Discipline covered: Elementary teacher education (includes courses in science education methods, biology, earth science, and physical science)

We are in the first year of a four-year project to use problem-based learning and other inquiry approaches in an integrated science and education methods experience for elementary teacher education (ETE) majors. Our primary goal is to foster in future teachers the ability and desire to use similar approaches in their elementary school classrooms.

The faculty involved in this project teach three science courses (biology, earth science, physical science) and an elementary science education methods course that are degree requirements for ETE majors. Students have traditionally taken the science and methods courses in variable sequences and at widely scattered times. Episodic and poorly integrated encounters with science and education courses make it difficult for students to make meaningful connections among topics and to translate their understandings into effective, inquiry-based teaching.

We are now redesigning the science and education methods courses to offer them as an integrated 'science semester' that will comprise ETE majors' entire course load for one semester. Traditional disciplinary boundaries will be softened to highlight shared themes, such as energy, evolution, and cycles. Students will work collaboratively on multidisciplinary problem-based learning (PBL) activities that use real-life problems (such as the health of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem) to contextual concepts and build learning skills. Lecture meetings will be transformed into large-group active learning sessions to help students understand difficult concepts, and start and wrap-up PBL problems. Investigatory labs will include activities from elementary science curriculum kits as launching points for more in-depth investigations. In the science education methods course students will critically examine theories and practices of elementary science pedagogy in ways that draw upon and contribute to their experiences with inquiry learning in the science courses. Field placements will help students to connect their understandings of science and pedagogy to the realities of elementary classrooms.

The project team is working with external evaluators to study students' experiences during and after the science semester. Formative aspects of the evaluation will examine students' developing beliefs and understandings of science, pedagogy, and themselves as teachers and learners of science. The summative aspect of the evaluation will compare the beliefs and classroom practices of student teachers who completed the science semester and those who completed analogous courses in a traditional format.