Abstract
Theory is taught to preservice teachers from the moment they enter the education program until they graduate. While theory serves as the foundation in many teacher preparation courses, these future teachers must also understand the relationship it has to practice. The focus of this article is on the journey of one group of preservice secondary science teachers toward becoming practitioners with a theoretical understanding of what and how they would teach science. Ecojustice philosophy, being implemented through citizen science pedagogy, served as the framework for this method course and proved challenging for both the professor and the preservice teacher. Hermeneutic ethnography served as the guiding methodological/theoretical framework for this research and provided an opportunity for extensive data collection in an attempt to better understand how participants made sense of learning to teach within a method course focused around ecojustice philosophy. By using hermeneutic ethnography, we are encouraged to make sense of what we are seeing, while considering our own cultural experiences and abilities to interact with others taking part in these events. This research highlights the need for dialogue within science teacher preparation classrooms, addresses the challenges in teaching for practice-theory, and suggests possibilities for future considerations within science teacher preparation.
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Notes
Single quotation marks will be used when combining or paraphrasing statements of the participant. When possible, double quotes will be used to represent exact statements.
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Britton, S.A., Tippins, D.J. Practice or Theory: Situating Science Teacher Preparation Within a Context of Ecojustice Philosophy. Res Sci Educ 45, 425–443 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-014-9430-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-014-9430-1