Teaching science with students in mind

With this thesis, I address gaps in research about how pre-service teachers (PSTs) develop and make use of knowledge for science teaching. In the project I used a qualitative case study approach to investigate seven PSTs’ science teaching, their use of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for pedagogical reasoning, and the sources contributing to their development of PCK. I explored how PSTs develop knowledge about students and instructional strategies. I also examined how they enacted these components of PCK. I videotaped the PSTs’ science teaching in grade 6–10 school practica in the first and third years of teacher education. I analyzed the videos to identify dimensions of quality instruction related to PCK. In their first-year school practica, the PSTs’ science instruction was student-centered, focusing on students’ prior knowledge and classroom discourse. However, the PSTs struggled to clearly communicate science concepts, and inquiry teaching was almost absent. In stimulated recall interviews performed shortly after some of the lessons, I used video recordings to prompt the PSTs to reconstruct thinking from the lessons. In their reflections, the PSTs shared nuanced knowledge about students, which informed their student-centered instruction with suitable instructional strategies. Specialized science courses, PST peers, and personal learning experiences were central sources of their PCK. I repeated video observations and stimulated recall interviews with three PSTs in third-year school practica. I examined whether and how experiences from specialized science teacher education courses, which intertwine content knowledge and PCK, made a difference in their classroom teaching. By comparing lessons, I found the PSTs’ instructional strategies and their reasons for selecting them were more grounded in science PCK and less in general pedagogy when they were teaching topics they had learned in specialized science courses. The PSTs viewed these courses as supporting their development of content knowledge, PCK, and self-efficacy for science teaching. Implications for teacher education includes that pre-service teachers’ prior knowledge of teaching may be a useful starting point for professional development, and teacher education courses that combine science and pedagogy seem to benefit PSTs when paired with opportunities to teach the same topics in school practica