Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large‐scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.

We present in this article the theoretic and methodological frame of the studies carried out by the authors on teacher’s professional knowledge and epistemological conceptions, taking as a reference the bases of the Model of Investigation at the School and the IRES curricular project. In a latter article we will analyse the data there obtained.

(*) Este trabajo es parte del Proyecto I+D+i EDU2011-23551: La progresión del conocimiento didáctico de los futuros maestros en un curso basado en la investigación y en la interacción con una enseñanza innovadora de las ciencias, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (hoy de Economía y Competitividad.[Recibido en noviembre de 2013, aceptado em mayo de 2014] Uno de los indicadores de calidad en la enseñanza de los contenidos escolares es lo que los profesores piensan y hacen en el aula con las ideas de sus alumnos. Tanto es así que en el currículo de Educación Primaria (RD 1513(RD /2006) y en el del Grado de Maestro (Orden ECI3857/2007) se hace referencia a la necesidad de considerar tales ideas como un referente de la enseñanza para así facilitar el aprendizaje. El propósito de este estudio es describir y analizar la progresión en las concepciones de una muestra de futuros maestros de Primaria acerca de las ideas de los alumnos sobre diversos contenidos escolares de ciencias, cuando participan en un curso de formación inicial de orientación constructivista. Uno de los problemas profesionales tratados durante el curso fue: ¿Qué ideas tienen los alumnos de Primaria sobre algunos contenidos escolares de ciencias? Para abordarlo, se diseñó un ciclo de aprendizaje profesional en tres momentos: Inicial, para activar, tomar conciencia y elaborar los puntos de vista de los participantes sobre el problema planteado; Intermedio, para provocar contraste y reflexión argumentada entre sus puntos de vista y otras informaciones seleccionadas, Final, para reelaborar los puntos de vista iniciales y explicar las razones de los cambios realizados. El análisis de las producciones escritas de los participantes a lo largo de estos momentos sugiere que, en todas las categorías estudiadas (naturaleza, cambio y utilización didáctica de las ideas de los alumnos), se produce un progreso de sus concepciones iniciales próximas a un modelo transmisivo que ignora las ideas de los alumnos, pero sin llegar al modelo alternativo que consideramos deseable. Finalmente, se propone un Itinerario de Progresión sobre las ideas de los alumnos con tres niveles de complejidad (apropiación, sustitución y construcción), que puede servir de referente en la formación inicial de maestros.Palabras clave: Formación de maestros de Primaria; Ideas de los alumnos; Educación Primaria; Enseñanza de las ciencias; Aprendizaje profesional. The future teachers 'conceptions about the nature, change and educational use of students' ideasOne of the indicators of quality in teaching classroom content is what teachers think about the ideas of their pupils, and then what use they of them. The purpose of the present study was to describe and analyse how, during their initial teacher education course, prospective primary teachers' conceptions about pupils' ideas on various topics of school science content progressed. Analysis of the participants' written productions throughout the course (which had a clear constructivist orientation) suggested that, in all th...

In a previous paper we discuss the theoretic and methodological framework which we have considered for studying the professional knowledge of the teachers. In this paper we present a review of some empirical studies with significance to the analysis of the scientific and didactic conceptions of the teachers. We also present a synthesis of the data obtained by the authors of these studies as well as of the most important conclusions.

We compare the content that was expected with what actually was put into practice in a course of ongoing education of secondary education (12-16 year olds) science teachers, and describe the most relevant problems that arose. We believe that the educational content -its nature, how it is organized and presented to the teacher participants, and so on -has a major influence on the relationships that are established between 'theory' and 'practice'. It is from this perspective that the results are analysed.The data come from statements made by those involved -the director and the coordinator of the course and the teacher participants -obtained in interviews and written documents.The inference drawn from the analysis of the results is that, in the educational strategy that was being studied, practice is not conceived of as a genuine scenario of production of meanings, but only as a field of application of the theories of the disciplines being taught. This has a decisive influence on the development of the course and on the degree of professional evolution of the participants.