A qualitative study of pre-service teachers using co-teaching as a method to understand scientific process skills to teach inquiry.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) have established scientific literacy as a goal for all students. The goals advocate scientific inquiry as an instructional strategy to be used in the classroom, and standards of inquiry have even been established. At the same time, co-teaching has become prevalent in classroom as regular education teachers work with special education teachers. The classrooms are inclusive and both teachers are to work together to benefit all the students. Research has shown positive perceptions and negative perceptions of co-teaching. In this study, pre-service teachers are co-taught an elementary science methods course at a medium-sized university. They are co-taught the basic science process skills by two science education instructors. In turn, they teach lessons to the methods course with a co-teaching partner covering the basic science process skills. The pre-service teachers were studied to see how they developed an understanding of the process skills and of co-teaching. The results showed how the pre-service teachers learned the process skills and how they learned about co-teaching. The co-teaching experience was particularly useful in that the pre-service teachers expressed the roles that co-teachers assume when they are in the classroom. This study shows that pre-service teachers should be made aware of co-teaching at the preparatory level and be able to practice co-teaching before being expected to know how to co-teach when they reach a classroom of their own.