This study incorporated Nature of Science (NOS) within children's literature in a science methods course to aid preservice early childhood teachers in improving their NOS understandings and abilities to transfer NOS into formats accessible to early childhood students. Through a qualitative research design, researchers collected data including pre…

We explored adaptations to an elementary science methods course to determine how varied contexts could improve elementary preservice teachers' conceptions of NOS as well as their ideas for teaching NOS to elementary students. The contexts were (a) NOS Theme in which the course focused on the teaching of science through the consistent teaching…

This study explored preservice teachers' views of their own cultural values, the cultural values they believed scientists hold, and the relationships of these views to their conceptions of nature of science (NOS). Parallel assignments in a foundations of early childhood education and a science methods course required preservice teachers to explore…

This study tracked the influence of explicit reflective instructional methods on cultural values, ethical and intellectual development, and the relationship of these with preservice teachers' views of nature of science (NOS). The researchers used the Views of Nature of Science Form B (VNOS B) to describe NOS views, the Learning Context…

Describes how one instructor used science education methodology in a language arts methods course. The purpose was to understand how preservice teachers might improve their science teaching through language arts methods. Discusses one preservice teacher and her use of the methodology in the science methods course in which she was currently…

It can reasonably be argued that the primary role of elementary teachers is to prepare their students to be literate adults, and thus many are literacy specialists. Often these teachers lack confidence in science and avoid it because it is not their specialty. Most elementary teachers have never conducted a scientific inquiry, yet they are being…

Preservice teachers in a science methods course were provided instruction on performance assessment, then guided through a design and implementation process of performance assessment tasks. We assessed the effect of designing and implementing a performance assessment task on preservice teachers' understanding of standards-based assessment. The…

This study examined the views, and the retention of these views, of 19 preservice elementary teachers as they learned about nature of science (NOS). The preservice teachers participated in a cohort group as they took a science methods course during which they received explicit reflective instruction in nature of science. Through Views of Nature of…

Preparing early childhood (K-3) teachers to teach science presents special challenges for the science methods instructor. Early childhood preservice teachers typically come to the methods classroom with little science content knowledge; they also lack confidence in their own abilities to teach science. This paper presents a theoretical background,…

This study assessed, and identified factors in participants' learning ecologies that mediated, the effectiveness of an explicit reflective instructional approach that satisfied conditions for learning as conceptual change on preservice elementary teachers' views of nature of science (NOS). Participants were 28 undergraduate students enrolled in an…