Implementing a Lesson Plan Vs. Attending to Student Inquiry: The Struggle of a Student-Teacher During Teaching Science

Abstract

Despite calls for student-centered, inquiry-based instruction in science, science teacher preparation remains mostly teacher-centered, with the underlying assumption that novice teachers need to form a teaching identity before attending to their students' inquiry. In this paper, we use the idea of framing to analyze a 42-minute science lesson of a senior kindergarten student-teacher. Findings suggest that the student-teacher struggled for balance between teaching science as implementing a lesson plan, and as attending to her students' inquiry. We use this evidence to suggest that novice teachers can attend to students' inquiry as early as in their student-teaching experience, which suggests additional pressure on the need for preparation in teaching science. Thus, the role of science methods courses should be to help students understand the different interpretations of teaching within the different frames and provide them with strategies for entering more productive frames during teaching.