The Progression of Prospective Primary Teachers’ Conceptions of the Methodology of Teaching

This article describes the evolution of prospective primary teachers’ conceptions of the methodology of teaching. Three categories were analyzed: the concept of activity, the organization of activities, and the concept of teaching resources. The study was conducted with five teams of prospective teachers, who were participating in teacher education courses of a constructivist orientation. The results showed very different itineraries in the processes of change, and the presence of two major obstacles—the belief that teaching is the direct cause of learning, and epistemological absolutism. The study allows us to deduce some implications for initial teacher education.     

The Progression of Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions of School Science Content

The purpose of the present work is to describe the progression in the conceptions of prospective primary teachers about school science content while they were participating in three teacher education courses following the same constructivist oriented strategy. The participants’ written output was analyzed in various categories—selection of content, types of content and their relationships, levels of complexity, and presentation of content to pupils. There was evidence for some progress in their conceptions of the content from a traditional view to another that we termed intermediate since it did not reach the vision that we consider to be the most complex. Finally, we present a General Itinerary of Progression on school content that could serve as a referent for initial teacher education.     

Exploring Prospective Teachers’ Worldviews and Conceptions of Nature of Science

This study explores the relationship, if any, between an individual’s culturally based worldviews and conceptions of nature of science. In addition, the implications of this relationship (or lack of relationship) for science teaching and learning are discussed. Participants were 54 Taiwanese prospective science teachers. Their conceptions of nature of science and their worldviews specific to humans’ relationship with the natural world were assessed using two open‐ended questionnaires in conjunction with follow‐up interviews. Their understandings of nature of science were classified into informed and naïve categories based upon contemporary views of these constructs and those stressed in international reform documents. An anthropocentric–naturecentric continuum emerged and is used to explain the participants’ views about humans’ relationship with Nature. Participants who recognized the limitations of scientific knowledge, and accept the idea that science involves subjective and cultural components, were more likely to emphasize harmony with Nature. In contrast, participants who possessed narrow views about the scientific enterprise and described science as close to technology and as of materialistic benefit tended to provide an anthropocentric perspective regarding the human–Nature relationships. The findings illustrate the interplay between participants’ sociocultural beliefs and conceptions of nature of science. Concisely, people with different worldviews may have concurrently different views about nature of science. The study suggests the need for incorporating sociocultural perspectives and nature of science in the science curriculum.     

An International Study of Prospective Teachers’ Initial Teaching Conceptions and Concerns: the case of teaching ‘combustion’

An important task of science teachers should be to take pupils’ (pre)conceptions and learning difficulties into account and to negotiate about the meanings of specific concepts. In this context, teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge plays an important role. This article presents an international study of Dutch, Finnish, English and Greek pre-service teachers’ conceptions and concerns of how to teach the concept of combustion. The prospective science teachers were invited to prepare a lesson about this concept for pupils of junior secondary school level. The prospective teachers were not allowed to consult any textbook. Research data were obtained from audio-taped semi-structured interviews with the prospective teachers. In addition, their written lesson plans and their answers to an accompanying questionnaire were collected and analysed. The results reveal a number of important characteristics of prospective teachers’ views and concerns regarding the teaching of combustion. The implications of the study for science teacher education will be presented.     

Kindergarten Teachers’ Conceptions of Environmental Education

A written questionnaire was used to obtain information regarding Greek kindergarten teachers’ personal views on the concept of Environmental Education (EE). The questionnaire was also designed to obtain the teachers’ views relative to a series of theoretical and methodological issues concerning the application of EE. It was ascertained that the prevalent conception of the kindergarten teachers includes the following: (a) it is directed towards a knowledge-centered type of EE, (b) it is primarily centered on nature and its protection in terms of EE content, (c) it aims not only to shape citizens willing to adopt environmental measures recommended by the experts, but who will also actively participate in social actions for the protection of the environment, (d) it favors learning procedures in the environment with field study activities, (e) it must be compulsory in the kindergarten level.     

Finnish Cooperating Physics Teachers’ Conceptions of Physics Teachers’ Teacher Knowledge

This article examines Finnish cooperating physics teachers’ conceptions of teacher knowledge in physics. Six experienced teachers were interviewed. The data was analyzed to form categories concerning the basis of teacher knowledge, and the tradition of German Didaktik and Shulman’s theory of teacher knowledge were used in order to understand the results. The results show that the teachers strongly emphasize knowledge related to day-to-day teaching practice. In German Didaktik, this means knowledge of the best instructional methods, while in Shulman’s categorization it belongs to the category of representations, strategies, and methods. It was also found that the teachers appear to lack some of the essential key ideas of modern physics teacher education, such as a holistic view of instructional approaches.     

Teachers’ and Students’ Conceptions of Good Science Teaching

Capitalizing on the comments made by teachers on videos of exemplary science teaching, a video-based survey instrument on the topic of ‘Density’ was developed and used to investigate the conceptions of good science teaching held by 110 teachers and 4,024 year 7 students in Hong Kong. Six dimensions of good science teaching are identified from the 55-item questionnaire, namely, ‘focussing on science learning’, ‘facilitating students’ understanding’, ‘encouraging students’ involvement’, ‘creating conducive environment’, ‘encouraging active experimentation’ and ‘preparing students for exam (PSE)’. Significant gaps between teachers’ and students’ conceptions on certain dimensions have been revealed. The inconsistency on the dimension ‘PSE’ is particularly evident and possible reasons for the phenomenon are suggested. This study raises the important questions of how the gap can be addressed, and who is to change in order to close the gaps. Answers to these questions have huge implications for teacher education and teacher professional development.     

Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions and Enactments of Project-Based Instruction

We present results of an investigation of preservice secondary mathematics and science teachers’ conceptions of project-based instruction (PBI) and their enactments of PBI in apprentice (student) teaching. We evaluated their thinking and implementations within a composite framework based on the work of education researchers. We analyzed survey responses, both qualitatively and statistically, from three cohorts of preservice teachers both before and after apprentice teaching. In addition we interviewed and observed a subset of these future teachers. We found that in general the preservice teachers held superficial views of PBI, as compared to the researcher framework. Participants reported time and curriculum restrictions as major barriers; however, teachers for whom enactment of PBI was presented as an explicit goal, and who were given support toward that end, were more likely to enact authentic implementations, regardless of previous reservations about PBI. Without this additional scaffolding, even teachers with high affinity for PBI were unlikely to implement it authentically.     

Teachers’ Conceptions of Gifted and Talented Young Children

Efforts by schools to cater more adequately for highly able students necessitate a shared understanding regarding the gifted and talented. This research aims to ascertain the qualitatively different ways in which teachers identify and describe gifted and talented children. It examines the variety of conceptions of giftedness held by teachers and analyses the patterns and inconsistencies among them. Initial findings of the study, conducted with 16 early childhood teachers (two male and 14 female), are reported. A qualitative phenomenographic research design was adopted because of its focus on revealing individual understandings (conceptions). These results show that teachers understand giftedness as a series of conceptions, namely excellence, potential, rarity, behaviour, innate ability, motivation and asynchrony. These are discussed with reference to existing theories and pertinent research. Results represent the initial findings of an ongoing major research project.     

Teachers’ Conceptions About the Genetic Determinism of Human Behaviour: A Survey in 23 Countries

This work analyses the answers to a questionnaire from 8,285 in-service and pre-service teachers from 23 countries, elaborated by the Biohead-Citizen research project, to investigate teachers’ conceptions related to the genetic determinism of human behaviour. A principal components analysis is used to assess the main trends in all the interviewed teachers’ conceptions. This illustrates that innatism is present in two distinct ways: in relation to individuals (e.g. genetic determinism to justify intellectual likeness between individuals such as twins) or in relation to groups of humans (e.g. genetic determinism to justify gender differences or the superiority of some human ethnic groups). A between-factor analysis discriminates between countries, showing very significant differences. There is more innatism among teachers’ conceptions in African countries and Lebanon than in European countries, Brazil and Australia. Among the other controlled parameters, only two are significantly independent of the country: the level of training and the level of knowledge of biology. A co-inertia analysis shows a strong correlation between non-citizen attitudes towards and innatist conceptions of genetic determinism regarding human groups. We discuss these findings and their implications for education.     

Minority Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions of Teaching Science: Sources of Science Teaching Strategies

This study explores five minority preservice teachers’ conceptions of teaching science and identifies the sources of their strategies for helping students learn science. Perspectives from the literature on conceptions of teaching science and on the role constructs used to describe and distinguish minority preservice teachers from their mainstream White peers served as the framework to identify minority preservice teachers’ instructional ideas, meanings, and actions for teaching science. Data included drawings, narratives, observations and self-review reports of microteaching, and interviews. A thematic analysis of data revealed that the minority preservice teachers’ conceptions of teaching science were a specific set of beliefs-driven instructional ideas about how science content is linked to home experiences, students’ ideas, hands-on activities, about how science teaching must include group work and not be based solely on textbooks, and about how learning science involves the concept of all students can learn science, and acknowledging and respecting students’ ideas about science. Implications for teacher educators include the need to establish supportive environments within methods courses for minority preservice teachers to express their K-12 experiences and acknowledge and examine how these experiences shape their conceptions of teaching science, and to recognize that minority preservice teachers’ conceptions of teaching science reveal the multiple ways through which they see and envision science instruction.     

Teachers’ expressions of craft conscience: upholding the integrity of a profession

How can teachers who quit claim to be dedicated to upholding the integrity of the profession? Paradoxically, and not without costs, leaving teaching may be an expression of an educator’s professional ethics. This investigation applies insights from A.O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty to the context of teaching in order to reveal the expressions of professional ethics in teachers’ resignation letters. These concerns constitute what Thomas Green calls ‘craft conscience.’ Using philosophical inquiry and document analysis, I examine 15 publicly available teacher resignation letters from the United States that were published on the internet between 2012 and 2014 to examine the pedagogical, professional, and democratic components of craft conscience.     

Experienced Teachers’ Strategies for Assessing Nature of Science Conceptions in the Elementary Classroom

This study explored the nature of science (NOS) assessments K-4 classroom teachers developed for measuring students’ understandings of NOS elements. We used the Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire-Form VNOS-D2 (Views of Nature of Science Elementary School Version 2) and interviews to verify that teachers’ conceptions of NOS were sufficient to enable them to teach and assess NOS. We collected copies of teachers’ action research designs, lesson plans, and assessment tools, conducted classroom observations and made field notes of their science instruction and assessments. We videotaped conversations at monthly workshops to note discussion surrounding teaching and assessing NOS in K-4 classrooms. We found that experienced teachers designed a variety of strategies for assessing NOS conceptions that differed by grade level.     

Prospective Elementary Teachers’ Understanding of the Nature of Science and Perceptions of the Classroom Learning Environment

This study investigated prospective elementary teachers’ understandings of the nature of science and explored associations with their guided-inquiry science learning environment. Over 500 female students completed the Nature of Scientific Knowledge Survey (NSKS), although only four scales were analyzed–Creative, Testable, Amoral, and Unified. The learning environment was assessed using previously-validated and reliable scales from What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) and the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI). Analyses indicated moderate multiple correlations that were statistically significant (p?<?0.01) between Creative (R?=?0.22), Testable (R?=?0.29), and Unified (R?=?0.27), and a positive learning environment. Regression coefficients revealed that Open-Endedness was a significant independent predictor of students’ understanding of the role of creativity in science (β?=?0.16), while Cooperation, Open-Endedness, and Material Environment were linked with understanding the testable nature of science (β?=?0.10–0.12). Interview questions probed possible relationships between an improved understanding of the nature of science and elements of a positive classroom environment. Responses suggested that an appropriate level of open-endedness during investigations was very important as this helped students grapple with abstract nature of science concepts and shift their conceptions closer to a more realistic view of scientific practice.