ABSTRACT

Our past experiences in science teacher education inferred that using scientific practices in science teaching courses and supporting pre-service teachers’ efforts to integrate these into their teaching allow them to gain confidence in analysing and interpreting empirical data. However, those efforts sometimes do not provide sufficient help for pre-service science teachers and they may struggle to understand science as well as the significance of evidence in science learning and teaching practices. Thus, this action research study examined a novel teacher training approach that focuses on improving pre-service teachers’ understanding of science and their ability to integrate evidence into their teaching practices. We worked with 75 pre-service teachers in a science and technology teaching course at the elementary teaching program of a private university in Turkey. Teaching of scientific practices was modelled in terms of the Benzene Ring Heuristic and the model-evidence link (MEL) discussions were included in the training model to be able to teach how to discuss evidence in scientific fields. Our study data was subsequently gathered from various sources, including pre-service teachers’ posters, video recordings of reflection sections that occurred before and after the implementation of the posters, and individual interviews. Analyses of the results suggested that the heuristic and MEL discussions helped pre-service teachers to achieve a systematic and holistic understanding of the scientific method. However, some pre-service teachers still misunderstood the scientific process even after the heuristic’s and MEL discussions’ implementation. Despite an increased emphasis on the qualities that defined scientific evidence, some teachers also still had difficulty understanding applying the principles of scientific evidence in their own work. Based on these findings, we argued that current scholarly understandings of science teacher training may be insufficient to some extent, and that educational institutions should make efforts to direct some resources to this problem.

摘要

我们过去在科学教师教育方面的经验推断，在科学教学课程中使用科学实践并支持职前教师将这些实践融入教学中，可以让他们在分析和解释经验数据时获得信心。然而，这些努力有时并不能为职前科学教师提供足够的帮助，他们可能难以理解科学以及证据在科学学习和教学实践中的重要性。因此，这项行动研究考察了一种新颖的教师培训方法，该方法侧重于提高职前教师对科学的理解以及他们将证据整合到教学实践中的能力。我们在土耳其一所私立大学的小学教学计划中与 75 名职前教师一起参加了科学技术教学课程。科学实践的教学以苯环启发式为模型，模型-证据链接 (MEL) 讨论包含在培训模型中，以便能够教授如何讨论科学领域的证据。我们的研究数据随后从各种来源收集，包括职前教师的海报、海报实施前后发生的反思部分的录像以及个人访谈。对结果的分析表明，启发式和 MEL 讨论有助于职前教师对科学方法进行系统和整体的理解。然而，即使在启发式和MEL讨论实施后，一些职前教师仍然误解了科学过程。尽管越来越强调定义科学证据的质量，但一些教师仍然难以理解在自己的工作中应用科学证据的原则。基于这些发现，我们认为目前学术界对科学教师培训的理解可能在一定程度上不够充分，教育机构应该努力将一些资源用于这个问题。