Problem solving in teaching training in science: analysis of students’ opinions and strategies

Abstract

Initial teaching training in Science implies dealing with aspects related to both the specific discipline and the pedagogic formation. Problem solving would bring together both aspects, constituting a didactic resource that has an influence on the process of initial teaching formation and on the prospective teacher performance. This study aims at finding out the opinions and strategies which a group of students, who are prospective teachers of Science, give when solving problems. To help the students make explicit their ideas, a technique consisting on incomplete phrases, such as: «When I solve a problem I try…» was used. The sample is constituted by students attending the first years of the careers of Physics and Chemistry at Universidad Nacional de San Juan (Argentina). The students’ answers appear to be specially related to both the cognitive skills needed to perform the task and the need of using different sources, and, in every case, they refer to close problems whose resolution implies prioritizing the stage of data identification. The results obtained, from the problem concept that is inferred and from the strategies that are used during the solving of the problem, question the way in which problem solving is approached in the initial teaching training stage.