How student teachers’ understanding of the greenhouse effect develops during a teacher education programme

Abstract

This paper reports on a longitudinal study on how student teachers’ understanding of the greenhouse effect developed through a teacher education programme in mathematics and science for pupils aged 7-13. All student teachers, who were accepted to the programme one year, were followed trough 2.5 years of the programme. The student teachers took science courses in which they were taught about the greenhouse effect.

Data was collected by questionnaires three times. The results show that a majority of the student teachers developed an adequate understanding of the greenhouse effect during the teaching programme. Several of the students developed further in the second science course. However a rather big group of students with poor understanding did not develop any further in the second science course and no one demonstrated full understanding. Different ways of collecting data and categorising responses affected how the students’ understanding was interpreted.