A study on the determination of the pedagogical beliefs of the preservice science teachers

In this study, pedagogical beliefs of Science Teacher candidates and how they reflect these beliefs in lesson plans and process of teaching were examined. The beliefs reflected by the teacher candidates on the process of teaching, lesson plans and interviews were discussed under the titles of "teacher-centered, mixed but more toward teacher-centered, mixed but more toward student-centered, student-centered." The research was conducted with nine voluntary teacher candidates enrolled in the School Experience course during the 2012-2013 academic year. In this study, qualitative research methods interview, document review (lesson plans), and video analysis and observation (lectures) were used. For data collection purposes, semi-structured interviews were carried out with the teacher candidates and lesson plans were collected as well as the lectures in the scope of School Experience were recorded. The content analysis was used in analysis of interviews, lesson plans and lectures. During the analysis the observation form designed by the author according the scope of the study was used for the analysis. Based on the results of the research, it was seen that while teacher candidates identified themselves as either mixed approach or student-centered approach; based on the analysis of the lesson plans and lectures teacher candidates were mostly identified as mix approach. While interview, the lesson plan and the lecture data of six teacher candidates were found to be compatible/partially compatible with each other; it was seen that the lesson plan and the lecture data of three teacher candidates were compatible with each other but not the interview data.