Preservice science teachers’ knowledge about how to teach scientific reasoning

In a modern and increasingly complex society, students are expected to acquire skills and knowledgeto deal with societal challenges, for example, climate change. These include scientific reasoningcompetencies (SRC), which describe abilities to solve scientific problems by applying scientific skillsand knowledge and thus play a crucial role in science education. To foster SRC, science teachersare expected not only to possess these competencies themselves but also to be aware of how theirstudents acquire SRC and have instructional strategies to teach SRC. Preservice science teachersshould already have acquired this pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on a basic level by the timethey graduate from university. To investigate this development of PCK about SRC in initial teachereducation, we conducted an exploratory study with a sample of 36 preservice science teachers ina Master of Teaching program at a public university in Victoria, Australia. We used the PCKSR-bio,a multiple-choice instrument for assessing PCK for different scientific reasoning activities regardingbiology-related classroom situations. We did not find differences between the PCK about SRC ofpreservice science teachers in the first year of their master’s studies and those in the second yearof their master’s studies, which indicates that their level does not significantly increase during thefirst year of their Master of Teaching program. An analysis of the participants’ responses to the itemsrevealed that they had comparable knowledge regarding each of the scientific reasoning activitiesaddressed and were best at answering questions that addressed students’ misconceptions. Thisis relevant for teachers who supervise early-career teachers as they should know what knowledgeearly-career teachers bring with them from initial teacher training and what they still need to learn.Furthermore, a comparison between the preservice science teachers in Australia and the preservicebiology teachers in Germany, both in a similar phase of their initial teacher education, revealed thatthe participants in Germany achieved a significantly higher average test score than the participants inAustralia. The findings are discussed and recommendations for the improvement of science teachereducation related to SRC and potentially for in-service professional development are made.