Better Understanding Pre-service Elementary School Teachers’ Mental Models about Seasonal Change

The goals of this study are to develop an abductive procedure that students can use to build alternative models, as well as to help teachers in building scientific models for their students based on the initial model they were given about seasonal change. Understanding these explanatory mental models can provide important information about the students’ knowledge structure, based on questions’ responses. The data collected from the paper-pencil test and individual interview with students. For this study, 30 pre-service elementary school teachers(1st grade) were participated. The findings of this study indicate that the students had obvious alternative conceptions, and that the 'distance theory' had the most significant effects on their alternative conceptions. We reconstructed the forming process of their alternative concepts based on abduction inference patterns in order to determine the origin of structure of their alternative conceptions about seasonal change. The expansion, contraction, and revision of main theory is achieved by their early age perceptions of traditional celestial bodies rather than developed specific information, and they have the expansion, contraction, and revision of main theory as their alternative models. The implications for science education for pre-service teachers and related studies were discussed. Teachers must have both the requisite science knowledge and the required abductive inference skills to effectively instruct elementary school students in scientific activities.

Finally, future studies should equate real scientists' research processes to teachers' research processes. This suggestion is based on the assumption that scientists and students use similar processes to develop scientific knowledge.