JoinThinking Outside the Kit: Building Preservice Science Teachers’ Inquiry Skills With an Experiment That Doesn’t Go as Planned
Preservice preparation courses for elementary teachers of science can provide opportunities to build pedagogical content knowledge. One common concern of preservice teachers is how to cope with a preplanned lesson that does not proceed as planned. Providing opportunities for preservice teachers to experience the unexpected actually immerses them in creative problem solving that is a hallmark of scientific investigation. This lesson in a preservice science methods course requires future teachers to build problem-solving skills through scientific inquiry as they cope with a type of science-kit activity in which the experiment does not go as planned.