Improving Prospective Teachers’ Knowledge about Scientific Models and Modelling: Design and evaluation of a teacher education intervention

Abstract

Evidence of the role of models in the teaching/learning process in science education is well documented in literature. A crucial role in this process is played by teachers. It is therefore important to design teacher education intervention focused on models and modelling. Although recognized as important by many authors, few attempts have been carried out and with a limited success. This paper reports of a three‐year‐long study whose aims can be summarized as follows: to investigate the knowledge of scientific models and modelling of physics, mathematics, and engineering prospective teachers; to explore the effectiveness of a research‐based teacher education intervention aimed at improving knowledge about scientific models and modelling; to inspect the effects of a refinement process of the intervention based on a design–trial–redesign cycle. About 400 prospective teachers from two Italian universities were involved in the study. The results show that the knowledge about models and modelling of prospective teachers after the four‐ or five‐year degree diploma is still rather poor and confused. On the other hand, the implementation results support the effectiveness of the designed intervention and of the refinement process. Implications which may give a contribution to more general research problems related to models and modelling in science education are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Physics education
• Pre‐service teacher knowledge
• Qualitative research
• Models
• Prospective teachers’ education
• Teachers’ views

Notes

1. Some authors (Minstrell, 1992) have used the term “facet” to indicate connection nets amongst few concepts. The most elementary forms of logical connection have been called by Di Sessa and Sherin (1998) phenomenological primitives (“p‐prims”)

2. To better understand the context of this research study, some descriptive information about the Italian teacher education system is reported in the Appendix.

3. Portfolios included answers to open questions about and reflections on the activities carried out during each of the sessions.

4. Such a result may be due to the massive coverage about this issue provided by local media during the beginning of 2008.

5. Although valuable, it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss a comparison of the different teaching approaches about models and modelling.