Teamwork and PBL-based teacher education : a study on prospective science teachers' opinions

Abstract

It is fully accepted that successful science learning depends at least in part on teachers’ teaching competences. In addition, there is some evidence that teachers tend to teach as they were taught. Therefore, in order to develop teachers’ innovative and student-centered teaching competences, methods courses should acknowledge teaching methodologies similar to those that prospective teachers will be required to use in their future as teachers. Problem-Based-Learning (PBL) and teamwork are student-centered teaching approaches that may foster the development of relevant competences for students as citizens. In fact, PBL can promote learning how to learn competences while teamwork can foster the development of social and interpersonal skills. However, to successfully put these teaching approaches into practice teachers need to fully acknowledge big role changes. Hence, in order to prepare innovative teachers, PBL, together with teamwork, should be used in initial science teachers’ education programs. This chapter describes how 38 prospective physical sciences teachers evaluate teamwork and PBL carried out within a methods course to approach a module on Using the lab for physical sciences teaching. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire, a self-evaluation grid and a videotaped discussion focusing on the diverse parts of a PBL sequence: problems formulation from a scenario, problem solving and synthesis and evaluation. Results indicate that prospective teachers valued PBL and teamwork, as they felt that the latter helped them to cope with the new roles that they were required to undertake throughout the PBL sequence. However, the facilitating effect of teamwork seems to be insufficient to lead students to fully overcome their difficulties with more unusual tasks. Nevertheless, it seems that they may be prone to use these teaching approaches when they become science teachers.