Conexiones: Fostering Socioscientific Inquiry in Graduate Teacher Preparation

摘要

Socioscientific Inquiry (SSI) represents one approach designed to target interest and knowledge in science. In this context, students consider scientific issues that have social implications and require a range of trade-offs, concepts, and considerations in order to arrive at informed conclusions (Sadler, 2004). However, inquiry tasks in general and SSI projects in particular are not widely adopted in K-12 settings, despite strong beliefs among teachers that these types of activities are valuable (Marshall, Horton, Igo, u26 Switzer, 2009). We suggest Collaborative Action Research may provide an important platform for enabling teachers to experience success through systematic investigations of their practice supported by peer interaction and collaboration (Capobianco u26 Feldman, 2006).In our investigation, we sought to understand the learning experiences of teachers within redesigned graduate-level courses aimed at preparing teachers to implement SSI approaches in the classroom. Data were collected from course participants to capture changes in scientific content knowledge, perceptions of SSI instruction, and strengths as well as recommendations of the experience. Results suggest that teachers can gain both content knowledge and pedagogical capacity in SSI methods.