Home
Resource
Preparing perservice teachers to teach elementary school science
PDF
PDF format is widely accepted and good for printing.
Plug-in required
PDF-1(18.47 MB)
Citation & Export
View Usage Statistics
Staff View

Citation & Export
Hide

Simple citation

Lewis, Amy D.. Preparing perservice teachers to teach elementary school science. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T38P62XP

Export

Click here for information about Citation Management Tools at Rutgers.

Statistics
Hide

Description

TitlePreparing perservice teachers to teach elementary school science
NameLewis, Amy D. (author); Ryan, Sharon (chair); Chinn, Clark (internal member); Curran, Mary (internal member); Rutgers University; Graduate School of Education
Date Created2017
Other Date2017-01 (degree)
SubjectTeacher Leadership, Teachers--Training of, Science--Study and teaching (Elementary)
Extent1 online resource (vi, 263 p. : ill.)
DescriptionThe development of scientifically literate citizens begins in the elementary school. Yet elementary school teachers are ill prepared to teach science (Trygstad, Smith, Banilower, Nelson, & Horizon Research, Inc., 2013). The research base on teacher preparation finds that programs designed to prepare elementary teachers are inadequate in providing both the content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge necessary to teach science effectively (Baumgartner, 2010; Bodzin & Beerer, 2003; Bulunuz & Jarrett 2009). This mixed methods study examined what happened when a science methods course was interactively co-taught by an expert in elementary teaching methods and a physics expert. This study also aimed to discover what aspects of the curriculum pre-service teachers (PSTs) said helped them in developing their understanding of science content and scientific reasoning, and how to implement inquiry practices to teach science. A nested case study of three PSTs provided descriptive portraits of student experiences in the class. A whole class case analysis was used to examine what PSTs learned in terms of science, scientific reasoning skills, and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) from their experiences in the course. It was found that students often conflated science content with the experiences they had in learning the content. Although PSTs felt the interactive co-teaching model effectively created a balance between theory and practice, it was their experiences doing science – conducting physical experiments, developing and discussing scientific models, and the use of inquiry-based instruction -- that they credited for their learning. Even with careful curriculum planning, and a course purposely designed to bridge the theory to practice gap, this study found one semester-long methods course to be insufficient in providing the vast content knowledge and PCK elementary school science teachers need.
NoteEd.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Amy D. Lewis
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T38P62XP
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School of Education Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
Version 8.5.5
Rutgers University Libraries - Copyright ©2024