INVESTIGATING PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY SCIENCE TEACHER REFLECTIVE THINKING USING INTEGRATED MEDIA CASE-BASED INSTRUCTION IN ELEMENTARY SCIENCETEACHER PREPARATION

To improve the preparation of future teachers, we must come to underst and their personal theories about teaching and learning. The purpose o f this study was to investigate preservice elementary teachers' theori es about science teaching and learning through their rejections on int egrated media case-based instruction, and subsequently to reflect upon and reform our own practice. Students in an elementary science method s course participated in a series of written and oral reflection tasks in response to integrated media instruction. Specifically, they respo nded to a videodisc case of a first grade teacher teaching a conceptua l change unit about seeds and eggs. Considering their responses to the reflection tasks, we constructed a profile of these elementary preser vice teachers. This profile consists of their images of themselves as future science teachers, the characteristics of their personal theorie s of teaching and learning, and the sways in which they frame classroo m problems. Our findings led to reforms in our methods course instruct ion and have implications for the preparation and continuing education of elementary science teachers. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.