Project 2061/American Association For The Advancement Of Science Education

Numerous calls for change in the ways science is being taught in America offer beguiling challenges that are not new to the science education community. Most visions of promoting educational change focus on the societal need for a more scientifically literate nation. Such changes and literacy developed through the use of research-based instructional methods are predicted to increase recruitment into math, science and engineering careers that serve as America‘s economic engines (Center for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Education, Committee on Undergraduate Science Education, 1999; National Science Foundation, 1996; Project 2061/American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989). Along with science literacy, calls for change in instructional methods stress active learning through inquiry that models scientific processes. Research indicates that teachers who use collaborative or active teaching approaches achieve higher levels of student learning than those using more traditional and passive instructional techniques (Goodsell, Maher, & Tinto, 1992; Wankat, 2002; Weimer and Lenze, 1994). As a result, teachers from preschool through college are being challenged to move from the traditional didactic lecture models of teaching science to an inquiry-based instructional model where students construct knowledge from experiences, ideas, investigations and discussions.

As the university is the formal training ground for teachers, further calls for change require university teachers to teach about the nature of science through inquiry, and the responsibility for much of the proposed reforms is ultimately placed on the university science professors, yet little is known about what they understand about the desired teacher roles or the nature of science and student