New Perspectives in Science Education

This qualitative study examines the professional development of primary teacher students regarding their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and their Content Knowledge (CK) based on Park & Oliver (2008). The teacher students participate in an academic course to gather subject knowledge in environmental education with a specific focus on hibernation of animals and plants. The methodological approach integrates minds-on-activities and hands- on-activities based on the principles of inquiry-based-science-education (IBSE; Elster, 2013). In addition, the teacher students work in teams and develop school projects for 4 to 6 graders, conduct them in the teaching and learning lab of the University Bremen and evaluate the pupils’ learning progression.

The study reports first results of the pilot course (N=5 teacher students) that was conducted in winter semester 2014/15 and preliminary findings of the final course that is just running in winter semester 2015/16 (N=25 teacher students).  For data collection a questionnaire in the pre-post-design and the students’ learning journals are used to measure the development of PCK and CK. The data analysis is based on the paradigm of the Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring, 1998).

The findings of the pilot course demonstrate first of all an increase of the CK. In addition, the students improve their knowledge about different aspects of PCK, but they struggle with imparting the method of IBSE. Therefore, in the final course we focus more intensively on the reflection of the essential features of IBSE. First findings of the final course we will report in our presentation.