Exploring Pre-Service Chemistry Teachers’ Pedagogical Scientific Language Knowledge

Abstract

Chemish, as the scientific language of chemistry, is essential for communicating in and understanding chemistry. At the same time, Chemish is one of the major difficulties in teaching and learning chemistry in the school context. Although in recent years the importance of language in general and scientific language in particular has been pointed out and much research has been carried out on these topics, less is known about (pre-service) chemistry teachers’ knowledge of teaching and learning the scientific language in chemistry classes. Thus, the research on Pedagogical Scientific Language Knowledge (PSLK) is missing. As this knowledge is crucial for (future) chemistry teachers to teach chemistry, in our survey, we seek to evaluate the extent of 41 pre-service chemistry teachers’ PSLK. The answers are analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results show that pre-service chemistry teachers’ content knowledge resembles the level of knowledge for higher secondary schools. Likewise, the pre-service chemistry teachers have a lack of incisive pedagogical content knowledge: although recognizing problems within Chemish, the pre-service chemistry teachers hardly address those and do not focus on the characteristics of Chemish while explaining scientific terms. On this basis, implications for further university chemistry teacher education and research will be drawn.

Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Pre-service Chemistry Teacher Preparation Unit on Fostering Pedagogical Scientific Language Knowledge

“…The following steps comprise the first development phase of the seminar unit: For the development of the first provisional concept, in the first step, the problem is identified by a study on pre-service chemistry teachers’ PSLK [Figure (i)]. The study by Mönch and Markic reveals that pre-service teachers are not aware of Chemish and its characteristics and do not consider its characteristics when explaining scientific terms. Since a literature review is also part of the first phase, a systematic review of the literature on science teachers’ PSLK is carried out.…”

“…What is also evidenced is that science/chemistry teachers seem to struggle with scientific language itself and the teaching of it. It is evidenced that (pre-service) science teachers lack knowledge of characteristics of scientific language, − scientific vocabulary, − and are unable to express the semantic structure of a concept . If science teachers do not know how to teach scientific language in their classroom, it can lead to scientific language anxiety for students and thus hinders their learning .…”

“…This type of teacher knowledge was first mentioned by Markic and has been further elaborated within two of our studies. We developed a model of PSLK which portrays elements constituting and influencing PSLK. , In the developed model of PSLK along the lines of the refined consensus model (RCM) of pedagogical content knowledge, the foundation of pedagogical scientific language knowledge is formed by the teacher professional knowledge bases with a focus on Chemish. These are more precisely the following: (i) content knowledge, (ii) assessment knowledge, (iii) curricular knowledge, (iv) knowledge of students, and (v) pedagogical knowledge.…”

“…How these knowledge bases finally result in pedagogical scientific language knowledge is influenced by the learning context and the teachers’ amplifiers and filters, the last of which includes, for example, the scientific language awareness of the chemistry teacher, as one can only teach scientific language consciously when one is aware of it. Scientific language awareness can be divided into the awareness of (i) grammar and discourse norms of scientific language, (ii) scientific terms and their morphology, (iii) semantic relationships between scientific terms, (iv) the difference between scientific and other language registers, (v) the abstractness of the concepts behind the terms, and (vi) recognition of scientific language teaching as a task of a science teacher. , Pedagogical scientific language knowledge itself is finally comprised of ten elements: knowledge of scientific language role models as students’ scientific language is influenced by media, social surroundings, and teachers knowledge of the development of the concept before the development of the scientific language as it is important to have a basic understanding before introducing scientific terms knowledge of making scientific terms and language explicit to draw students’ attention to scientific terms, e.g., by discussing their morphology knowledge of providing a discursive classroom as it is important for students to learn using scientific language in an anxiety-free learning space by including multiple dimensions of language knowledge of providing multiple resources and representations as, e.g., pictures, diagrams, hands-on experiments, to minimize the abstractness behind scientific terms knowledge of providing scaffolds for scientific language development in different ways, e.g., oral through questions, visual through letting students draw, and written through sentence patterns knowledge of communicating expectations clearly in terms of how and when scientific language is to be used knowledge of specific methods and tools for teaching and learning the scientific language during different steps of the learning process, e.g., summarizing terms in a glossary knowledge of motivation when learning the scientific language as Chemish should not overwhelm students knowledge of lesson preparation and follow-up as Chemish needs to be part of lesson objectives, and therefore, a broad curricular and content knowledge is needed …”

“…Given these research results, we agree with Rollnick as she states that (scientific) language is a key point in science teacher education as “(i) the appropriate use of language strategies in teaching science [···] need to be modeled by teacher educators and (ii) the importance of language awareness of the pre-service teachers themselves as teachers of language and science” has to be pointed out. This is why the purpose of this study is to develop a seminar unit that focuses on fostering pre-service chemistry teachers’ pedagogical scientific language knowledge (PSLK) with the help of the systematized PSLK of German chemistry teachers, following the research questions: RQ1: How can an innovative seminar unit for promoting pedagogical scientific language knowledge in pre-service chemistry teacher training be designed and implemented? RQ2: How does the seminar unit foster pre-service teachers’ scientific language awareness and their pedagogical scientific language knowledge? …”