Incorporating the Epistemic Core in Teacher Education Practice

Abstract

The chapter focuses on the design and implementation of a pre-service chemistry teacher education module that aimed to integrate the epistemic core in pre-service teachers’ learning. The module was offered as part of an undergraduate programme at a state university in Turkey. The participants were pre-service teachers in their senior year of a 4-year programme. The teacher education intervention was based on 11 3 h sessions. Sessions included a theoretical introduction to nature of science as well as to the epistemic core categories (i.e. aims and values of science, scientific practices, scientific methods and scientific knowledge). For each category of the epistemic core, there were two sessions. In one session lasting for 2 h, there was input by the instructors. In the second session lasting for 1 h, the participants engaged in reflection tasks and produced lesson ideas based on the instructional input. The final two sessions were dedicated to the planning of a set of lesson resources. The chapter discusses in detail the content of each session including the tasks and strategies used, and it provides examples of lesson ideas produced by the groups of pre-service teachers following each session. The content of the sessions including the actual tasks and strategies used in the module are provided making it possible for other teacher educators to adapt and use them in their own teaching of pre-service teachers.