigation are related to the training of middle grades science teachers and the potential necessity to explicitly support content knowledge instruction that aligns with calls for changes to how the conservation of energy is taught before student teaching. In addition, better integration of content knowledge with methods and curriculum courses are called for. The participants had satisfactory performance on both licensure exams and in required coursework. However, they had not achieved understanding of content necessary for instruction on renewable energy technology that is included in middle grades standards.

摘要

背景：可再生能源课程反映了强调环境素养和工程、技术和科学概念的研究、标准和政策文件。学生在这个领域和其他领域的科学成就已被发现可以通过教师的内容知识来预测。因此，本研究调查了在为中学课堂设计可再生能源技术教学时，是否以及在何处发现职前教师的内容知识差距。

目的：本研究的目的是探讨职前中学教师对可再生能源技术教学设计的内容知识。

设计和方法： 13 名职前科学教师在他们的学生教学经验之前的学期专注于 6-8 年级（11-14 岁）的执照课程的最后一个学期参加。结构编码用于在与其教学设计相关的四个工件中开发内容知识实例的类别，并进一步分析和描述。

结果：职前中学科学教师在设计可再生能源技术教学时使用的内容知识属于三个内容类别，包括六个知识领域问题。

结论：这项调查的意义与中学科学教师的培训有关，以及明确支持内容知识教学的潜在必要性，这与在学生教学之前改变能量守恒教学方式的呼吁相一致。此外，还需要将内容知识与方法和课程课程更好地结合起来。参与者在执照考试和必修课上都取得了令人满意的成绩。但是，他们还没有理解中级标准中包含的可再生能源技术教学所需的内容。