Background: Recent literature indicates that the trend towards investigating pre-service elementary teachers' conceptual understanding of science concepts they are expected to teach and their command of that content-specific conceptual understanding is gaining momentum in science education. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate…

This multi-case study examines how three elementary mathematics methods instructors, in the same teacher education program, provide their prospective teachers with learning opportunities. Qualitative data were collected through interviews, classroom observations, and artifacts. The findings suggest that the instructors' beliefs associated with…

This study aimed to document pre-service elementary teachers' (PSTs'), who are going to teach K-5, ability to construct as well as evaluate justifications varied in terms of levels of sophistication. Additionally, this study aimed to investigate how PSTs' knowledge of content in which they were being asked to prove influenced their ability to…

Background and purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate and identify the nature and the interrelatedness of pre-service teachers' misconceptions and scientific concepts for explaining dissolving before, during, and after a 5E learning cycle lesson on dissolving, the intervention. Sample, design, and methods: Guided by Vygotsky's…

Nineteen pre-service and in-service teachers taking a chemistry teaching methods course at a university in Hong Kong were asked to take a diagnostic assessment. It consisted of seven multiple-choice questions about the chemistry of the lead-acid battery. Analysis of the teachers' responses to the questions indicated that they had difficulty in…

This article describes the outcome of an exercise carried out with one hundred undergraduate student teachers (preservice teachers) enrolled in a Biology Teaching Methods course, a third year course in a four-year Teacher Education Programme. The students, working in groups of three to four, were assigned to construct a concept map showing their…