Science Teacher Education, Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, and the Reflective Turn

Abstract

The disciplines of science are often perceived as a quest for right answers, a perception generated unintentionally by the school classroom focus on right answers in the assessment of one's success in learning science. In contrast, the profession of teaching has very few right answers and frequently involves the management of conflicting tensions (Berry, 2007). As a result, the science educator often faces a significant dilemma: there are few right answers for teaching science or for teaching others how to teach science, yet those who are learning to teach science are often predisposed to expect right answers by virtue of their own education in science. Thus, the education of science teachers often involves the challenge of shifting prior expectations from the right answers associated with science to the many perspectives required to make sense of the realities of teaching in a science classroom.