PEDAGOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS OF …digibug.ugr.es/...et_al_2015_PedagogicalScientificPrimaryTeachers.pdfpedagogical and scientific beliefs of future primary school teachers and

PEDAGOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS OF FUTURE

PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS AND UNIVERSITY

SCIENCE EDUCATION AND SCIENCE LECTURERS

Alicia Benarroch¹, Javier Carrillo-Rosúa¹,², Ricardo Casas¹, Alicia Fernández-Oliveras¹,

María Carmen Romero¹, and José Miguel Vílchez-González¹

¹ Departamento de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales, University of Granada

² Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, CSIC- University of Granada

Abstract: This study presents an analysis of the reflections of three university science

lecturers (AXL, MYA and PAB) taking part in a training process at the University

Corporation of Bogotá (Colombia), designated Supervisión. The basic aim of the supervision

process, agreed beforehand with faculty, consisted of accompanying the lecturer (teacher)

throughout an educational innovation consisting of designing argumentation activities in the

context of their university teachings, to promote and achieve better quality participation from

the students, designated argumentative participations. The intention was to steer the various

faculty teaching models towards more interactive and student-focused models, designed to

favour their knowledge building. After completing the supervision process, three final

reflexive activities were requested, identified as public presentation, self-reporting and

individual interview, which were the sources of the reflective codes in this study.

Keywords: pedagogical beliefs, image of science, teacher trainers

INTRODUCTION

The beliefs of future teachers embarking on their science education studies tend to be in line

with the traditional teaching model, with the subsequent gradual incorporation of

constructivist models, without the latter replacing the former (Martín del Pozo, Porlán &

Rivero, 2011). Teachers’ beliefs are psychological constructs widely acknowledged in

Educational Professional Development. They are framed within the mediational paradigm of

“teacher thinking”, where the teacher's behaviour is guided by a private and implicit personal

system of beliefs which act as non-rational mediators of their teaching planning. For science

teachers, the important beliefs concern: i) Image of Science, ii) Learning of Science and iii)

Science Teaching; the three categories that form the vertices of the didactic triangle. Table 1

synthesises the main ideas associated with the cited models.

Our aim in this work is twofold:

a) To examine the beliefs held by future primary school teachers (group 1; N = 60) at the

onset of their science education course.

b) To compare said beliefs with those of university lecturers in science education (group 2; N

= 33) and sciences (group 3; N = 98).

As a starting point, it is assumed that the beliefs of prospective teachers are closer to those of

science lecturers than to lecturers in science education.

Strand 13 Pre-service science teacher education

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Usuario

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Table 1. Teaching models and main associated beliefs.

Traditional Model Constructivist Model

Nature of Science Science absolute and true Science is paradigmatic, i.e.

contextualized and subject to prior

knowledge, techniques and structures.

Learning of

Science

Cognitive structure as an

"empty box". Learning

by listening and

repeating.

Full cognitive structure. Learning by

reconstruction, through physical,

vicarious and symbolic interactions.

Science Teaching Teacher explains and

students perform

activities

Students solve problems (from their daily

life, socio-scientific…) through research

methodology, whereby they perform,

think about and regulate their own

learning and work in interaction with

their peers, discussing and sharing ideas.

METHOD

We reviewed several instruments: the Inventory of Educational and Scientific Beliefs,

INPECIP (Porlán, 1989), the Professional and Pedagogical Experience Repertoire (Loughran,

Mulhall & Berry, 2004) and others (Martínez et al., 2001; Marín & Benarroch, 2009; 2010;

Benarroch & Marín, 2011). Finally, INPECIP was chosen for its brevity and its widespread

application.

The questionnaire versions used (in Spanish) may be found at:

http://goo.gl/forms/YAsWyJtwHB, for future teachers;

http://goo.gl/forms/1RbBvlVDQ9, for university lecturers in science teaching; and

http://goo.gl/forms/qxT7izBWNh, for university science lecturers.

INPECIP (Table 2) consists of 51 Likert-type statements with 5 response options (1 =

strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).

Table 2. INPECIP questionnaire structure.

Nº Statements Statements

Nature of Science 14 55, 51, 47*, 44*, 42*, 40*, 39, 38, 28,

23, 22*, 21*, 11, 4*

Learning of Science 14 54, 50, 48*, 46*, 41*, 35*, 33, 32,

27*, 24*, 19*, 14, 8, 5

Science Teaching 23 56, 52, 49, 45, 43*, 37*, 36*, 34*,

31*, 30, 26, 25, 20*, 17*, 16, 15, 13,

10, 9*, 7*, 6*, 2*, 1

Total 51

*items corresponding to the traditional model


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The survey was carried out in March 2014 with future teachers who were taking a course at

the University of Granada to further their studies from 180 to 240 credits. Teacher

collaboration, extended to the whole of Spain, was achieved by means of an anonymous

questionnaire, inviting them to take part in the research by e-mail in the first semester of

academic year 2014-2015.

We analysed the answers provided by a total of 60 students on a Degree course in Primary

Education, 33 Science Education lecturers, without any experience in the INPECIP test, and

98 university Science lecturers. Table 3 synthesises some features of the samples.

Table 3. Sample characteristics.

Sample N Characteristics

Group 1 Primary

School

Teachers in

Training

60 66% are female and 33% are male.

15% had studied “Science Education” during their previous

degree course.

70% had no teaching experience.

23% had less than 5 years of teaching experience.

5% had between 5-10 years of teaching experience.

2% had more than 20 years of teaching experience.

Group 2 University

Lecturers in

Science

Education


58% had never heard of the INPECIP test.

42% knew about its existence, but had not worked with it.

Group 3 University

Lecturers in

Science


Include almost all the main knowledge areas:

Area Number of participants Percentage

Geology 40 40.8%

Chemistry 19 19.4%

Physics 14 14.3%

Pharmacy 11 11.2%

Biology 3 3.1%

Engineering 3 3.1%

Others 8 8.2%

55% had less than 18 years of teaching experience.

43% had between 18-24 years of teaching experience.

2% had more than 24 years of teaching experience.

RESULTS

First of all, we calculated the basic statistical parameters of each item in every category. We

transformed the results corresponding to the variables associated with the less constructivist

sentences, as follows: “1” is transformed into “5”, “2” is transformed into “4”, “3” remains

unchanged, and so on. After this transformation, a high score indicated, in all items, a more

constructivist trend.


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Our first objective is to calculate the global indexes that provide information on the thinking

of the different groups of participants, for every category (Table 4).

As these variables are not normally distributed (confirmed using both Anderson-Darling and

Kolmogorov-Smirnoff tests), we employed a non-parametric Mann-Whitney test (Table 5).

Table 4. Mean results by category and group.

Mean Estimated error

of the mean

Standard

deviation Variance Min. Q1 Median Q3 Max.

Image of

Science

Group 1 3.07 0.03 0.24 0.06 2.50 2.93 3.00 3.21 3.57

Group 2 3.83 0.10 0.60 0.36 2.86 3.32 3.71 4.25 5.00

Group 3 3.05 0.03 0.27 0.08 2.07 2.86 3.00 3.21 3.86

Learning

of

Science

Group 1 3.52 0.05 0.36 0.13 2.86 3.24 3.43 3.71 4.42

Group 2 4.02 0.09 0.54 0.29 3.00 3.61 4.14 4.43 4.79

Group 3 3.27 0.04 0.38 0.14 2.50 3.00 3.21 3.50 4.57

Science

Teaching

Group 1 3.09 0.02 0.18 0.03 2.52 3.00 3.09 3.22 3.52

Group 2 3.48 0.07 0.40 0.16 2.74 3.22 3.48 3.76 4.43

Group 3 2.94 0.02 0.23 0.05 2.48 2.82 2.91 3.09 3.52

In each category, Science Education lecturers are more “constructivist” than both their

students and their colleagues from Science departments. In the “Learning of Science” and

“Science Teaching” categories, students are shown to be somewhat more “constructivist” than

university science lecturers, but less so than lecturers in science education.

Table 5. Study of significant differences between groups.

Difference of

means

Mann-Whitney

test (p-value)

¿Are there significant

differences?

Image of

Science

Groups 1-2 -0.760 0.00 Yes

Groups 2-3 0.781 0.00 Yes

Groups 1-3 0.022 0.50 No

Learning of

Science

Groups 1-2 -0.504 0.00 Yes

Groups 2-3 0.753 0.00 Yes

Groups 1-3 0.249 0.00 Yes

Science

Teaching

Groups 1-2 -0.388 0.00 Yes

Groups 2-3 0.540 0.00 Yes

Groups 1-3 0.152 0.00 Yes

Results show statistically significant differences between all pairs of groups (p<0.001), except

in the case of the “Image of Science” category of groups 1 and 3 (p=0.5).


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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The results show some coherence between Image of Science, Learning of Science and

Science Teaching among each population group. Thus, university lecturers in science

teaching are shown to be the most constructivist in the three categories, with university

science lecturers the least. The data obtained are consistent with those of other studies (Martín

del Pozo, Porlán & Rivero, 2011) in terms of the tenuous alignment of the beliefs of future

primary teachers with the constructivist models of science teaching. It does not seem

paradoxical that prospective teachers’ beliefs are closer to those of university science teachers

than to those of science education lecturers, as the former will have been the main trainers of

secondary teachers who, in turn, have taught science to pupils prior to their admission to

university. Moreover, pupils will probably have had less contact with science education

faculties, or none at all to date.

It is striking that, overall, members of the university faculty of sciences turn out to be more

traditional, not only in terms of teaching and learning, but also in the Image of Science

category (they themselves are creators of science), where a significant difference is found

with science education lecturers, although not with students.

In any case, these ideas are far removed from the most advanced proposals on science and its

teaching-learning, so channels must be found that facilitate communication and understanding

among the different stakeholders responsible for the beliefs of future teachers. To quote

Claessens (2007, p.2), “It is perhaps scientists who should be the first to speak out and show

the way”.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Work funded by III Contract-Programme between the Scientific Policy and Research

Department of U. of Granada and the Collective Research Group, Faculty of Education and

Humanities, Melilla Campus. Project: Pedagogical - Didactic Training of University Science

Faculty.

The authors also would like to express their appreciation to all the participants of their study.

REFERENCES

Benarroch, A. & Marín, N. (2011). Relaciones entre creencias sobre enseñanza, aprendizaje y

conocimiento de ciencias. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 29 (2), 289-304.

Claessens, M. (2007). El eslabón perdido. Research*EU, número especial, p.2.

Loughran, J., Mullhall, P., & Berry, A. (2004). In search of pedagogical content knowledge in

science: Developing ways of articulating and documenting professional practice.

Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41 (4), 370–391.

Marín, N. & Benarroch, A. (2009). Desarrollo, validación y evaluación de un cuestionario de

opciones múltiples para identificar y caracterizar las visiones sobre la naturaleza

de la ciencia de profesores en formación. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 27 (1), 89-

108.

Marín, N. & Benarroch, A. (2010). Cuestionario de opciones múltiples para evaluar creencias

sobre el aprendizaje de las ciencias. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 28 (2), 245–260.

Martín del Pozo, R., Porlán, R., & Rivero, A. (2011). The progression of prospective

teachers’ conceptions of school science content. Journal of Science Teacher

Education, 22 (4), 291-312.

Martínez, M.M., Martín del Pozo, R., Rodrigo, M., Varela, P., Fernández, P. & Guerrero, A.

(2001). ¿Qué pensamiento profesional y curricular tienen los futuros profesores de

ciencias de Secundaria? Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 19 (1), 67-87.


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Porlán, R. (1989). Teoría del conocimiento, teoría de la enseñanza y desarrollo profesional.

Las concepciones epistemológicas de los profesores. Tesis Doctoral inédita.

Universidad de Sevilla.


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Part 13

Strand 13

Pre-service science teacher education

Co-editors: Maria Evagorou & Marisa Michelini


CONTENTS

Chapter Title & Authors Page

227 Introduction to Strand 13

Maria Evagorou & Marisa Michelini

1922

228 Empirical validation of a competency model for science teaching

Markus Wilhelm, Christian Vollmer, Benjamin Tempel,

Markus Rehm, Katrin Bölsterli & Dorothee Brovelli

1923

229 Conventional and digital microscopy – Developing cell conceptual

competences using the example of human biology

Lissy Jäkel, in cooperation with Julia Berg, Anamarija Penzes

1931

230 Articulation of evaluation criteria for improvement pre-service

teachers’ argument skills

Tomokazu Yamamoto, Etsuji Yamaguchi, Mayumi Naramoto,

Keita Muratsu & Shigenori Inagaki

1943

231 Pre-service primary teachers’ beliefs of teaching science with

simulations

Antti Lehtinen, Pasi Nieminen & Jouni Viiri

1949

232 Pre-service primary teachers' understanding of fermentation: The

“lab-brewed” beer project

Arantza Rico, Joserra Díez & Oihana Barrutia

1960

233 Construction by teachers in training of a model animal

- adaptation/energy needs -

Susana García-Barros, María Jesús Fuentes-Silveira,

Juan Carlos Rivadulla-López & Cristina Martínez-Losada

1972

234 How the scientific and pedagogical approaches to energy teachers in

training evolve

Cristina Martínez-Losada, María Jesús Fuentes-Silveira,

Juan Carlos Rivadulla-López & Susana García-Barros

1979



235 Pedagogical and scientific beliefs of future primary school teachers

and university science education and science lecturers

Alicia Benarroch, Javier Carrillo-Rosúa, Ricardo Casas,

Alicia Fernández-Oliveras, María Carmen Romero &

José Miguel Vílchez-González

1988

236 Experimental microcomputer-based activities developed and

implemented by pre-service primary teachers

Dimitris Stavrou & Vasilis Savvorginakis

1994

237 Exploring student teachers` knowledge concerning diagnostics in

science lessons

Yannik Tolsdorf & Silvija Markic

2002

238 Epistemology as an aid in metacognitive exercises in order to teach

didactics of physics for future teachers

Olga L. Castiblanco A. & Roberto Nardi

2010

239 Inquiry-based teaching and learning of nature of science in primary

teacher education

Matti Väisänen & Anssi Lindell

2018

240 Establishing school university partnerships to teach science - Does

what worked for us work for you?

Kenny, J., Hobbs, L., Speldewinde, C., Jones, M., Campbell, C.,

Gilbert, A., Chittleborough, G., Herbert, S. & Redman, C.

2029

241 Empowering STEM teachers: Development of a multidisciplinary

pedagogical STEM course

Heleen Bossuyt & Nele Vandamme

2041

242 Science lesson study activity in a pre-service teacher training course

Hayashi Nakayama & Tomokazu Yamamoto

2050

243 Developing preservice teachers’ ‘practical science teaching skills’

through lesson study

Koichi Furuya

2057

244 The consistency between preservice teachers’ epistemological

beliefs and instructional strategies

Nurcan Cansiz & Mustafa Cansiz

2066



245 Successful university-school partnerships - An interpretive

framework

Linda Hobbs, Mellita Jones, John Kenny, Coral Campbell,

Gail Chittleborough, Sandra Herbert, Andrew Gilbert &

Christine Redman

2073

246 Designing a course for enhancing teachers’ understanding of

inquiry-based teaching and learning

Marios Papaevripidou, Maria Irakleous & Zacharias Zacharia

2085

247 Investigating the relation between declarative and procedural pre-

service chemistry teachers’ knowledge about analogies

Nilmara Braga Mozzer, Thais Mara Anastácio Oliveira &

Rosária Justi

2093

248 What do pre-service teachers remember about the concept of

density?

G. Martínez Borreguero, F. L. Naranjo Correa, F. Cañada,

D. González-Gómez & J. Sánchez-Martín

2103

249 Science teachers’ instructional explanation construction at different

stages of teacher education

Valeria M. Cabello

2109

250 Pre-service science teachers’ understanding and attitudes to inquiry

Leeanne P. Hinch, Eilish McLoughlin, Paul Van Kampen &

Odilla E. Finlayson

2116

251 Knowledge base enlargement of a pre-service chemistry teacher in

the context of a Brazilian initial training program

Keysy S. C. Nogueira, Elaine P. Cintra & Carmen Fernandez

2126

252 Measurement invariance as a validity argument of a physics

teaching efficacy questionnaire

Claudia Meinhardt, Olaf Krey & Thorid Rabe

2135

253 Media as a teaching resource in biology classes: undergraduates’

experiences

Mariana Tambellini Fausino & Rosana Louro Ferreira Silva

2141



254 Effects of a supervised internship on preservice science teachers’

self-efficacy beliefs

Janina Pawelzik, Maria Todorova, Miriam Leuchter &

Kornelia Möller

2147

255 Pre-service biology teachers’ competence to use basic principles of

inquiry in the design of laboratory tasks

Jan Petr

2157

256 Using CoRes for capturing pedagogical content knowledge of redox

reactions

Luciane Fernandes Goes & Carmen Fernandez

2163

257 Language and science experience narratives of pre-service primary

teachers learning to teach science in multilingual contexts

Mariona Espinet, Laura Valdés-Sanchez & Maria Isabel Hernández

2174

258 Integrated science education of primary and middle school teachers

at university

Anja Goehring

2181

259 Teaching abilities of prospective teachers at the beginning of the

practical phase of teacher education

Anna Windt, Anna Hasenkamp, Sarah Rau, Gerlinde Lenske &

Stefan Rumann

2188

260 Pre-service science teachers’ knowledge, attitudes and ethical

approaches regarding biotechnology

Huseyin Ates & Jale Çakiroğlu

2196

261 Domain-specific teachers’ competencies (FALKO) – sub-project

physics

Anja Schoedl & Anja Goehring

2208

262 Pre-service teachers’ perceptions about modelling: First steps

towards a reflective participation in scientific practices

Anna Garrido & Digna Couso

2216

263 Motivation for choosing physics teacher education – An instrument

adaptation study

Olaf Krey & Thorid Rabe

2228



264 Professionalization through practical training – application of PCK

within a physics student lab

Susan Fried, Florian Treisch & Thomas Trefzger

2236

265 Hands-on experiments in the practicum: Critical issues for initial

teacher education

André Rodrigues, Juliano Camillo & Cristiano Mattos

2246

266 Contributions of a program of teaching training for the PCK

Pablo Micael Araújo Castro & Sérgio Henrique Leal

2252

267 Modeling in elementary school pre-service teacher education: The

influence of teaching scenarios

Digna Couso & Anna Garrido

2260

268 Promoting pre-service teachers’ professional vision of instructional

support in elementary science classes

Cornelia Sunder, Maria Todorova & Kornelia Möller

2271

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PEDAGOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS OF …digibug.ugr.es/...et_al_2015_PedagogicalScientificPrimaryTeachers.pdfpedagogical and scientific beliefs of future primary school teachers and