Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

Developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been emphasized for teacher's professionalism and it should be done from systematic teacher training courses. In this study, we investigated changes of elementary pre-service teachers' PCK of science teaching and motivational strategies before and a...

Developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been emphasized for teacher's professionalism and it should be done from systematic teacher training courses. In this study, we investigated changes of elementary pre-service teachers' PCK of science teaching and motivational strategies before and after a training course. For the analysis of pre-service teachers' PCK, their lesson plans, surveys, and interviews were collected. According to the results, in the beginning of the semester, pre-service teachers in the experimental group usually used didactic or combination of didactic and inquiry teaching strategies and a few pre-service teachers used inquiry or discovery teaching strategies when making lesson plans. However, at the end of the semester many pre-service teachers used inquiry teaching strategies in their lessons which included activities of asking students' prior knowledge, conducing experiments, finding conclusion, and comparing teachers' explanations with students' explanations. Regarding motivational strategies, in the beginning of the semester they focused using activities to create student's emotional interest in science lesson but at the end they used other strategies to create positive atmosphere for learning, capture intellectual interest in science, and connect science to students' everyday lives. The changes in pre-service teachers' PCK in the experimental group was meaningful because there was less change in pre-service teachers' PCK in the control group. This study implies the need for effective professional development programs for developing pre-service teachers' PCK.

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