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Student-teachers’ Dialectically Developed Motivation for Promoting Student-led Science Projects

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Abstract

School science systems tend to emphasize teaching and learning about achievements of science (such as laws and theories) at the expense of providing students with opportunities to develop realistic conceptions about science and science inquiry and expertise they could use to conduct their own science inquiry projects. Among reasons for such an emphasis, teachers’ lack of experiences with realistic science inquiry appears to be particularly problematic. Accordingly, we engaged student-teachers in a university-based course that attempted to balance instruction about science and science inquiry with student-teachers’ own theorization about science and science inquiry. Qualitative data collected mainly from nine student-teachers in four focus groups indicate that these student-teachers’ motivation for promoting student-led science inquiry projects in schools significantly increased by the end of the course. Analyses suggest that this outcome was influenced by changes in their conceptions about the nature of science, changes in how they associated science inquiry with student learning, and the inductive-deductive dialectic immersion that was built into their pre-service methods course. Implications of these findings for science teacher education are explored in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M5S 1V6, Canada

    J. Lawrence Bencze

  2. Faculty of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University, Bedford Highway, Halifax, NS, B3M 2J6, Canada

    G. Michael Bowen

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  1. J. Lawrence Bencze
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  2. G. Michael Bowen
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Correspondence to J. Lawrence Bencze.

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Bencze, J.L., Bowen, G.M. Student-teachers’ Dialectically Developed Motivation for Promoting Student-led Science Projects. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 7, 133–159 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-007-9115-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-007-9115-6

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