Ideas about science in Mexican primary education: curriculum demands and teachers' thinking
María Teresa Guerra-Ramos, PhD Student
Supervisors: John Leach, Jim Ryder
School of Education, The University of Leeds, UK
This research project addresses the introduction of ideas-about-science (knowledge about the methods of science, the nature of scientific knowledge and the processes and practices of the scientific community) through the primary curriculum in Mexico. It aims to explore the baseline knowledge that teachers draw upon to face curriculum innovations and the messages they communicated in the classroom. The first phase of the research study involved a document analysis in order to characterize what primary science curriculum requires teachers to teach in relation to ideas-about-science. The second phase will be an interview study of teachers' ideas-about-science aiming to explore targeted aspects of their understanding. It will explore the ideas of 15 pre-service and 15 in-service primary teachers expressed in the context of three hypothetical situations with pedagogical relevance, their associated questionnaires and follow-up interview. Data collected will be analysed with an ideographic approach and used to discuss their educational implications.