Transforming pre-service teacher knowledge in science education through multimedia and ICT

The purpose of this study was to determine if the beliefs of elementary pre-service teachers had been influenced by the provision of an interactive CDROM of modeled case studies of teaching science. Through a grounded theory approach using constant comparative analysis the findings revealed that the modeled practices by themselves made little impact on the pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices. The twenty-four pre-service teachers in the study continued to use traditional teaching approaches in their lessons but at the same time espoused the concepts of constructivism. Nevertheless, toward the end of the semester through a combination of learning experiences of the pre-service teachers’ critical reflection of their own video taped science lessons culminating in a focus group session, the pre-service teachers were able to differentiate between their own beliefs and teaching practices with what was presented on the interactive CD ROM. The outcome of this study provides a transformative learning model that uses multimedia and ICT as a strategy in bringing about conceptual change in pre-service teachers’ beliefs and has application in professional development for in-service teachers.