Exploring preservice teachers' mental models of the environment

Abstract

A major premise underlying this chapter is that if preservice teachers are aware of their mental models of the environment, they will want to develop more accurate images that inform how they will teach about the environment in the future. This chapter describes how we used drawings as a survey tool to uncover preservice teachers' mental models of the environment, our findings, and programmatic changes that we implemented as a response to our study. Building on previous science education research using drawings that describe preservice teachers' beliefs about the subject of science, we developed the Draw-An-Environment Test (DAET). We then developed a rubric based on the NAAEE Guidelines for the Preparation and Professional Development of Environmental Educators (2004) for scoring the drawings, the Draw-An-Environment Test Rubric (DAET-R), to quantitatively analyze the data collected using the DAET. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.