The activities designed by 91 teams of primary teacher education students as part of their teaching proposals in a course on science teaching are analysed together with the subsequent reformulations of those activities. The objective of the study was to gain insight into the students' professional practical knowledge and the underlying focus of…

Research on teacher educators' professional learning has gained increasing interest within science education. Curriculum materials have been suggested as a means of supporting "teacher" learning for several decades but have not yet been examined as a potential tool for supporting the learning of "teacher educators." In this…

The study aimed to explore the integration of lesson study into science teacher education programs to enhance preservice science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for STEM. The lesson study cycle encompassed planning, teaching, reflecting, re-teaching, and re-reflecting phases, and the participants' experiences regarding PCK for STEM…

The purpose of this study is to examine pre-service chemistry teachers' orientations towards chemistry teaching during chemistry teaching method courses. This study was conducted with ten pre-service chemistry teachers for 28 weeks. The Draw-A-Science-Teacher-Test Checklist (DASTT-C), card-sorting activity, interviews, observations, and reflection…

Two common reasons elementary preservice teachers have low self-efficacy with science teaching is their lack of content knowledge and past negative experiences with science teaching or learning. Holding low self-efficacy beliefs has negative impacts on both the method of science instruction and amount of science instruction delivered in the…

The study assessed the science teaching confidence of preservice teachers in teaching elementary science by addressing two research questions: (1) Did preservice teachers understand the science concepts well enough to be effective in teaching elementary science content? (2) Did preservice teachers have the necessary science concepts and skills to…

This study investigated the nature of the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development among 22 prospective teachers enrolled in an elementary science methods course. The nature of prospective teachers' PCK development was investigated in relation to their experiences in planning, enacting, and reflecting upon a Physical science lesson. The…

Background: In the context of recent research in science education and continued struggles to understand how best to support science teachers, epistemological frames, made up of sets of epistemological resources teachers activate, have emerged as an important focus of research. However, at the time of this writing no research was available to…

Scientific modeling is a scientific practice that uses models to prepare elementary and middle school science teachers to engage students using scientific inquiry. Model-based inquiry (MBI) is a pedagogical teaching approach that engages students using scientific inquiry during scientific modeling. However, preservice teachers lack understanding…

The purpose of this study was to explore four elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs) learning outcomes based on "affective characteristics," "science knowledge," and "pedagogical content knowledge" during a science methods course that incorporated "explicit instruction on drawing-to-reason" about…

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the impact of co-taught integrated STEM methods instruction on preservice elementary teachers' self-efficacy for teaching science and mathematics within an integrated STEM framework. Two instructional methods courses (Elementary Mathematics Methods and Elementary Science Methods) were redesigned to…

Digital timelines have been both transformational and supportive in enhancing the ways in which information is shared through text, images, interaction, and creativity to achieve course goals and objectives across numerous disciplines. In analyzing the experiences of teacher candidates (TCs) in their creation of a variety of resources to address…

This study examined the impact of microteaching experiences of preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a science teaching methods course. The microteaching lessons targeted the physical science concepts represented in the Texas Educational Agency's exam for early childhood through sixth grade teacher certification. The results of this study…

In this self-study, two science educators partnered with two elementary teachers to plan, implement, and reflect on a unit taught in second grade classrooms that integrated science and language arts. The researchers hoped to increase their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for elementary science teaching so that they might use their experiences…

Methods for teaching early childhood mathematics and science are often addressed in a single, dual-content course. Approaches to teaching this type of course include integrating the content and the pedagogy of both subjects, or keeping the subject areas distinct. In this article, the authors discuss and illustrate their approach to such a combined…