Section archive - Preservice Teachers

This study examined elementary preservice teachers’ knowledge and application of science vocabulary during peer teaching. The purpose of this study was to: (1) examine preservice teachers’ knowledge of elementary science vocabulary at the beginning and end of a science methods course, and (2) document preservice teachers’ use of elementary science vocabulary commonly used in elementary science instruction during initial science teaching experiences. The data reveal that preservice teachers’ initial knowledge of elementary science vocabulary was lacking , despite the successful completion of high school and college science coursework. The findings indicate that the course positively impacted the preservice teachers’ knowledge of select elementary science vocabulary.

This study examines pre-service teacher research in a nine-month teacher education programme, implemented as a means of making explicit links between research and practice. The results reveal that although student teachers expressed significant concerns about having to develop a research question, they conferred with and developed questions in conjunction with their associate teachers. However, they also indicated that support from the associate teacher presented a significant challenge. Furthermore, the results reveal that understanding a research disposition to be integral to teaching proved to be a significant conceptual challenge amongst some of the pre-service teachers and associate teachers.

The article focuses on identifying which motives for becoming a teacher have a beneficial effect and which ones have a detrimental effect. A longitudinal study on the motivation for becoming a teacher investigated the importance that Dutch pre-service teachers ascribed to multiple motives. The article examined how these motives are related to the efforts, involvement and professional commitment to the teaching profession of the participants. The results were used to distinguish between adaptive motives and maladaptive motives for becoming a teacher. The findings revealed that the perceptions of teaching ability, intrinsic career values and making a social contribution were the most important motives for choosing the teaching profession. Choosing teaching as a fallback career or because of social influences were two motives that were found to be least important for the pre-service teachers.

In this work, the authors are interested in supporting beginning teachers in identifying and productively drawing on the everyday knowledge and experiences that children bring to science learning. They focus on preservice teachers’ emerging understandings of the nature and utility of learner’s funds of knowledge. The authors argue that when preservice teachers define the utility of funds of knowledge, they do so in reference to managing classroom interactions and supporting student learning. The authors consider preservice teachers’ description of the utility of funds of knowledge as a hook to be productive and reasonable but insufficient.