Assessing Pre-Service Science Teachers’ Understanding of Global Warming through the Content Representation (CoRe) Instrument

Microteaching is a significant way to prepare pre-service teachers to overcome specific challenges in a natural classroom environment. It is widely accepted that pre-service science teachers gain pedagogical benefits from microteaching activities. Furthermore, microteaching enhances the conceptual understanding of the presenter on the related teaching topics. This research intends to map two pre-service science teachers’ conceptual understanding before and after engaging in microteaching on the concept of phases of the moon. The data were collected through pre and post-interviews and observations of microteaching. Activated knowledge elements during interviews and microteaching were determined and compared. The study’s results provided evidence that microteaching is a fruitful way to improve pre-service science teachers' understanding of phases of the moon. Furthermore, it was detected that both the quality and quantity of pre-service science teachers' knowledge elements increased after their microteaching engagements

The study examined the relationship between perceived self-efficacy of pre-service basic science teachers and teaching practice performance in colleges of education in Delta State, Nigeria. One hundred and twelve (112) pre-service basic science teachers were selected from two colleges of education in Delta State. Forty-six (46) from College of Education l (COEI) while sixty-six (66) from College of Education II (COEII). The study tested three hypotheses derived from the three research questions. The independent variable was perceived self-efficacy of the pre-service basic science teachers, the dependant variable was teaching practice while the moderating variables were two colleges of education of the pre-service science teachers. The instruments used were “Teaching Practice Assessment Score Instrument (TPASI)” and the “Pre-Service Science Teachers Perceived Self Efficacy (PSTPSE)” with thirty (30) questions. Person correlation was used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that the three null hypotheses were accepted. The hypothesis one is accepted because there was no significant relationship found to exist between the pre-service basic science teachers perceived self-efficacy and their teaching practice assessment scores. Also, no significant difference was found between COEI and COEII pre-service basic science teachers‟ perceived self-efficacy scores and their performance in teaching practice. Finally, for all the pre-service basic science teachers irrespective of their subject combination, there was no relationship between their perceived self-efficacy and the teaching practice assessment. Consequently, it was recommended that there should be a reform in pre-service teacher education programmes in all our teachers training institutions; it can help to develop and improve teacher education programmes and pre-service teaching practice; this reform should aim at strengthening both content and pedagogical knowledge of pre-service teachers.

Background: There has been an increasing emphasis on empowering pre-service and in-service science teachers to attend student reasoning and use formative assessments to guide student learning in recent years. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore pre-service science teachers’ pedagogical capacity for formative assessment. Sample: This study took place in Turkey. The participants include 53 pre-service science teachers in their final year of schooling. All but two of the participants are female. Design and methods: We used a mixed-methods methodology in pursing this inquiry. Participants analyzed 28 responses to seven two-tiered questions given by four students of different ability levels. We explored their ability to identify the strengths and weaknesses in students’ answers. We paid particular attention to the things that the pre-service science teachers noticed in students’ explanations, the types of inferences they made about students’ conceptual understanding, and the affordances of pedagogical decisions they made. Results: The results show that the majority of participants made an evaluative judgment (i.e. the answer is correct or incorrect) in their analyses of students’ answers. Similarly, the majority of the participants recognized the type of mistake that the students made. However, they failed to successfully elaborate on fallacies, limitations, or strengths in student reasoning. We also asked the participants to make pedagogical decisions related to what needs to be done next in order to help the students to achieve academic objectives. Results show that 8% of the recommended instructional strategies were of no affordance, 64% of low-affordance, and 28% were of high affordance in terms of helping students achieve the academic objectives. Conclusion: If our goal is to improve pre-service science teachers’ noticing skills, and the affordance of feedback that they provide, engaging them in activities that asks them to attend to students’ ideas and reasoning may be useful.

Background: Argumentation is accepted by many science educators as a major component of science education. Many studies have investigated students’ conceptual understanding and their engagement in argumentative activities. However, studies conducted in the subject of chemistry are very rare.Purpose: The present study aimed to investigate the effects of argumentation-based chemistry lessons on pre-service science teachers’ understanding of reaction rate concepts, their quality of argumentation, and their consideration of specific reaction rate concepts in constructing an argument. Moreover, students’ perceptions of argumentation lessons were explored.Sample: There were 116 participants (21 male and 95 female), who were pre-service first-grade science teachers from a public university. The participants were recruited from the two intact classes of a General Chemistry II course, both of which were taught by the same instructor.Design and methods: In the present study, non-equivalent control group design was used as a part of quasi-experimental design. The experimental group was taught using explicit argumentation activities, and the control group was instructed using traditional instruction. The data were collected using a reaction rate concept test, a pre-service teachers’ survey, and the participants’ perceptions of the argumentation lessons questionnaire. For the data analysis, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, the Mann–Whitney U-test and qualitative techniques were used.Results: The results of the study indicated that an argumentation-based intervention caused significantly better acquisition of scientific reaction rate-related concepts and positively impacted the structure and complexity of pre-service teachers’ argumentation. Moreover, the majority of the participants reported positive feelings toward argumentation activities.Conclusions: As students are encouraged to state and support their view in the chemistry classroom when studying reaction rate, it was observed that their understanding increased in terms of both the context and the quality of the argumentation that they produced. In light of the findings, it is suggested that argumentation activities should be developed to promote students’ science content knowledge and argumentation skills.

This study examined the relationships between pre-service science teachers’ teaching self-efficacy, locus of control, attitude towards science teaching and teaching anxiety. A conceptual model of these relationships was examined using data collected from 356 pre-service elementary science teachers. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations and path analysis. Results showed that attitude towards science teaching was linked positively and teaching anxiety negatively to pre-service science teachers’ science teaching self-efficacy. Additionally, pre-service science teachers’ locus of control was found to be related positively to attitude towards science teaching and related negatively to science teaching anxiety. Finally, pre-service science teachers’ attitude towards science teaching had a negative effect on science teaching anxiety. These results point to the importance of positive role modelling and increased teaching practice in pre-service science teacher education to emphasise the effect of teachers’ attitudes and efforts on student performance.

The purposes of the present study are to elicit pre-service elementary science teachers’ scientific and pseudoscientific beliefs about earthquake and to make inferences about their understandings of science. Although the subject of earthquake is not a pseudoscientific area, some pseudoscientific beliefs related to earthquake were used in this study. Forty-one pre-service elementary science teachers participated in the study voluntarily. The open-ended questionnaire involving eight items related to earthquake were administered to pre-service science teachers. The qualitative data were analyzed by applying interpretative analysis. The results of the analysis revealed that some of the pre-service science teachers had pseudoscientific beliefs about earthquake contexts, although they had science education background. Additionally, rest of the pre-service science teachers could not present any scientific evidences about why they are in favor of scientific explanation or why they do not believe pseudoscience. The pre-service science teachers were not able to articulate their knowledge learned in NOS (Nature of Science) course when they reason about pseudoscientific beliefs about earthquake. Therefore, it would be recommended that understanding of NOS and conceptualizing demarcation criteria between science and pseudoscience should be intended to be developed within the subject matter of science and it should be integrated into other courses by explicitly emphasizing in real science contexts.

A mixed research-based model for pre-service science teachers' digital literacy: Responses to “which beliefs” and “how and why they interact” questions

This article explores pre-service and in-service science teachers’ perceptions on active learning, and examines the effectiveness of active learning by pre-service science teachers in the Irish second level classroom through a two-phase study. In the first phase, data on perceptions were gathered from final year pre-service teachers and in-service teachers in Irish post-primary schools. In the second phase, pre-service science teachers, working with teacher educators, designed a comparative test for students in lower secondary science classrooms. This tested achievement differences for students taught in traditional ways and students taught using active learning approaches. While the test results show a significant difference between traditional teaching and active learning, overall analysis indicates that the majority of teachers in the study were not convinced of the value of this way of teaching. The findings have implications for science teaching and the enactment of curriculum reform measures in compulsory education.

The assessment of the UAE's in-service and pre-service Elementary science teachers in the integrated science process skills

Purpose: In science education, it is among the most important purposes that students become primarily scientific literate individuals. Scientific literacy is associated with deep understanding of “Nature of Science [NOS] and scientific inquiry processes. At this point, teachers' adequate level content knowledge about the nature of science gain importance because of responsibility of their students' getting contemporary understanding of the nature of science. In this study, it is aimed to determine and compare the status of pre-service science teachers and Science and Technology teachers' content knowledge about the nature of science. Method: This study is a descriptive model in which qualitative research techniques are used. In 2009-2010 education year, 89 pre-service teachers who are studying in 4th class in one of the leading universities in science education in Turkey and 64 Science and Technology teachers who are working in small city in Turkey participated in the study. The situation of the knowledge of the participants about the nature of science is determined using “Views about Nature of Science (BDYG) questionnaire which is adapted to Turkish from “VOSTS (Views on Science-Technology-Society). In order to analyze the answers of participants to the questions in BDYG questionnaire, every questionnaire item placed under every question is encoded by 10 field experts as Realistic , Has Merit and Naive . After every item that pre-service and in-service science teachers chose in BDYG questionnaire is analyzed, frequencies and percentages for each item are calculated in accordance with the descriptive analysis. Results and Suggestion: According to the results of the analysis, pre-service science and in-service teachers conducted in research are found to have a certain level of content knowledge about the nature of science. However, that level of knowledge they have about the nature of science does not sufficiently represent a contemporary vision at an adequate level. Moreover, as one of the most important results of the research, widespread realistic and naive views of the in-service teachers resulted from BDYG questionnaire are quite parallel with pre-service teachers in same categories. The realistic views that participants have in high percentage and that are parallel to each other are on tentativeness of scientific mistakes in scientific studies, “precision and uncertainty in scientific knowledge, “influence of society on scientist and “defining science. Besides, both participant groups have same level naive views on “characteristics of hypothesis, theories and laws, “the epistemological status of laws, hypotheses and theories and “the nature of scientific models issues. In this context, it is thought that both groups should take field education about nature of science. This education, for pre-service science teachers, can be through lessons related to science and nature of science which are given in their university education and for in service teachers, through in-service education and seminars from which every teacher can get benefit. Key Words: Content knowledge about the nature of science, Pre-service science teacher, Science and Technology teacher

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of an intervention on pre-service science teachers’ self-efficacy to teach science through argumentation and explore the challenges they experienced while implementing argumentation. Forty pre-service science teachers in their final semester of schooling participated in an intervention that lasted for 11 weeks. Intervention focused on participants’ understanding of argumentation as a scientific practice and as a pedagogical tool. The participants engaged in argument construction, evaluation, and critique, taught three argumentation lessons, engaged in peer observation of teaching, and reflection on their teaching skills. Data were collected through Argumentation Self-Efficacy Scale and an open-ended questionnaire. The results show that the intervention had a significantly positive effect on pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy. Despite this reported self-efficacy, participants experienced significant challenges in guiding their students to construct scientific arguments and assessing the arguments developed by their students. Discussion focuses on implications for professional development of pre-service and in-service science teachers.

Background:Pre-service science teachers’ conceptual understanding of astronomical concepts and their misconceptions in these concepts is crucial to study since they will teach these subjects in middle schools after becoming teachers. This study aimed to explore both 7th-grade students’ and the science teachers’ understanding of astronomical concepts and to diagnose the misconceptions of 7th-grade students and pre-service science teachers regarding some basic astronomy concepts derived from a three-tier test.Materials and methods:The test was administered to 105 pre-service science teachers and 91 seventh-grade students. The best conceptual understanding was related to the properties of the Sun.Results:The students and pre-service science teachers have some common misconceptions in astronomy. Pre-service teachers mostly have misconceptions not regarding complex concepts but instead in very basic knowledge of astronomy.Conclusions:There is a need to take serious measures to correct the misconceptions of the teachers, since under such circumstances it is optimistic to expect them to teach the subject correctly.

Atoms, ions and molecules are considered as abstract concepts that often lead to students’ learning difficulties. Th is study aimed at providing description of pre-service science teachers (PSTs)’ creative thinking skills on atoms, elements and compounds digital media creation. Qualitative descriptive method were employed to acquire data. Instruments used were rubric of PSTs’ digital teaching media, open ended question related to PSTs’ technological knowledge and pre-test about atoms, ions and molecules that were given to eighteen PSTs. The study reveals that PSTs’ creative thinking skills were still low and inadequate to create qualified teaching media of atoms, ions and molecules. PSTs’ content and technological knowledge in regard with atoms, ions and molecules are the most contributing factors. This finding support the necessity of developing pre-service and in-service science teachers’ creative thinking skill in digital media that is embedded to development of technological content knowledge.

In this study, we aimed to investigate pre-service math and science teachers during teaching practicum course by analyzing daily journals shared in a web-based environment. 65 seniors participated in the study (41 pre-service math teachers and 24 pre-service science teachers). Within qualitative case study approach, the study focused on descriptive and content analysis during the data analysis. By looking at the findings of the study, pre-service math teachers provided more details in discussing the teaching methods and emphasizing on lesson preparations compared to pre-service science teachers. On the other hand, pre-service science teachers included more specific activity examples than did pre-service math teachers in their daily journal entries. Another important finding of the study showed that pre-service teachers tended to evaluate themselves and their friends positively, but negatively criticized their teachers. In light of these findings, we recommend offering teaching practicum course when pre-service teachers take their theoretical courses.

This study examined the impact of the Indonesian pre-service teacher professional education program (PPG) on pre-service science teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) competencies. As a government-directed initiative, the PPG program's curriculum is aligned with TPACK principles. We conducted a comparative analysis involving 311 teachers divided into four groups: pre-service PPG science teachers, pre-service science teachers not enrolled in PPG, in-service science teachers with less than two years of experience, and those with more than two years of experience. ANOVA results revealed a significant positive effect of the PPG program on TPACK scores, except when comparing non-PPG pre-service teachers to in-service teachers with less than two years of experience. Pre-service PPG teachers demonstrated greater confidence in technology-related TPACK components. In contrast, in-service teachers with over two years of experience exhibited higher overall TPACK scores, particularly in pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. These findings highlight the effectiveness of government-sponsored teacher training in enhancing TPACK while recognizing the valuable expertise that experienced teachers bring to their practice. The study suggests a need for resource allocation and training strategies that incorporate the strengths of both pre-service and experienced educators to foster a more comprehensive approach to teacher development.