Pre-service Teachers Developing PCK in a Natural History Museum

Abstract

This chapter is about the design and study of a pre-service teacher field experience that takes place at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's immersive space Q?rius ("curious"). Q?rius features more than 6000 specimens including shells, skeletons, fossils, rocks, and minerals that are organized in non-text collections that visitors can see, touch, and study under a microscope. Prospective 7th-12th grade teachers from the George Washington University's Master of Education Program in Secondary Education were trained as museum volunteers to facilitate the Q?rius visitors' experiences and tasked with attending to visitor thinking, facilitating questioning, and sustaining engagement with the artifacts. Practical outcomes for science teaching resulted in gaining confidence working with learners, becoming better questioners, and learning to inquire with visitors (instead of giving answers to them). [For the complete volume, "Pedagogical Content Knowledge in STEM: Research to Practice. Advances in STEM Education," see ED613708.]