The future teachers 'conceptions about the nature, change and educational use of students' ideas

Abstract

One of the indicators of quality in teaching classroom content is what teachers think about the ideas of their pupils, and then what use they of them. The purpose of the present study was to describe and analyse how, during their initial teacher education course, prospective primary teachers' conceptions about pupils' ideas on various topics of school science content progressed. Analysis of the participants' written productions throughout the course (which had a clear constructivist orientation) suggested that, in all the categories studied (nature, change, and educational use of pupils' ideas), there was progression from their initial conceptions that had been close to a transmissive model that ignored pupils' ideas, but that this progression did not reach the alternative model that we considered desirable. We propose an "Itinerary of Progression" on pupils' ideas which can serve as a referent in initial teacher education.