PCK for introductory mechanics pre-service teachers in a conceptual lab
- Autor(en)
- Brigitte Wolny, Martin Hopf
- Abstrakt
Pre-service physics teachers are to learn not only physics and pedagogy, but also develop a variety of skills and aspects of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). They retain their own beliefs about their students’ preconceptions, representations of subject matter and perception of teaching. Van Dijk presented a research model to study science teachers’ PCK (Van Dijk & Kattmann, 2007). Within the Educational Reconstruction for Teacher Education (ERTE) framework, teachers’ knowledge is related to developing learning activities for students which includes the design of teaching-learning sequences, the study of students’ prescientific conceptions, and subject matter analysis.
The present design based research project focuses on pre-service teachers’ PCK development and takes their conceptual understanding in mechanics into account. This project keeps track of pre-service teachers’ conceptions (written protocols, FCI) and explores pre-service teachers’ gain on PCK (interviews) after an eight hour teaching-learning sequence in introductory mechanics.
At the University of Vienna pre-service physics teachers attend a conceptual lab (Physics School Experiments Laboratory, PSE-lab) in the 4th semester of their Bachelor studies. During this PSE-lab, they engage themselves with a non-traditional teaching-learning sequence in introductory mechanics (Hopf et al., 2010). This alternative content structure includes the key idea of starting with two-dimensional dynamics motion.
The main goals are that pre-service teachers learn about the content structure of this teaching-learning sequence as well as knowing how to implement experiments to enhance their students’ learning. Our hypothesis is that, while strictly following the new content structure for introductory mechanics, pre-service teachers will develop a deeper understanding of Newton’s laws as well as gain a better perception of how to implement such a structure into their own teaching.
To measure the development of PCK, interviews were conducted before and after the teaching-learning sequence in the PSE-lab. Data analysis is conducted via qualitative content analysis. The first study of pre-service teachers’ developing knowledge was conducted in 2014, followed by a redesign of the teaching-learning sequence and a second study in 2015. Depending on pre-service teachers’ prior teaching-experiences and commitment during the PSE-lab, they describe learning settings in a more professional way after the lab, using terminology, physics concepts and correct descriptions in the interview. Knowledge about implementing and arranging learning-settings is broadened, whereas the conceptual understanding is only slightly enhanced.
Despite an arguably short intervention we have seen significant evidence in pre-service teachers’ PCK development.
- Organisation(en)
- Plattform für Didaktik der Naturwissenschaften (AECCs), Experimentelle Grundausbildung und Hochschuldidaktik
- Band
- 1076
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 8
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1076/1/012016
- Publikationsdatum
- 2016
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 503013 Fachdidaktik Naturwissenschaften
- Schlagwörter
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/pck-for-introductory-mechanics-preservice-teachers-in-a-conceptual-lab(0349f60a-1a70-4be0-a26d-99bd99514b3a).html