Pre-service teachers´ beliefs about the benefits and challenges of stse based school-industry collaboration and practices in science education

Abstract

School-industry collaboration can be an effective way to implement STSE issues to teaching. However, teachers´ negative beliefs, lack of knowledge, resources, support and opportunities to collaborate with companies can impede the efficient implementation. In this case-study, 42 Finnish and Slovenian pre-service teachers´ STSE beliefs were first examined before and after the school-industry collaboration course by survey. After the course, beliefs of 8 Finnish pre-service teachers were analyzed in more detail by open-ended questionnaires and reflective writing. The pre-service teachers were more confident to teach STSE issues after the course in both countries. However, they needed more support and knowledge from the community members they collaborated with (i.e. representatives of industries, university teacher, student colleagues and school teachers). The industry-based teaching material was considered beneficiary especially for mixed-ability classrooms and the whole course was regarded useful for future practices. The results of this research highlight the importance of pre-service teacher education and practices with STSE issues. The positive and negative beliefs should be examined frequently already during the pre-service education in order to develop tools for teacher support and encouragement. This research promotes a practical example and ideas of a local school-company collaboration.