Spanish Science Teacher Educators’ Preparation, Experiences, and Views About Nature of Science in Science Education

The obstacles and difficulties that science teachers face when teaching the nature of science (NOS) are well-known. Nonetheless, little is known of what science teacher educators (STEs) know, do, and think about this issue. Thus, a study with 142 Spanish STEs was conducted. This was aimed at analysing (i) what preparation the STEs have to teach NOS, (ii) what educational experience they have about NOS, (iii) what importance they give to NOS in their training plans, (iv) when NOS should be taught, (v) how to integrate NOS in science education, (vi) how to teach NOS, (vii) what to teach about NOS, and (viii) the influences interconnecting the STEs’ preparation, experience, and opinions regarding NOS teaching. Among the results, it was found that most STEs state that they have ample knowledge of NOS, are well prepared pedagogically to teach it, and have extensive experience in teaching it. However, there was some mismatch between their stated preparation and their experience teaching NOS. In addition, they think that NOS should be taught from early ages and be treated as cross-cutting content in science education. They also consider that, when teaching NOS, an implicit approach is just as effective as an explicit-reflective one. As for their selection of NOS content to include, they are fundamentally divided into two groups — those who select only epistemic aspects of NOS and those who select a balanced proportion of both epistemic and non-epistemic aspects. The limitations of the study are reported along with the issues that require further research.

Finding Common Ground: A Synthesis of Science and Mathematics Teacher Educators’ Experiences with Professional Growth

The seven articles that comprise this Special Issue examine the professional growth of mathematics and science teacher educators across different contexts and different foci of who is the teacher educator being studied. Despite these differences, a common thread running throughout these seven articles is the need for learning to be situated in collaboration with others. In this final article, we examine the contribution of these articles through two perspectives: that of the collaborative contexts supporting the professional growth of mathematics and science teacher educators, and the role of disciplinary knowledge as part of the purpose for teacher educators’ professional growth. We notice that collaboration can take on very different structures in supporting teacher educators’ professional learning due to the different purposes and roles of the teacher educators in the studies. We also notice that while collaboration figures as an important component in all of the studies, the disciplinary specific aspects of collaboration, i.e., how collaboration might be negotiated differently by teacher educators in mathematics and science, is still not well understood. Overall, these articles provide important insights that help to shed new light on the complex and multifaceted nature of teacher educators’ learning and growth and provide productive avenues for future research.

Facing neoliberalism through dialogic spaces as sites of hope in science education: experiences of two self-organised communities

In this paper, we discuss the role of dialogue in two layers; first, in relation to two self-organised communities of science teachers in which we participated and, second, our process of coming together during our PhDs to analyse these communities, a dialogue about the dialogue. Regarding the first layer, there is much to learn from science teachers and science teacher educators when they are organised in sites of learning that can be spaces of hope, beginnings, and becoming, as is illustrated in the case of these two self-organised communities. Regarding the second layer, we discuss the value of dialogue and the possibilities it offers to develop ideas for science education in a way that might be democratising, emancipatory, and offering counter-narratives in a neoliberal Chile. By engaging in this dialogue revisiting the practices of our communities, we gained a sense of agency within the field of science education. However, we realised that we need to move towards a critical view within our communities, and more contextual and transformative science education by translating these sites of hope to our educational praxis today. For us, this relates both to developing a collective view of how to make science education provide pedagogical conditions and experiences for critical and engaged citizenship and thinking how we can act and engage with different settings in solidarity. One way of moving towards this is by developing a political knowledge of our disciplines through a collective scientific conscientisation. Our communities are the departure points to achieve this.

Research on Learners and Teachers of Mathematics and Science: Forerunners to a Focus on Teacher Educator Professional Growth

This introductory paper first reflects the genesis of research in mathematics and science teacher education. The analyses show a movement from foci of research in mathematics and science education from students to teachers, and then to teacher educators. Next, an overview of research in mathematics and science teacher education and its development is provided, including teacher educators’ growth. This is followed by a comparative look at the seven papers in this special issue through three lenses, focusing on who the teacher educators in these papers are, the practices which are the focus for development, and the contexts in which the professional growth is situated. The seven papers not only exemplify how teacher educators might critically and systematically reflect on their own growth, educate new teacher educators, and do corresponding research, but also demonstrate the considerable progress the research community has made with respect to the professional growth of mathematics and science teacher educators in the last decade. Finally, challenges and questions are raised, in particular in relation to raising the quality and quantity of proficient teacher educators in order to strengthen teacher education research, and to have enough human resources to offer more and better professional development opportunities and to support schools.

Foregrounding Intersectionality in Considerations of Diversity: Confronting Discrimination in Science Teacher Education

This paper contributes to a small but significant body of research addressing issues of prejudice in science education. It is written in the form of a critical incident analysis that uses the framework of intersectionality to examine deficit ideologies and biases inherent in science as a body of knowledge as well as science teacher education. If left unchecked, these prejudices can filter through into school science education, reinforcing the stereotypes of who can contribute to the field of science. The paper makes a call for science teacher educators to support teacher candidates as they move past an academic understanding of diversity in science education to examine their personal dispositions. Suggestions are made for approaches that can be adopted to facilitate the forms of deconstruction necessary for progress to be made in this area.

A Survey of Science Teachers’ Perception and Practices in Inclusive Science Classrooms

This paper reports on a first study about Singapore primary science teachers’ views and practices in inclusive science classrooms. Rasch analysis was performed on an online teacher survey administered to 108 teachers, which was conducted to investigate teachers’ views about students with special education needs (SEN; Construct A), self-efficacy views in teaching students with SEN (Construct B), and their science teaching practices in inclusive classrooms (Construct C). The findings show that it was generally easy for the science teachers to agree with items in Constructs B and C, but not in Construct A. A closer examination of the individual constructs revealed positive teachers’ views, their feelings of inadequacy and wish for greater school support, and selected types of accommodations and modifications practiced in their classrooms. This study contributes new insights drawn from an Asian study, offers a validated instrument, and provides science teacher educators ideas for supporting science teachers in inclusive science teaching.

The Efficacy of Inquiry-Based Instruction in Science: a Comparative Analysis of Six Countries Using PISA 2015

This study is a comparative analysis of 15-year-old students’ scientific literacy, and its association with the instructional strategies that students experience, across six OECD countries that participated in PISA 2015. Across the six countries, the study investigates the efficacy of inquiry-based instruction in science in contrast with two other instructional approaches to teaching secondary science: adaptive and teacher-directed teaching. The analysis shows that students who reported experiencing high frequencies of inquiry strategies in their classrooms consistently evidenced lower levels of scientific literacy across the six countries. Benchmark analysis also showed, common to all six countries, a strongly positive association between the frequency of teacher-directed and adaptive teaching strategies and students’ scientific literacy. Additionally, the study disaggregates PISA’s composite variable representing inquiry-based instruction and shows that different components of inquiry are differentially associated with students’ scientific literacy. We discuss the implications of these analyses for science teacher educators, science teachers, and educational policy makers. In doing so, we add nuance to our understanding of the efficacy of inquiry-based instruction in science, suggesting that some components, as conceptualised and assessed in PISA, seem to suggest greater attention and use, and others more moderated use.