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Students’ Conceptions as a Neglected Perspective in Trainee Teachers’ Biology Lesson Plans

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Current Research in Biology Education

Part of the book series: Contributions from Biology Education Research ((CBER))

Abstract

Planning lessons is a core component within the pedagogical cycle of teaching. Hence, knowledge about it is a constitutive part of science teachers’ professional competencies. All the ideas and considerations that arise during planning a lesson materialize in a written lesson plan. Particularly, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is regarded as crucial to planning lessons appropriately, since it addresses different perspectives of the learning processes. Appropriate planning would lead to learning environments that are adequately tailored to students’ needs in order to facilitate science learning. To investigate the extent to which classroom practice is planned based on analyses of students’ understanding in science, we analyzed lesson plans of German in-service trainee biology teachers (N = 107) in a qualitative content analytic approach. Our findings show that trainee teachers focus on prior knowledge as well as on motivational and social aspects in their analysis of students’ needs, but barely consider learning difficulties or students’ conceptions. Comparing two purposefully selected cases, we illustrate difficulties in the interplay between students’ conceptions and instruction using the example of ecosystem dynamics. Our findings provide further insight into biology teachers’ PCK during planning, and confirm empirical findings that describe teachers’ difficulties with considering students’ conceptions. Consequences for research and practice in biology teacher education are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The project K2Teach is part of the “Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung”, a joint initiative of the German Federal Government and the Länder, which aims to improve the quality of teacher training. The programme is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant number 01JA1802). The authors are responsible for the content of this publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Leroy Großmann & Dirk Krüger

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  1. Leroy Großmann
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  2. Dirk Krüger
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Correspondence to Leroy Großmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Konstantinos Korfiatis

  2. School of Education, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Marcus Grace

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Großmann, L., Krüger, D. (2022). Students’ Conceptions as a Neglected Perspective in Trainee Teachers’ Biology Lesson Plans. In: Korfiatis, K., Grace, M. (eds) Current Research in Biology Education. Contributions from Biology Education Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89480-1_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89480-1_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-89479-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-89480-1

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