Microteaching Lesson Study: An Approach to Prepare Teacher Candidates to Teach Science through Inquiry

Abstract

Inquiry-basedteaching has become the most recommended approach in science education for afew decades; however, it is not a common practice yet in k-12 schoolclassrooms. In order to prepare future teachers to teach science throughinquiry, a Microteaching Lesson Study (MLS) approach was employed in ourscience methods courses. Instead of asking teacher candidates to simply share(present) their inquiry-based lesson plans with peers, we requested teachercandidates to develop, teach, and collaboratively reflect upon their lessons.This paper reports our findings from a recently finished study thatinvestigated teacher candidates’ learning from and perspectives about MLS. Datawere collected through teacher candidates’ lesson plans, teaching performances,and reflective reports. The study concluded that MLS provided teachercandidates valuable practical opportunity and their learning through suchcollaborative action was significant. Participating teacher candidates highlyvalued MLS approach even though a few of them raised some concerns about it.