Welter Virginia Deborah Elaine, Emmerichs-Knapp Lars, Krell Moritz
IPN-Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, 24118 Kiel, Germany.
Institute of Biology Education, University of Cologne, 50931 Köln, Germany.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2023 Mar 22;13(3):279. doi: 10.3390/bs13030279.
A rapidly changing world and constantly expanding knowledge requires education to no longer focus on teaching subject-matter knowledge but also to promote students' critical thinking (CT) and an accurate understanding of the nature of science (NOS). However, several studies have shown that these skills are still poorly acquired during formal education. Given the cause-effect sequence from teacher education to teacher action to student learning, it seems reasonable to consider individual factors on the part of (pre-service) teachers as possible contributors to such skill gaps. In our study, we therefore investigated how pre-service biology teachers perform on tasks assessing their CT skills and NOS beliefs. In addition, we addressed the questions of whether test performance and/or the relationships between CT skills and NOS beliefs differ as a function of the number of learning opportunities. Our results show that our participants' CT skills were only in the low-average range. Moreover, 86% of them did not have an informed understanding of NOS. Although participants in the master's program demonstrated clearly superior CT skills than those in the bachelor's program, no such difference was found in terms of NOS beliefs. However, there was a consistent advantage for pre-service teachers who were aspiring to a teaching qualification in two (as opposed to only one) scientific subjects. Our findings provide useful implications, particularly with respect to the influence of learning opportunities in university teacher education and the effectiveness of CT- and NOS-based instructional settings. On a more prospective note, our findings underscore that, given the grand global tasks of the 21st century, it seems more important than ever to ensure that pre-service science teachers have sufficient expertise in CT and NOS in order to increase the likelihood that these teachers will be able to successfully help their future students develop these skills.
瞬息万变的世界和不断扩展的知识要求教育不再仅仅专注于传授学科知识，还应促进学生的批判性思维（CT）以及对科学本质（NOS）的准确理解。然而，多项研究表明，在正规教育过程中，这些技能的掌握情况仍然不容乐观。考虑到从教师教育到教师行为再到学生学习的因果序列，将（职前）教师个人因素视为造成此类技能差距的可能原因似乎是合理的。因此，在我们的研究中，我们调查了职前生物教师在评估其CT技能和NOS信念的任务中的表现。此外，我们还探讨了测试成绩和/或CT技能与NOS信念之间的关系是否会因学习机会的数量而有所不同。我们的结果表明，参与者的CT技能仅处于低平均水平。此外，86%的参与者对NOS缺乏深入了解。尽管硕士课程的参与者在CT技能方面明显优于本科课程的参与者，但在NOS信念方面未发现此类差异。然而，对于有志于获得两门（而非仅一门）科学学科教学资格的职前教师来说，存在持续的优势。我们的研究结果具有重要意义，特别是在大学教师教育中学习机会的影响以及基于CT和NOS的教学环境的有效性方面。更具前瞻性的是，我们的研究结果强调，鉴于21世纪的重大全球任务，确保职前科学教师在CT和NOS方面具备足够的专业知识似乎比以往任何时候都更加重要，以便增加这些教师能够成功帮助他们未来的学生培养这些技能的可能性。
