Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Reflection on Narrative Images of Inquiry

Preservice elementary teachers face challenges in learning to teach science. Educative curriculum materials, designed to promote teacher learning, can provide support for overcoming these challenges. The educative curriculum materials used in this study provide narrative vignettes describing a teacher’s decision making with regard to lesson plans. As part of an elementary science methods course, 40 preservice teachers were asked to reflect on and respond to the narratives. Results suggest that descriptions of teaching situated in lesson plans can promote productive reflection for preservice teachers. This study informs the design of educative curriculum materials and elementary science teacher education experiences and helps improve the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary science teacher educators.