Prospective Teachers' Views on Teaching Science Concepts

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the views of pre-service teachers who have taken the "Science Teaching" course in the undergraduate program of classroom teaching about the teaching of science concepts. In this study, the phenomenology study approach, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. The study group of this research consisted 75 pre-service teachers, 56 female and 19 male, studying in the third year of the undergraduate primary teaching program of a state university. In this study, the views of the pre-service teachers who took the science teaching course about the teaching of science concepts were determined through four open-ended questions followed by face-to-face semi-structured interviews with eight participants. It can be said that the idea that prototype examples should be given about a concept in concept teaching is known by pre-service teachers (82.3%). It was observed that the pre-service teachers were aware of a misconception about force as a science concept (90.7%), but they had difficulty writing the main views of learning theories (48.0%). It is an important detail that the participants did not see the exams as tools to eliminate misconceptions at a high rate (82.7%). Interviews were conducted with eight participants who volunteered and had available time about the answers they wrote for four open-ended questions. It was seen that the participants’ opinions supported the findings of this study. Some suggestions were made based on the findings of the study.