Confronting the Need for Conceptual Change in Pre-Service Science Education

Abstract

During a five-year period the authors taught over 100 students in a graduate course (The Nature of Science) counting toward teacher certification at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Despite the fact that students had undergraduate degrees in the sciences, most of them found the application of models in science challenging and the epistemological consequences unsettling. Moreover, students found it especially difficult to use a model to correctly generate predictions, which was starkly illustrated with the application of Archimedes' principle during our unit on floating and sinking. We examine the deceptive belief that student success with algorithms and word problems leads to conceptual understanding as well as the conceptual change necessary to understand the relationship between evidence and inference as explored in the nature of science course. Considering the apparently strong science backgrounds of our students, we doubt that typical pre-college students can achieve the goals described in the National Science Education Standards in the short time typically allotted for their science studies. We explore the issues students face in "understanding" science as well as the impact of science education on students and teachers, and implications for policy makers and pre-service programs.

Culture as inter- and intra-personal mediator: considering the notion of conceptual porosity and its connection to culture as a concept

“…A conceptual change model of learning in teacher education has been proposed as an important methodology for research on how teachers learn (Schwartz, Shapiro and Gregory 2013), but more research utilizing this method is warranted. Conceptual change has, however, been used as an analytic tool in research on teachers' learning about diversity (Larkin 2012) and inquiring into 'cultural values' as a non-conceptual factor (Abd-El-Khalick and Akerson 2004).…”

A framework for professional learning and development in science for New Zealand upper primary teachers

“…Several studies, including Stepans and McCormack (1985), Skamp (1989), and Appleton (1995) found that more formal science training was not associated with increased levels of conceptual science knowledge. In more recent work, Schwartz, Shapiro, and Gregory (2013) found that nearly all of the students in their graduate level teacher certification course did not understand the basic structures of science, despite all of them being science majors. The study confronted teacher candidates with a situation in which they had to apply a theoretical model (Archimedes' principle) to explain their observations and make predictions.…”