The Excitement and Wonder of Teaching Science: What Pre-service Teachers Learn from Facilitating Family Science Night Centers

Source: Journal of Science Teacher Education, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 199-220, March 2012.

The author describes how pre-service teachers facilitated stations at a family science night as a context to learn to identify, assess, and use children’s science ideas.
Assessment is already difficult in K-12 classrooms.

The pre-service teachers in this study experienced success at teaching science and developed understandings about children’s science ideas.

Data included reflective postings, class discussions, observations, artifacts, and photographs.

The findings contribute to understanding the value of multiple learning contexts in teacher preparation and lead to implications about leveraging informal science contexts for educating teachers.