Practising Science with Pre-Service Teachers

International research has shown that school science is dominated by procedural laboratory exercises. Students are rarely exposed to the kinds of research designs and processes used by scientists in their research. To address this problem, this project extended initial work undertaken in an Australian Research Council Discovery project (DP120100369) seeking to develop pre-service science teachers’ capabilities in teaching diverse approaches to science inquiry. By modifying unit content, assessment and learning experiences, pre-service teachers were exposed to a diverse range of scientific research designs used by practicing scientists. This novel approach is now integrated into Bachelor of Education and Masters of Teaching courses for secondary science teachers at QUT and JCU. An innovative dimension of the project involved the co-development of video and other resources with scientists, which were embedded into the teacher education classes. By having practicing scientists explain how they design their research and suggest how these designs can be adapted for high school settings, this project delivers a unique approach to redressing the limited focus on procedural science activities that dominates school classrooms internationally. Resources from the project have been adapted into professional learning materials for teachers and are available for free access here.