Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Beliefs about Reform-Based Science Teaching and Learning

The quality of elementary preservice science teachers’ learning to teach science depends upon their reform-minded beliefs about science teaching and learning. Framed by the sociocultural model of embedded belief systems and alternative conceptions of mentor-novice relationships, this two phase, mixed methods dissertation study used survey and interview data to determine whether, and to what extent, elementary preservice teachers’ beliefs changed during student teaching in the direction of traditional or reformed science teaching; which beliefs are the most popular; how past learning histories influenced beliefs; and how the personal learning histories and mentors influenced the science teaching belief system. In the first phase, it surveyed one cohort of elementary teachers enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a public school in the Southwest United States and found a significant, and mostly positive, difference exists between the participants’ initial and final beliefs, which suggests that preservice teachers’ became more reform-minded after student teaching. Some reformed beliefs were widely supported, but many traditional beliefs persisted after student teaching. In the second phase, it analyzed survey and interview data from two preservice elementary teachers with different initial beliefs of science teaching and found that both preservice teachers showed an increase in their degree of reform-mindedness at the conclusion of the student teaching year. In both cases, the past learning histories seemed to influence the degree of reform-mindedness achieved by the end of the program, but the mentors influenced multiple aspects of the preservice teacher’s belief system.