Evaluating the effectiveness of teacher preparation courses in raising students’ understanding of the nature of science using the SUSSI survey

This paper reports on an exploratory pilot study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of various science teacher preparation courses in raising pre-service teachers understanding of the nature of science (NOS). Undergraduate (n1=229, n2=211) and postgraduate (n1=81, n2=53) students in four courses, across five campuses and two universities, were assessed using the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry (SUSSI) survey (Liang et al., 2008) both pre- and post- course. Paired samples t-tests on individual items of the SUSSI revealed limited change in the pre-service teachers’ understanding of NOS in the various courses examined. In addition to the tightening of methodological controls a more explicit reflective approach will be adopted in the next round of data collection