Pre-service Elementary Teachers' Inquiry on a Model of Magnetism and Changes in Their Views of Scientific Models

초등 예비교사의 자기 모델 탐구 과정과 과학적 모델에 대한 이해 변화

An alternative vision for science inquiry that appears to be important and challenging is model-based inquiry in which students generate, evaluate and revise their explanatory model. Pre-service teachers should be given opportunities to develop and use their mechanistic explanatory models in order to participate in the practice of science and to have a sound understanding of science. With this view, this study described a case of pre-service elementary teachers' scientific modeling in magnetism. The aims of this study were to explore difficulties preservice elementary teachers encountered while they engaged in a model-based inquiry, and to examine how their understandings of the nature of scientific models changed after the model-based inquiry. The data analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers had difficulties in drawing and writing their own thinking because they had little experience of expressing their own science ideas. When asked to predict what would happen, they could not understand what it meant to make a prediction "based on their model". They did not know how to use or consider their model in making a prediction. At the end of the model-based inquiry they reached a final consensus of a best model. However, they were very anxious about whether the model was the "correct" answer. With respect to the nature of scientific models, almost all of the pre-service teachers initially viewed models only as a communication tool among scientists or students and teachers to help understand others' ideas. After the model-based inquiry, however, many of them understood that they could create, test, and revise their "own" models "by themselves". They also realized the key aspects of scientific models that a model can be changed as evidence is accumulated and a model is a knowledge production tool as well as a communication tool. The results indicated that pre-service elementary teachers' understandings of the nature of scientific models and their previous school science experiences could affect their performance on a model-based inquiry, and their experience of scientific modeling could help them enhance their understandings of the nature of scientific models.