Preservice Secondary Science Teachers' Orientations Toward Science-Technology-Society (Sts) Instruction

Abstract

The subjects participating in this research project consist of all 104 students enrolled in a secondary science teaching methods course at a large midwestern university between the years 1989-1994. The research conducted evolved over the five years of the study; thus, the effort represents an action research project. In action research, self-reflection and self-evaluation result in insights which guide decision-making with the intent of improving the quality of instructional practice. A priori assumptions are inappropriate; instead, the direction of the research effort is guided by a self-reflective spiral of planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and replanning. Therefore, as this spiral unfolds in the pages to follow, the reader should recognize that what appears to be shifts in methodologies (quantitative to qualitative; reduction to expansion, etc.), actually represent careful reflection and changes enacted to improve the quality of a secondary science teaching methods course for preservice secondary teachers. Thus this manuscript, as an end product, is an ex post facto story of critical decisions in which an instructor improved instructional practice and his students gained confidence in their ability to make use of a powerful teaching strategy.