The Organization of environments for reflecting expected skills from science and physics prospective teachers

SUMMARY The Organization of Environments For Reflecting Expected Skills From Science And Physics Prospective Teachers As similar to the all other teacher training fields, prospective teachers who have been educated in physics and science education programs come across to the problems faced during their teaching practice again when they go into the professional life. With the teaching carried through science education programs, that to be learning theoretical knowledge permanently and reflecting it into practice require non problematic environments to the prospective teachers during their practices. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that effect science and physics prospective teachers' behaviors reflected on their teaching practices and suggest a model which provide them to display the expected skills in this process. The study is performed by 5 faculty instructor implemented teaching professional courses at KTU Fatih Faculty of Education, 40 prospective teachers in Science Education Program attending teaching practice during the 2001-02 education term, 25 prospective teachers in Physics Education Program attending teaching practice during the 2000-01 education term, and 4 science, 9 physics mentors working in different elementary and secondary schools at Trabzon and Akçaabat. Findings are obtained from the surveys and observations applied to prospective teachers, interviews done by faculty instructors and mentors, and incomplete sentence forms applied to these mentors. It is also determined that the main factors which effecting prospective teachers' knowledge and skills they reflect at the practice schools are mentor, practice school, faculty, method tutor, prospective teacher's gained skills in faculty, and prospective teachers' profile and life. In addition, it was seen that the behaviors of prospective teachers such as use of appropriate teaching methods and techniques, preparing activity and developing simple tool-equipment were not as high as expected. Above all, it was appeared that some schools would not give prospective teachers the opportunity of displaying course presenting behaviors by using laboratory and instructional technologies. On the basis of the findings gained, it was presented a model prepared by knowledge map technique to supply prospective teachers for showing expected skills during their teaching practices appropriately. Key Words: Teaching Practice, Science Education, Physics Education, Gained Behaviors in Teacher Education, Knowledge Map VII