Abstract
Many reported studies relating to models and modeling clearly indicate that science teachers need to be knowledgeable about the role of models and modeling in science and need to be engaged in rich modeling activities, so that they become able to use models in science teaching and learning. In view of adequately preparing pre-service teachers to teach science through models, the authors in this chapter discuss how a cohort of pre-service elementary teachers was introduced to model-based teaching/learning and reasoning. Data for this study were collected from 62 pre-service teachers, who had the same background knowledge and similar computing skills. After four lab meetings about the pedagogical uses of computer models and computer-modeling tools, students were asked to propose a science lesson with computer models to be taught in a real classroom. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted to assess the quality of students’ lessons in terms of the structure of the computer models proposed and the complexity of the entire lesson.
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Valanides, N., Angeli, C. (2011). Teaching Pre-service Elementary Teachers to Teach Science with Computer Models. In: Khine, M., Saleh, I. (eds) Models and Modeling. Models and Modeling in Science Education, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0449-7_12
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