PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS' BELIEFS OF EFFECTIVE PHYSICAL SCIENCE TEACHING

The purpose of this study was to explore pre- service physical science teachers' perceptions on the types of teachers they wish to become, and to rate their personal beliefs of the characteristics of an ideal physical science teacher. The sample comprised 52 (56% female) second year Bachelor of Education science students studying towards a four year qualification in Education at a University of Technology. Pre- service physical science teachers first wrote a narrative on the type of future teachers they wish to become, and later a modified version of a questionnaire titled 'Test your effectiveness as science teacher' was used as a data collection instrument. This instrument is made up of 25 items categorized into knowledge of science, planning and organization, teaching methods, personal relations and enthusiasm. Students' perception of an ideal science teacher was measured on all the five categories using a 5- point Likert type scale ranging from 1= I really need to improve, to 5 = this is a real strength of my teaching. A relationship between the five categories and gender was also explored. The findings revealed the following: the mean score for the full scale was 3.80, for knowledge of science M = 3.35, for planning and organization M = 3.53, for teaching methods M = 3.67, for personal relations M = 4.24 and for enthusiasm M = 4.2. There was a correlation between the findings of the questionnaire and the themes that emerged from the narratives. The findings suggest that even though the pre- service physical science believe that they have good qualities and characteristics of effective future physical science teachers, they are not that confident in their content knowledge of physical science, and that they should think about how to improve this feature of their physical science teaching. The findings further revealed that male students were more efficacious than the female students in the four out of five categories. Recommendations are made to the physical science teacher education programmes to enhance the critical aspects of development towards the teaching and learning of physical science, i.e. content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge; which in turn will improve teacher quality.