The prospective teachers´change of knowledge about science teaching methodology using an initial training program

Abstract

The methodology of teaching is one of the most important areas of the curriculum in the initial teacher´s education. This article describes and analyzes the change, detected in the prospective primary teachers’ conceptions about the science teaching methodology with which future teachers are identified. In this study were compared conceptions before and after a training course in constructivist orientation. The study has been performed with a sample of 311 students enrolled in the 2nd year of the degree course at the University of Seville, organized in 92 teams during the course, in five classrooms with the same education proposal. The information was obtained using a pre- and a post-test questionnaire, containing twelve statements with which students had to express their degree of agreement on a Likert-scale. Six statements were related to a more traditional methodology and six other statements to an alternative methodology, two for each category have been studied: the concept of activity, types of activities and methodological sequence. The responses were analyzed in different ways, such as descriptive statistics, principal components analysis, statistically significant differences and effect size to estimate the magnitude of the detected differences. The results reveal that early in the course the prospective teachers identified themselves with approaches that stand for an alternative teaching methodology and beliefs consistent with a traditional teaching methodology. After the course, significant differences were observed with respect to the starting situation. Thus, their agreement with the statements of an alternative model to teach science seems strengthened and the disagreement with the statements of the traditional teaching model seems to increase. Finally is being referred to the implications of these results in the initial teacher training in science education.