the classroom practice of preservice teachers and their conceptions of teaching and learning science

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q 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0036-8326/98/020197-18

SCIENCE TEACHEREDUCATION

Thomas Dana and Julie Gess-Newsome, Section Editors

The Classroom Practice of PreserviceTeachers and Their Conceptions ofTeaching and Learning Science

VICENTE MELLADODepartment of Science and Mathematics Education, Faculty of Education, University ofExtremadura, Avenida de Elvas, 06071 Badajoz, Spain; e-mail: [email protected]

Received 5 March 1996; revised 9 July 1997; accepted 25 November 1997

ABSTRACT: The present article describes research carried out with four student teachers of primaryand secondary science education. The preservice teachers’ conceptions of the learning and teachingof science were analyzed and compared with their classroom practice when teaching science lessons.The data gathering procedures included a questionnaire and interviews, both analyzed by means ofcognitive maps, and classroom observations during the participants’ practice teaching. The resultsdid not allow a general correspondence to be established between preservice teachers’ conceptionsabout teaching and learning science and their classroom behavior. The implications of the researchfor teacher education are discussed. q 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 82:197–214, 1998.

INTRODUCTION

The factors that are involved in teaching are multiple and complex (Kemmis, 1987) and, inworking toward the improvement of teaching, one has to consider it from a global perspective inwhich these factors are interrelated. Nevertheless, there are results (Mitchener & Anderson, 1989;Tobin, Tippins, & Gallard, 1994) which indicate that the one factor key to the success or failure ofputting any curricular innovation into practice is the teacher.

The study of the teacher has changed from a paradigm (methodological framework) of technicalrationality, which was dominant up to the 1970s, to one of “teacher thinking” (Marcelo, 1987).Here, teachers, instead of being technicians who apply instructions, are constructivists who processinformation, make decisions, generate routines and practical knowledge, and have beliefs that in-fluence their professional activity (Shavelson & Stern, 1981). To a great extent as a consequence

Correspondence to: V. Mellado

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of Shulman’s (1986) work on pedagogical content knowledge, the teacher thinking paradigm hasevolved recently toward a greater degree of compromise with the specific content that teachersactually teach (Anderson & Mitchener, 1994; Marcelo, 1993).

Shulman (1986, 1993) considers that, together with general psychopedagogical knowledge andknowledge of the subject matter, teachers develop specific knowledge, which Shulman termedpedagogical content knowledge, concerning the form of teaching their subject. The teacher is themediator who transforms content into depictions comprehensible to the students. Teachers’ edu-cational strategies depend very much on the material being taught, and their classroom practice andactivities on the subject (Stodolsky, 1991)—the reason being that any given material has certainassociated beliefs and traditions about how best to teach and learn it.

From the constructivist viewpoint (Hewson & Hewson, 1989), in analogy to studies of studentconceptions of scientific concepts, science teachers are considered to have inherited from their ownyears in school deeply rooted conceptions of scientific concepts, of the nature of science, and ofthe way to teach and learn it. The study of science teachers’ beliefs or conceptions thus takes onspecial importance as a first step toward generating in the teachers themselves conceptions andpractices better suited to the currently proposed curricular objectives (Gil, 1993; Hewson, 1993).

The term teachers’ educative conception or belief has had different connotations in its use inresearch (Pajares, 1992). In our study, beliefs or conceptions imply a conviction or a value judgmentabout something (Koballa & Crawley, 1985), and in them important roles are played by the socialand affective components, viability, and willingness to act (Tobin et al., 1994).

In the paradigm of teacher thinking it is assumed that how teachers behave is influenced by howthey think, and Munby (1982) even stated that if investigations find no relationship between thebeliefs and classroom behavior of a teacher, it is because the choice of model or methodology beingused is poor and inappropriate. However, previous studies with science teachers (Lederman 1992;Mellado, 1997) have shown us that we cannot always establish correspondence between the teach-ers’ conceptions of the nature of science and their classroom behavior when teaching science,because there are other factors involved in the complexity of the classroom.

The aim of the present work is to analyze whether the conceptions of prospective teachers aboutthe teaching/learning of science and their classroom practice when teaching science are related.

RESEARCH ON TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS OF THE TEACHING ANDLEARNING OF SCIENCE

One of the difficulties we face in reviewing the research literature is that, because the variousinvestigations use very different methodologies, it is difficult to establish comparisons betweenthem. Another difficulty, pointed to by Koulaidis and Ogborn (1995), is the differing philosophicalevaluation the investigators make of the methodological instruments they use.

When prospective teachers start their university education, they bring to it ideas, conceptions,and attitudes about science teaching/learning (Shaw & Cronin-Jones, 1989), which are the fruit ofthe many years they themselves had spent in school (Briscoe, 1991; Gunstone, Slattery, Bair, &Northfield, 1993; Gustafson & Rowell, 1995; Hewson & Hewson, 1989; Wallace & Louden, 1992;Young & Kellogg, 1993), accepting or rejecting the roles of their own school science teachers.These beliefs have been steadily forming since their school years, and have become more stablethe longer they have been a part of each person’s belief system (Pajares, 1992), and in many respectsdo not change significantly during the university education program (Aguirre & Haggerty, 1995;Marcelo, 1995).

There are many works that study teachers’ conceptions about science teaching/learning (Aguirre,Haggorty, & Linder, 1990; Ballenilla, 1992; Gustafson & Rowell, 1995; Gunstone et al., 1993;Hashweh, 1996; Pomeroy, 1993; Porlan, 1989; Smith & Neale, 1991; Spear, 1984), although theydo not determine the relationship between conceptions and classroom teaching behavior.

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Several studies have found a relationship between science teachers’ conceptions and their class-room practice. Tobin and Espinet (1989), in a case study of a secondary science teacher, noted thatthe teacher’s beliefs are consistent with the classroom practice. This teacher’s aims were to coverthe programmed material transmitting knowledge by means of verbal explanation. Mitchener andAnderson (1989) and Cronin-Jones (1991) also showed that secondary science teachers’ beliefs andcurricular values influence their classroom practice. Science teachers put into practice those curric-ular innovations that are compatible with their beliefs and values. Cornett, Yeotis, and Terwilliger(1990) made a case study of the practical theories of a novice science teacher and affirmed that thetheories detected significantly affect the teacher’s instructional and curricular decisionmaking. ForLorsbach, Tobin, Briscoe, and Lamaster (1992), beliefs about assessment also influence the class-room practice of expert secondary teachers. Dillon, O’Brien, Moje, and Stewart (1994) analyzedthe influence of the beliefs of three expert secondary teachers on the use they make in class ofexplanations and of textbooks and other written materials, and concluded that the teachers’ con-ceptions of science teaching are closely related to classroom instruction. In a case study of expertprimary teachers, Appleton and Asoko (1996) found there to be coherence between their construc-tivist view of science teaching/learning and their planning and practice of teaching. Lee and Porter(1993) started from the idea that reality is very complex and humans build simplified models of it.Their results indicate that a teacher built a mental model of teaching based on her perceptions,beliefs, emotions, and feelings about her students, and her classroom behavior was highly consistentwith this model. In McRobbie and Tobin (1995), experienced secondary teachers constructed amental model coherent with their beliefs concerning traditional-type chemistry teaching/learningand their classroom behavior. This is a very stable model because of its congruence not only withthe teachers’ beliefs, but also with their goals, and with the beliefs and actions of the studentsconstructed in the context of the classroom.

Other studies have only found a partial relationship, with frequent contradictions, between edu-cational conceptions and classroom teaching behavior (Lopez, 1994). Such is the case of the expertprimary teacher studied by Louden and Wallace (1994), whose constructivist principles are contra-dicted by a teacher-centered teaching of science. Even expert primary teachers with strong philo-sophical commitments to constructivism and conceptual change (Abell & Roth, 1995) recognizecontradictions between their beliefs concerning science teaching/learning and their classroom teach-ing behavior.

Curricular directives involve conflict between secondary science teachers’ beliefs and classroompractice (Gallard & Gallagher, 1994). Bol and Strage (1996) also found contradictions between thecurricular goals of in-service biology teachers and how those teachers assess their students, wherethey rather emphasize basic knowledge. One explanation of this contradiction is the pressure thestudents exert to have the cognitive demands of classroom tasks reduced.

These studies indicate that there is more consistency between beliefs and classroom practice inexperienced teachers than in novice and prospective teachers who can present remarkable contra-dictions between their implicit theories and those they have to expound on, and usually have moretraditional teaching behavior than that manifested in their previous conceptions (Pavon, 1996).

Nevertheless, the consideration of the complexity of the classroom has led some researchers toadd caveats to this influence of teachers’ conceptions; that is, they do not necessarily predict theteachers’ classroom behavior (Huibregtse, Korthagen, & Wubbels, 1994). It has also led someinvestigators to highlight the importance of practical knowledge.

For Freire and Chorao (1992), the practical principles of action of most of the secondary physicsteachers they studied have common characteristics separate from their beliefs. The teachers’ con-ceptions of teaching seem to act as factors that affect the transformation of the “formal” into a“real” curriculum, and the different types of conceptions identified can be associated with thedifferent positions of the teachers in what the investigators described as the dialectic interactionbetween the functional and in-progress paradigms. In any case, they underscored the complexity

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of both the conceptions and the models of classroom action of their science teachers. Also, Duffeand Aikenhead (1992) maintained that teachers’ selection of assessment methods is based almostexclusively on their practical knowledge.

In the complexity of the real classroom, teachers construct simplified models with which theyare comfortable and that they find nonconflictive and permit them to act (Wallace & Louden, 1992).There may be no transfer of science teachers’ conceptions of science into classroom practice (Gess-Newsome & Lederman, 1993) if the teachers lack schemes of practical action that are coherentwith their beliefs (Tobin, 1993).

Another line of research in which there have been numerous studies published is the relationshipbetween beliefs, metaphors, and classroom practice of science teachers (Grant, 1991; Gurney, 1990;Powell, 1994; Ritchie, 1994; Tobin et al., 1994). The metaphors with which teachers conceptualizetheir roles affect their teaching practice in the classroom (Tobin & Fraser, 1989), and the construc-tion of new metaphors can help teachers change their pedagogical practices (Tobin, 1990). Teachers’metaphors influence their actions regarding assessment, and, for teachers to be able to carry outchanges in their assessment methods, there has to be a consistency between beliefs, metaphors, andclassroom practice (Briscoe, 1993). For Lorsbach et al. (1992) and Tobin (1993), their teacher maychange her beliefs and not change her classroom practice; however, change did occur when sheconstructed new metaphors.

METHODOLOGY

The methodologies associated with the technical rationality paradigm were mainly experimentaland statistical. The more recent ethnographic or naturalist paradigms (Goetz & Lecompte, 1988;Guba, 1983; Woods, 1987), or teacher-thinking paradigms (Marcelo, 1987), have more qualitativemethodological premises and methods of investigation. We feel it should not be necessary to con-front, in a reductionist manner, qualitative and quantitative methods (Estebaranz, 1992; Woods,1987), but rather that it should be possible to use a combination of various methods (Marcelo,1992). The case study as the examination of an example in action (Walker, 1983) has been gainingparticular importance in research about the teaching community.

Our investigation was a case study of four science teachers at the end of their initial training atthe University of Extremadura during the 1992–1993 academic year. Two of them are prospectiveprimary school teachers (maestros) specializing in sciences in their last year of their teaching di-plomatura course (3 university years with courses in science and mathematics, psychology, generalteaching methods, science teaching, mathematics teaching, and teaching practice), and two arescience graduates, one in physics and the other in biology (5 university years of specific studiesbasically in physics or biology, with no pedagogical material), during a brief postgraduate courseon pedagogy.

Spain is currently undertaking a process of educational reform, one result of which is that bothscience specialist maestros and science graduates will be teaching natural sciences in the first cycleof obligatory secondary education (13–14 year olds). One of the objectives of our research program(Mellado, 1995) is to discover what conceptions about the teaching and learning of science the twogroups of teachers (science maestros and science graduates) have, and what influence there is ontheir behavior in the classroom when giving a science class.

For the selection of participants, all maestros and graduates who carried out the aforementionedstudies during the 1992–1993 academic year at the University of Extremadura in Badajoz wereinformed of the investigation. From an initial broad sample of volunteer preservice teachers, thefinal selection of the four participants was made taking into account that there were two maestrosand two graduates of different specialities (physics and biology) who had adequately completedthe data gathering protocols and the teaching practices course, and who had a high expressivity andmotivation for the production of qualitative data.



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Figure 1. Data gathering and analysis.

First, the subjects participated in a videotaped microteaching session aimed at gathering specificdata for the preparation of individualized initial interviews and as a preliminary field study to aidin sharing meanings. The data gathering procedures we used to study the teachers’ preconceptionswere the questionnaire and the semistructured interview (Fig. 1). The questionnaire used to deter-mine the teachers’ conceptions about the nature of science and science teaching/learning was theINPECIP (Inventory of Teachers’ Scientific and Pedagogical Beliefs), designed and tested by Porlan(1989) at the Universidad de Sevilla. The INPECIP consists of 56 items that can be scored from 1to 5 according to the degree of agreement or disagreement. The semistructured interview givenpreviously to each participant consists of more than 200 questions concerning academic background,the nature of science, the science teacher, the science curriculum, and the teaching and learning ofscience.

To study the behavior of the teachers in the classroom, we used their personal planning documentsand classroom observations during their videotaped teaching practices, and stimulated recall inter-views. We did not include the teaching practice diaries, because, in earlier studies (Mellado &Bermejo, 1995), we observed that the diaries focused on general questions and not on specificproblems of the teaching and learning of science. Throughout the investigation, the participantswere kept informed about the analyses and results by the investigator and were given the opportunityto comment on the results.

The four participants, whom we shall call David (physics graduate), Miguel (biology graduate),Ana (science specialist maestra), and Julio (science specialist maestro), carried out their teachingpractice in the province of Badajoz. Classroom sessions were recorded in the following levels andsubjects: David in “physics and chemistry.” of second BUP (secondary school, 15-year-old boysand girls); Miguel in “natural sciences” of first BUP (14-year-old boys and girls); Ana in “natural

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sciences” of sixth EGB (primary school, 11-year-old boys and girls); and Julio in “natural sciences”of eighth EGB (13-year-old girls). At the time of the recorded session, the four participants hadalready been teaching for 2 or 3 weeks in their respective classes. The nonparticipant classroomobservation was made on the subject “Energy and Environment,” which, being interdisciplinary,allowed each participant to take a specific orientation in accord with their own educational trainingand the level of the class. One or two classroom sessions were recorded for each participant,according to the time into which each had structured the topic. The investigator was present as anonparticipating observer. Each lesson was recorded by two video cameras to capture both theprospective teacher’s and the students’ reactions.

In a qualitative investigation, the process of analyzing the data was related simultaneously to itscollection, reduction, and representation (Miles & Huberman, 1984). In our case, the questionnaireand the initial interview were analyzed by means of cognitive maps (Mellado, 1996). These are anextension of the conceptual maps developed by Novak and Gowin (1988) for graphical scientificrepresentation of concepts and extensively convalidated (Ontoria et al., 1992) and used in researchof science teachers (Gess-Newsome & Lederman, 1993; Hoz, Tomer, & Tamir, 1990; Markham,Mintzes, & Jones, 1994; Shymansky et al., 1993). Llinares (1992) gave the maps a different ori-entation, using them to display prospective teachers’ belief structures on mathematics teaching. Theresulting cognitive maps relate, in a partially hierarchical and idiosyncratic manner, units of infor-mation in a broader sense than the concepts used in conceptual maps, and permit an unfragmentedoverall picture of teachers’ beliefs concerning the teaching of sciences.

To construct a teacher’s cognitive maps from the questionnaire, we classified the responses tothe items by ascribing them to an orientation. Then, in each group of responses, the phrases of themore general and inclusive items were linked to those more specific, forming a cognitive map ofbeliefs in a technique that is analogous to that used by Novak and Gowin (1988) for concepts.

To construct a map from the interview, each phrase implying a unit of information was coded,followed by classification into five categories: (a) academic history; (b) the science teacher (theprofession, professional knowledge, and teacher education); (c) the nature of scientific knowledgeand the school science curriculum; (d) the learning of science; and (e) the teaching of science(planning, organization of the class, classroom instructional tasks, resources, and assessment). Thenthe information units of each category or subcategory were related graphically, forming the cog-nitive map. For example, David’s response to question 163 was classified into 11 information units:

D-163: What importance do you give to explanation by the teacher?

David’s response: [Explanation is unavoidable because the student has to be told things that he doesnot know].1 [It is the teacher who knows these things and has to transmit them.]2 Therefore [theexposition of content is unavoidable],3 but I think that [there are teachers—and this you see insecondary centers—who come in: “topic such-and-such, blah, blah, blah . . . ,” and the studentwriting it all down. And that’s not the thing. It’s about giving him the concepts he wants]4 . . . [notdictating to him, but explaining the concept to him, turning it this way and that, explaining it invarious ways, looking for examples for him].5 Because also it would be very easy to come in andsay: “Topic such-and-such. Principles of dynamics. Dynamics: this is the part of physics which blah,blah, blah,” and the student copying it down. It would be the easiest thing in the world, but to meit is of no use, because [it is not a matter of me explaining it but of them understanding it].6 [I havesomehow to seek that the student has understood it].7 Then [you explain, and if they do not under-stand, then go back again, and find another way to explain it].8 [Even though you have to give precisewording at times, because there are times when you have to consider the language that is dealt within physics, and you have to give them the things with this language so that they become familiarizedwith it, above all when they are going to do sciences].9 But also [it is a good idea to explain it inyour own way, say it with words that the student uses]. It is fine for you to say that when a force10

is exerted on a body, the body acquires a proportional acceleration, but also you should explain itin your own fashion. [The explanation would not be so much reading off a roll, but giving them the



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Figure 2. David’s cognitive map of teacher explanation, drawn up from the initial interview.

two or three concepts which they have to have and trying to show them from different angles usingtheir vocabulary].11

Figure 2 shows the cognitive map for David concerning explanation, drawn up on the basis ofhis responses in the initial interview. The numbering corresponds to the coding of the interviewquestions. The cognitive map shown is one of the 32 that we prepared for David’s preconceptions(Mellado, 1995).

For the analysis of the classroom teaching behavior, several simultaneous viewings were madeof the recordings of the teacher and of the students, writing down the most outstanding aspects and

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drafting a script for the final montage with the two tapes. Later, each lesson was transcribed, encodedinto units of information, and represented graphically and sequentially. In this analysis, the personaldocuments contributed by each teacher in the planning and interactive teaching were also takeninto account.

Each participant was subsequently given an audio-recorded stimulated recall interview, in whichthe participating prospective teachers analyzed together with the investigator their own behavior inthe classroom. The stimulated recall interview was considered by Calderhead (1988) as an appro-priate methodology for interactive studies. Finally, each participant analyzed their respective pro-visional final report as drafted by the investigator, and the results were discussed.

RESULTS

Preconceptions

The four teachers recall that, when they were students, most primary and secondary scienceteachers followed a sequence of traditional transmissive instruction: explain: go through exercisesof applications; and ask questions. The main and, in most cases, only resource that teachers usedwas the textbook.

All the teachers indicated that their ideas about the science teacher or about the teaching andlearning of science were formed principally from their own experiences as students, from what theythemselves had lived, and that these ideas had been changed very little by their university education.All four believe that the most important thing for being a teacher, and hence to know how to teach,is that the teacher likes teaching. For them, teachers learn by themselves to teach, taking as referentstheir experience as students and, above all, their own practical experience in teaching. These resultscoincide with those of the aforementioned previous work on science teachers’ opinions.

Except in their practice teaching, David, Miguel, and Julio consider that their university educationhas had little influence on their learning to teach. This agrees with the results of Martınez, Garcıa,and Mondelo (1993) for science teachers. Ana, however, believes that her teacher education coursehas helped her to learn to teach, but as something personal because she believes that one cannot betaught to teach.

Metaphors serve to express their roles as teachers. For David, students see the teacher as a father,a sage, or a judge; on the other hand, he sees himself as the leader of the teaching-how-to-learngroup. For Julio, the teacher is a father or elder brother for primary students and a friend or comradefor secondary students. Miguel and Ana see the teacher as guide and orientor.

The four teachers reflect an apparent constructivist orientation toward learning, as active con-struction based on the students’ existing ideas, relating new knowledge with what the student alreadyknows. Nevertheless, they give quite different epistemological value to the students’ ideas. AlthoughDavid and Julio consider it important to discover what the students’ ideas are, they do not ascribethem any epistemological value, but regard them as simple mistakes that the teacher has to eliminatewhen they do not coincide with those of science. Miguel, however, regards students’ ideas as truealternative theories with the same epistemological value as those of the school curriculum. Con-sequently, the teacher is not to change these theories, but rather to help the students reinforce themand justify them themselves. For Ana, it is the school curriculum that has epistemological value,and not students’ ideas. She nonetheless gives a great deal of importance to the children’s ideasdue to the fact that they are originated by the children themselves, who, for her, are the protagonistsin the classroom. Even when Ana considers that intuitive ideas are erroneous, she would not try totear them down because for her the acquisition of knowledge is wholly subordinate to the integraleducation of the children.

In relation to conceptions about the teaching of science, we refer to orientations or dominanttendencies for each participant, because there exist contradictions in some aspects and we agree



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Figure 3. Preconceptions about the instructional sequence.

with Fernandez and Elortegui (1996) in that, while establishing teaching typologies or models maysuggest trends, the usual case with a teacher is not to find the pure versions but a mixture of featurescharacteristic of various typologies.

According to the questionnaire, the four teachers would plan by behavioral goals, and all showagreement with Item No. 20 of the INPECIP questionnaire:

Objectives, organized and formed into a hierarchy according to their degree of difficulty, are to bethe essential instrument directing educational practice.

However, in the interview, they reject planning by goals and defend planning by content, whichshould take the children’s existing knowledge into account. Ana and Julio would also plan activities,and David and Ana would include attitude development. The two maestros (Ana and Julio) indicatethat they would also plan the form of presenting the class, whereas the two science graduates indicatethat they would keep this aspect in mind, but would not plan it explicitly. Discrepancy between theanswers in the questionnaire and in the interview were detected in several aspects. Other studies(Gunstone et al., 1993; Lederman & O’Malley, 1990) have already pointed to the limitations of thequestionnaire in determining teachers’ conceptions, and advocate more the use of interviews andclassroom observations.

All four teachers, in coherence with their intention to start from the basis of the students’ ownideas, would commence the teaching sequence by attempting to discover what these preexistingideas are by way of questions, examples, anecdotes, etc., which would also serve the purpose ofmotivation (Fig. 3). David would make the teacher’s explanations the axis of teaching, although hewould also consider a strategy of simple conceptual change based on the contradiction between thestudents’ ideas and those of the curriculum. The students would make the conceptual change au-tomatically by way of dialogue or by teacher explanation. Miguel believes that students shoulddebate their ideas in class to reinforce and justify their thoughts, and the teacher’s explanation isnot for the purpose of rebuttal, but rather to contribute a further element to the debate. Ana defends

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Figure 4. Planning by the four teachers.

a strategy of guided conceptual change in which the teacher should guide and orient the studentsby way of dialogue, activities, and explanation, endeavoring to let it be the students’ themselveswho make the conceptual change. Julio agrees with David in that the children’s erroneous ideashave to be eliminated by contradiction or by explanation on the part of the teacher.

The prospective teachers’ conceptions of science teaching are closely related to their conceptionsof science learning.

Teaching Behavior in the Classroom

Analysis of the personal documents showed that only Ana makes a complete and detailed plan(Fig. 4). The other three plan by content, and do not make an explicit plan of the form in which togive the class, although they say they do keep it in mind.

Nonetheless, in the four cases, there exists an implicit personal goal which conditions the wholeof their performance. It is not referred to in the planning, but is brought out in the final stimulatedrecall interview. For David, the importance of the theme (“Energy and the Environment”) lies notin the content but in the social implications and the generation of attitudes in the students. Miguelaims for the students to learn the basic content on energy and the environment. For Ana, theimportance is that the children understand that energy has positive and negative aspects, and thatthey gain positive attitudes toward the environment and participate and interrelate in class. Julio’sgoal is that the girls in his class become aware of the importance of the conservation of the envi-ronment and that they participate in class.

We agree with the studies showing that teachers do not plan by behavioral objectives, but ratherby content and activities (Lederman & Gess-Newsome, 1991; Shavelson & Stern, 1981; Wallace& Louden, 1992), and with those of Duschl and Wright (1989) and Brickhouse (1993), whichindicate that science teachers have certain personal goals or objectives that are distinct and at adifferent level from the curricular objectives and that condition their performance.



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Ana’s real planning corresponds in great part to her preconceptions. Although to a lesser degree,in David, one also observes fair coherence between his real planning and his preconceptions. Bycontrast, Miguel’s planning does not correspond with his preconceptions because he just tries totransmit content without taking into account whether it is suited to the students’ ideas andknowledge. Julio hardly plans explicitly at all: his real planning is limited to a brief and disorderlyscript.

David, Ana, and Julio give the theme an orientation of “Science, Technology, and Society,”aiming for the development of student attitudes; Miguel, on the other hand, centers on the relation-ship between energy and living beings. The pedagogical treatment of the concept of energy isdescriptive in the case of Miguel, but begins from the definition of mechanical work for the otherthree. From the pedagogical point of view, it is more suitable to commence the theme of energy ina descriptive manner (Varela et al., 1993).

In their preconceptions, although the four teachers indicated that they would start out on the basisof the students’ intuitive ideas, the significance of these ideas was different: mistakes that have tobe eliminated if they do not coincide with the ideas of science for David and Julio; true alternativetheories for Miguel; ideas with no epistemological, value but with pedagogical value for Ana. Inthe classroom, none of the teachers makes a systematic individualized diagnosis of the children’sideas; therefore it is difficult to start from these ideas and monitor the learning individually. AsNeale, Smith, and Wier (1987) have indicated, novice teachers think more in overall terms aboutthe class as a group than as differentiated into individuals. Their initial questions fulfill more amission of motivation and encouragement to participate than being a step in the constructiviststrategy.

David begins by asking the students questions, and, instead of rebutting their alternative ideas,he makes further comments on them and asks additional questions guided by a strategy of rein-forcing those ideas he considers important. Following this phase, there is an extensive treatment ofthe concept involved with the aid of the blackboard, press cuttings, and notes drawn up by theteacher, which he gives out at the beginning to all the students. In the classroom, David uses dialogueand, above all, teacher explanation in a basically transmissive strategy, although with student par-ticipation. He does not employ his preconceived contradiction strategy, so his behavior may bedescribed as partially coherent with his preconceptions.

In Miguel’s classroom, the students are regarded as mere passive receptors of external knowledge,contrary to his preconception of science teaching. He follows a strategy of transmission of externalknowledge, with little student participation, based exclusively on teacher explanations supplementedby use of the blackboard and slides packed with information. His rhythm is very fast, with scarcelyany pauses, so that assimilation is difficult for the students (Tobin et al., 1994). For him, completionof all the programmed content is more important than the students’ learning. Miguel’s classroombehavior is completely contrary to his preconceptions, which were to reinforce the students’ alter-native ideas through debate and not by means of teacher explanation.

In her class, Ana gives pedagogical value to the students’ ideas, although not epistemologicalvalue. She begins by asking the students questions and, on the basis of the ideas revealed in theiranswers, puts new, guiding questions to them that reinforce these ideas. Ana’s brief explanationsare for clarification and reinforcement and to relate the new ideas to ones that the children alreadyhad. She follows a classroom strategy of guided conceptual change through dialogue, activities,and teacher explanation. Ana’s students were the only ones who were arranged six to a table andcarried out activities in groups. Ana’s classroom behavior is quite coherent with her preconceptionsof the teaching and learning of science.

Julio begins by asking his students questions, but his questions are of a low cognitive level andthe girls’ answers contribute little information. He follows a basically transmissive classroom strat-egy, although with student participation. He does not use the contradiction strategy noted in hispreconceptions, and the strategy behind his questions to the students is one of motivation and

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Figure 5. Classroom instructional sequencing of the four prospective teachers.

participation. His behavior is only partially compatible with his preconceptions. Figure 5 showsschematically the instructional sequencing of the four prospective teachers in the study.

With respect to the relationship between metaphor and classroom behavior, this is quite markedfor David, Ana, and Julio, but there is a total contradiction between Miguel’s guide and orientormetaphor and his classroom behavior.

The classroom behavior of the four teachers is closer to traditional models of teaching andlearning of science than to their preconceptions. Ana’s behavior is the most coherent with herpreconceptions, followed by David’s and Julio’s, which have a partial correspondence. By contrast,there is a sharp contradiction in Miguel’s case. Thus, at least for prospective teachers, we canestablish no clear relationship between the teachers’ conceptions about the teaching and learningof science and their classroom practice. Other factors that may have a determining influence willhave to be considered.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION

One observes in the maestros greater coherence between their preconceptions and classroomteaching behavior. It must be noted, however, that all four prospective teachers improvised to agreat extent in how to give the class, and that even the maestros used little of their knowledge ofthe didactics of science. For the graduates, this may well have been the natural consequence oftheir having received very little educational training. The maestros, however, had received suchtraining, but they too were incapable of transferring much of the knowledge they had acquired ofscience teaching into the classroom. We believe that this situation exists because the knowledgethe maestros have received concerning science education is theoretical, impersonal, and static, withlittle relationship to the practical knowledge of the classroom required when giving the sciencelesson.

During their initial stage of teacher education, science teachers are required to learn a body ofprofessional knowledge that includes knowledge of science, psychopedagogy, and theory of scienceteaching methods. We call this type of knowledge static because it is general for all prospective



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Figure 6. Components of the science teacher’s professional knowledge.

teachers and independent of the learner (in his/her facet of learning to teach science) and can befound in written or audiovisual materials without any need for direct personal involvement. Aca-demic, or static, knowledge is necessary for the science teacher, and the Teacher Education Centermust encourage stimulating and exemplary methodologies in learning academic knowledge, butthis knowledge is insufficient for the prospective teacher to be able to learn how to teach scienceor to change their beliefs or teaching practices.

Also, when the prospective science teachers begin their university course, they already havecertain knowledge, values, beliefs, and attitudes about science, the teaching and learning of science,the teacher, etc., which are inherited from their earlier school years; therefore, in the initial educationof both primary and secondary teachers, it is also necessary to encourage reflection on their ownconceptions about science and the teaching and learning of science as a first step toward theirgenerating better-suited conceptions and practices in themselves. Nevertheless, for prospectiveteachers, knowledge of their conceptions about science or the teaching and learning of science doesnot automatically guarantee the transfer into classroom practice if the teachers have not acquiredpractical schemes of action in the classroom consistent with their beliefs.

In our opinion, there exists a professional component in science teachers’ knowledge that weconsider “dynamic” (Fig. 6) and that has a status that is different from content knowledge, generalpsychopedagogical knowledge, or static knowledge of science teaching methods, even though itstarts from these three kinds of knowledge and is related to them (Blanco, Mellado, & Ruiz, 1995;Mellado, in press). Dynamic knowledge is personal and practical (Pro Bueno, 1995), acquired frompersonal teaching experiences in specific contexts (Tamir, 1991), and evolves by means of a processof reflection–action between assimilated theory and the practical teaching of specific material. Thisprocess allows teachers to reconsider their static knowledge and conceptions, and to modify orreaffirm them. It is also, as noted by Wilson, Shulman, and Richert (1987) for pedagogical contentknowledge, a form of pedagogical action and reasoning.

The dynamic component is the most specifically professional and distinguishes expert science

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teachers from novices. The expert teacher has developed this dynamic component over years ofteaching experience, and integrates the different components of knowledge into a single structure.We agree with Gess-Newsome and Lederman (1993), Hauslein, Good, and Cummins (1992), andLederman, Gess-Newsome, and Latz (1994), when they consider this single structure to be peda-gogical content knowledge (PCK).

During their teaching practice, preservice teachers can generate their own practical schemes ofaction in science teaching. Reflection during and on the practice of teaching (Schon, 1983) allowsprospective teachers to analyze, through classroom observations, their classroom behavior and con-trast it with their preconceptions (Louden & Wallace, 1994) in a continuous feedback process. Onealso permits them, through case studies in the university center, to contrast their teaching behaviorwith that of expert science teachers and with that of their companions. This reflection has to bedone together with their university supervisor, cooperating teacher, and classmates. They have toredefine their teaching strategies, contrast them with their previous beliefs, and again put them intopractice. In this process, the support they receive from their university supervisors and companionsis fundamental, because their apprenticeship includes social and personal development as well asprofessional development (Bell & Gilbert, 1994). Insofar as they take these three aspects intoaccount, prospective teachers’ practice will be consistent with their beliefs, and both will be capableof change. Teachers’ beliefs can, as one of many variables, influence curriculum implementation,but the curriculum also affects teachers’ beliefs (Tobin et al., 1994).

Science teaching research has been dominated by the constructivist paradigm since the 1980s,which has led to considerable progress in many aspects of the teaching and learning of science.Matthews (1994) criticized the epistemological foundation of constructivism with its marked em-piricist aspects in the individual construction of scientific knowledge in the learning of science, andits neglect of social aspects, which, in the history of science, has meant the construction of theo-retical concepts not coincident with personal experiences. The situation is different, however, withrespect to the way in which teachers learn to teach science, because teachers have no universalreferents available in science teaching equivalent to scientific theories. Although prospective teach-ers are subject to a process of socialization in the profession, they learn to teach in a personalmanner and elaborate their own pedagogical content knowledge. In this sense, the constructivistparadigm, as referent and not as a teaching method (Tobin et al., 1994), would be more applicableto how teachers learn to teach science than to how students learn scientific concepts.

The centers that impart initial teacher education cannot limit themselves to transmitting staticpropositional knowledge. They must introduce more knowledge of procedures and strategicschemes of action—the dynamic component—so that prospective teachers can assimilate it assomething personal, in a practical teaching context, from reflection on their own conceptions andpractice (Blanco, 1994; Kagan, 1992). Lecture courses on science teaching methods have a majorrole to play in this approach (Furio, Gil, Pessoa, & Salcedo, 1992; Mellado, Blanco, & Ruiz, inpress). Finally, if prospective teachers take the teachers they had during their school years as positiveor negative referents for science teaching, it is fundamental that the methodology used in the initialteacher education centers should itself be consistent with the theoretical models of which the teachereducators are proponents, otherwise, the prospective teachers will learn more from what they seedone in the classroom than from what they are told ought to be done (Stoddart, Connell, Stoffett,& Peek, 1993; Tobin et al., 1994; Trumbull & Kerr, 1993).

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