Constructing Meaning in a Science Methods Course for Prospective Elementary Teachers

How do prospective elementary science teachers think? This case study

reveals thinking patterns common to preservice elementary teachers;

identifies their behavioral characteristics while learning to teach science which are not commonly noted in current literature;

provides change strategies to accelerate preservice elementary teachers embracing the holistic, constructivist, inquiry/practice-based paradigm consistent with the standards set by the curriculum.

The chapters in this book immerse the reader in a sequence of episodes in this science methods course, and reveal the adventure of turning theory into practice while analyzing student-student/student-instructor interactions and their outcomes in an inquiry-driven, flipped classroom.

Strategies presented empower preservice elementary teachers to

implement national and state standards;

change science learning/teaching from “business as usual” to applying science and engineering practices in the classroom;

make cognitive and behavioral changes required to shift paradigms and eliminate science anxiety;

pass through stages of grief inherent in the loss of dominant mechanistic paradigm.