Preservice Elementary Teachers' Development of PCK-Readiness about Learners' Science Ideas.

[摘要] Preservice elementary teachers face many daunting challenges as they learn to teach science.Teacher educators try to design methods courses that help them meet these challenges and prepare them for the experiences they will have as student teachers and new teachers.Because they often do not spend much time with students, it is a general assumption that preservice teachers are unable to develop pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) with respect to their learners.Rather than focus on what they are unable to do, however, this dissertation explores how a methods course might foster consideration of learners’ science ideas, an important component of PCK.Perhaps preservice teachers can learn to develop PCK-readiness, thus putting them in a good position to develop rich usable PCK once they have more experience in the classroom. This study follows a class of preservice teachers through an elementary science methods course.It describes the trajectories of eight focus preservice teachers’ thinking about their learners. It also explores how the entire class made sense of a set of activities designed to foster consideration of learners’ ideas.Results indicate that with scaffolds, preservice teachers are able to think in complex ways about their learners’ ideas, including considering how to use those ideas in instruction.The trajectories of the preservice teachers varied but generally showed growth in thinking about learners’ ideas, although some were focused on or influenced by particular aspects while others made more consistent growth in several areas.Generally, the course activities supported thinking about how to deal with learners’ ideas but not the characteristics of those ideas.This study contributes to the field by providing a description of how a range of preservice teachers engaged with the activities in the methods course.In addition, it describes the kind of influence that a methods course might have on preservice teachers’ development of a crucial aspect of learning to teach.Finally, it explores how thinking about preservice teacher learning in terms of PCK-readiness gives new insight into what preservice teachers are capable of and how teacher education might best prepare them for successful careers as science teachers.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Preservice Teacher Education

[关键词] PedagogicalContent Knowledge;Preservice Teacher Education;Science Teacher Education;Elementary Teacher Education;Elementary Science Teachers;Education;Social Sciences;Education