Relationships between prospective secondary teachers' classroom practice and their conceptions of biology and of teaching science

This article describes the journeys—in the form of case studies—that three individuals took as they prepared to become secondary biology teachers. These prospective teachers were in a science teacher education program whose goal was to graduate teachers who held conceptual change conceptions of teaching science and were disposed to put them into practice. The article describes these prospective teachers' conceptions of teaching science and selected portions of their knowledge base in biology, and explores how these conceptions along with their teaching actions developed during the course of the program. There are several conclusions. First, all three individuals came into the program with positivist conceptions of knowledge and of science. In addition, they had some sense of the importance of recognizing science as a process. They had little sense, however, of the role of theory in doing science and in producing scientific knowledge. Next, all three individuals entered the program with a knowledge of biology that was static and fragmented. Although there was little change during the year in the static, fragmented character of their knowledge, all of them ended the year considerably more confident in their biological knowledge. Then, the teaching of all three was largely transmissionist in character, in that for them it was essential to articulate correct scientific knowledge explicitly on the basis of a deep‐seated, but uncritically examined, belief that this is what their students would remember. Over the year, however, indications of a more student‐centered focus developed in their teaching. Finally, although all three prospective teachers adopted some key components of conceptual change teaching (focusing on students' views and creating a supportive classroom climate), they did not explore the reasons why student views were plausible and fruitful to them, or spend time in activities that would increase the status of accepted scientific views and decrease the status of contradictory views. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 83:347–371, 1999.