Pixel International Conferences

Pre-service teacher trainers use to ask themselves about the effectiveness of the teacher training program they are implementing. An answer could be found on the Likert-like opinion surveys of the educational work granted by many universities, which are answered by the students and can be construed as an external indicator. Nevertheless, we seek for a more systematic evaluation proposal that let us triangulate not only quantitative but also qualitative results, taking into account the concrete objectives of the different educating programs.

In order to answer this request and becoming aware of the key importance in the teaching-learning process in science education of the emotions experienced (as they play an important role in teachers’ construction of pedagogical content knowledge, curriculum planning, relationships with children…), in this paper, we present an evaluation design that complete the above descripted characteristics. Furthermore, we show the results obtained with a semi-open questionnaire about emotions that pre-service primary teachers declare to have felt in a Science Education course.

We conclude that the impressions can run roughly as an indicator of the effect of a teacher training course, resulting the need of multiple instruments in order to consider the different aspects that a program like those require. Specifically, from the results obtained thanks to the emotions questionnaire, we found that students expressed both positive and negative emotions, and we highlight how “negative emotions” declared by students can have a different cause and play different roles in science learning considering as much quantitative as qualitative information.

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