Pre-service teachers' teaching practice of science technology society environment (STSE) learning approach integrated nature of science during internships

Abstract

© 2019 Author(s). This research aims to investigate pre-service teachers' teaching practice of Science Technology Society Environment (STSE) integrated Nature of Science (NOS) which focused on the aspect of nature of scientific evidence, during their year-long internships. Pre-service teachers (n=23) were developed the concepts of STSE learning approach and Nature of Science concepts in the course "Local Science" in second semester of academic year 2016 before the teaching internships started in the next semester. They also participated in the pre-internship orientation seminar which focused on STSE integrated NOS teaching approach. The data were collected from pre-service teachers' lesson plans, first and second implementation of activities which designed based on STSE learning Approach integrated NOS, 46 lessons in total. The classroom activities were recorded following by interviews of supervisors, teacher mentors and students. The data from VDO recordings and transcribed interview recording were analyzed by two set of frameworks: the characteristics of STSE learning approach to justify pre-service teachers' ability to teacher STSE and the Level of Evidence, to identify the understandings and using of scientific evidence in lesson plan and implementation. The findings indicated that pre-services teachers could follow the steps and reflect the characteristics STSE learning approach properly. They also successfully deployed the local context in designing and implementing their lesson plans. However, the emphasis of scientific evidence used in their lesson plans and activities mostly fall into the quality level of single-experiment and case study level which considered as the second rank from the lowest of seven level. From the credibility point of view, the second rank is very basic and need more evidences to confirm a conclusion. The study suggested that the emphasize on the scientific evidence alone is not enough, the consideration of quality of evidence and how evidences are acquired, needed to be included in the nature of science related course. Teaching and learning using STSE approach is a feasible way to portrait nature of scientific evidence, one of the most important aspects of Nature of Science.