Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Images of Scientific Inquiry Regarding Practices of Next Generation Science Standards

Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Images of Scientific Inquiry Regarding Practices of Next Generation Science Standards

We investigated Korean preservice elementary teachers’ mental images of science inquiry and inquiry teaching with respect to 8 specific Science and Engineering Practices (SEP). The preservice teachers had learned about science inquiry, but were not taught these SEP in their Korean curriculum. We asked them to draw and explain an imagined situation where they would be teaching science inquiry in an elementary science classroom. Some were also asked to describe an imagined situation of scientists conducting research. We applied the 8 SEPs as an analysis framework to review their images of science inquiry and inquiry teaching. The majority of students (93.2%) for elementary science teaching and all (100%) for science research represented images related to at least one SEP. However, students’ pictorial and/or written descriptions were restricted to some SEPs such as planning and carrying out investigations or analyzing and interpreting data. Although they tended to respond that asking questions and defining problems would be the most related to science inquiry among the 8 SEPs, they rarely applied those kinds of scenes to their drawings. Furthermore, using mathematics and computational thinking was hardly found in their ideas of elementary science inquiry teaching, and developing and using models was not represented as being part of scientists’ research. The findings indicate possible approaches to teachers’ professional development and suggest directions for further research.