Prospective physical sciences teachers’ use of laboratory activities: an analysis of its evolution due to a science teaching methods course

Prospective teachers entering Science Teaching Methods Courses already bring ideas about how to teach Physical Sciences as well as how to use several teaching resources, namely the teaching laboratory. Research has shown that prospective teachers consider the teaching laboratory of great importance for science teaching and learning but they would be unable to use it properly. The Science Teaching Methods Course taught by the authors to Portuguese prospective Physical sciences teachers includes a module on using the laboratory for Physical Sciences teaching. The teaching of this module was organised according to a constructivist perspective that draws heavily on critical analysis and reflection. Thus, the objective of this paper is to analyse how the learning of the module referred to above affected prospective teachers' ideas on using the laboratory for teaching the concept of Chemical Reaction. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire, used both as a pre- and a post-test. Pre-/post-test comparisons showed that prospective teachers' ideas suffered meaningful changes due to treatment