Bridging the gap between preservice elementary teachers and the chemistry lab

The current study explored what factors affect preservice teachers' decision making about whether or not they would use particular lab activities in their future classrooms. Previous observations from Purdue faculty who teach a science methods course for elementary education majors have indicated that the preservice teachers (PSET's) in their class tend to rely on biology rather than any of the other sciences to plan science lessons. Therefore, the chemistry course for elementary education majors (CHM 200) was the focus for this study. Qualitative research methods were used to obtain information from this group of PSET's to help revise this course to be more affective for future PSET's. A semi-structured interview was used for data collection, and grounded theory guided both the data collection and analysis. Data were collected over the course of two semesters; 64 interviews were conducted, and 32 interviews were ultimately transcribed and used in the data analysis. The analysis of the data revealed that there are basic factors that seem to be at play when the PSET's are thinking about what they would use in their future classroom as well as why they would or would not use a particular activity. The major areas of concern for the PSET's seems to be whether or not they like a particular activity and what they project their future students as liking. Another issue that arose was that of safety. If the PSET saw an activity as being unsafe, then they would probably choose not to use that activity in their future classroom. These factors provide useful information for anyone who is teaching a science content course for preservice elementary teachers. If the goal of a course is to provide activities for the PSET's to use in their future classrooms, then it is imperative that we take a look as some of the factors that these students use to guide their decision making about their future teaching.