Primary School Student Teachers' Understanding of Climate Change : Comparing the Results Given by Concept Maps and Communication Analysis

Climate change is a complex environmental problem that can be used to examine students' understanding, gained through classroom communication, of climate change and its interactions. The present study examines a series of four science sessions given to a group of primary school student teachers...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Research in science education (Australasian Science Education Research Association) 2013-10, Vol.43 (5), p.1801-1823
Main Authors: Ratinen, Ilkka, Viiri, Jouni, Lehesvuori, Sami
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology
Case studies
Chemistry
Classroom Communication
Climate
Climate change
Concept formation
Concept Mapping
Discourse Analysis
Education
Elementary School Students
Essays
Freehand Drawing
Geography
Higher education
Inquiry
Physics
Preservice teacher education
Primary school teachers
Science Education
Science Instruction
Science teaching
Scientific Concepts
Student Attitudes
Student Teacher Attitudes
Student teacher relationship
Student Teachers
Teaching Methods
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Climate change is a complex environmental problem that can be used to examine students' understanding, gained through classroom communication, of climate change and its interactions. The present study examines a series of four science sessions given to a group of primary school student teachers (n = 20). This includes analysis of the communication styles used and the students' pre- and post-conceptualisation of climate change based on results obtained via essay writing and drawings. The essays and drawings concerned the students' unprompted pre- and post- conceptions about climate change, collected before and after each of the four inquiry-based science sessions (in physics, chemistry, biology and geography). Concept mapping was used in the analysis of the students' responses. The communication used in the four sessions was analysed with a communicative approach in order to find out the discussion about climate change between teacher and students. The analyses indicated that the students did not have the knowledge or the courage to participate in discussion, but post-conceptualisation map showed that students' thinking had become more coherent after the four sessions. Given the results of the present study, proposals for using concepts maps and/or communication analysis in studying students' conceptions are presented. [Author abstract, ed]
ISSN:0157-244X
1573-1898
DOI:10.1007/s11165-012-9329-7