Innovative primary science classroom practice through pre-service teacher immersion in a problem-based, collaborative learning experience: Approaches to teaching that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn.

This paper describes a pedagogical approach adopted in a compulsory science curriculum subject within a Bachelor of Education (Primary) degree that tackles the complex integrated skills required by pre-service teachers to address the many problems identified in various national and international research reports. A problem based learning approach is employed where students demonstrate their emerging content knowledge, collaborative skills and pedagogical content knowledge within a criterion-referenced assessment framework. Their development as teachers of science and technology is presented in a vertically integrated set of assessment tasks. The teaching team work collaboratively in the design and delivery of the subject both of which are informed by current research in the field. An action-research methodology employing, in part, a quasi-experimental pre/post-test design is used to assess students' developing content knowledge, scientific conceptions and complexity of their reasoning. In addition, ongoing feedback and evaluation procedures are built into the subject through the use of one-minute Harvard Papers which allow teaching staff to make continual improvements and to cater for the individual needs of students. Students' formative and summative feedback reveals high levels of satisfaction with the approach. Student results demonstrate highly significant increases in both content knowledge and complexity of cognitive reasoning and which are accompanied by significant reductions in their alternative scientific conceptions.In 2006, the authors were successful in winning a Carrick Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.