Science in the Trenches: An Exploration of Four Pre-service Teachers' First Attempts at Teaching Science in the Classroom

Abstract

This paper explores four students' attempts at teaching science in the real world classroom during their initial student teaching practicum, including their struggles and successes. When pre-service teachers enter their initial practicum experience they are confronted with differing teaching philosophies of their own, their university professors, and their school mentors (Sullivan, Mousley & Gervasioni, 2000; John, 2001; Fu and Shelton, 2002). Within this situation, preservice teachers struggle to find their own niche of teaching science and learn to reflect as both learner and teacher (Kelly, 2000). Our goal as science teacher educators is to help pre-service teachers have an easy transfer from personal university experiences to teaching science in the “real” classroom environment while maintaining the integrity of newly learned teaching strategies (Segall, 2001). This work adds to and helps guide science teacher educators in identifying difficulties pre-service teachers' experiences in the transition from methods courses to practice.