Rafael Porlán

The Progression of Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions of School Science Content

The purpose of the present work is to describe the progression in the conceptions of prospective primary teachers about school science content while they were participating in three teacher education courses following the same constructivist oriented strategy. The participants’ written output was analyzed in various categories—selection of content, types of content and their relationships, levels of complexity, and presentation of content to pupils. There was evidence for some progress in their conceptions of the content from a traditional view to another that we termed intermediate since it did not reach the vision that we consider to be the most complex. Finally, we present a General Itinerary of Progression on school content that could serve as a referent for initial teacher education.

SPANISH PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS’ INITIAL IDEAS ABOUT TEACHING CHEMICAL CHANGE

We describe and analyse the initial ideas of a sample of 24 Spanish prospective teachers about teaching the concept of chemical change to 13-14 year old pupils. The participants, working in groups, elaborated proposals to teach this concept. A content analysis of these proposals showed that: a) a great part of the content was organized in a linear sequence; b) within a diversity of methods there predominated closed sequences of laboratory observation activities aimed at allowing the pupils to infer the concepts for themselves, but without taking their pre-existing conceptions on chemical change into account; and c) evaluation was seen as a check that the pupils had acquired the knowledge that the teacher had established beforehand. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of the conceptions detected for initial teacher education. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. Eur.: 2001, 2, 265-283]