Preservice Elementary Teachers' Perceptions on Models Used in Science and Science Education

과학과 과학 교육에서 사용되는 모델에 관한 예비 초등 교사들의 인식

The purpose of this study was to explore preservice elementary teachers' perceptions on models used in science and science education. Participants were sixty-one undergraduate students who were enrolled in a science education course offered at a university of education located in a mid-sized city, Korea. Data were obtained from the participants at the beginning of the course when they provided their answers to a questionnaire about models. The analysis revealed that a large number of the preservice teachers perceived models as representative of physical realities. By contrast, a relatively small number of them viewed models as representations of ideas or things like theories or hypotheses. Lots of the participants were apt to define a model from the perspective of its functions and considered the purposes of models communication, teaching, and understanding as well as visualization, simplification, and clarification. Most of the preservice teachers believed that there could be multiple models for a single target, and all of them answered that models could be changed in science. It was therefore concluded that the preservice teachers perceived properly the multiplicity and variability of models. Nevertheless, they could not elaborate how a model is used and evaluated in the process of scientific inquiry, and just a few of them mentioned the detailed nature of models. The preservice teachers possessed teacher-centered views of using models in the science classroom, and a small number of them remarked that they were going to use models for students to develop their own models and perform scientific inquiry.