Reforming the Education Program for Physical Science Teachers in Taiwan

This article reports on reforms of the science education program for prospective physical science teachers in Taiwan and examines their impact on these teachers. The reforms include restructuring the courses in physical science methods, and requiring all prospective teachers to do action research during their one-year full-time teaching practice. The former aims to instil knowledge of constructivism and enable them to teach physical science by using constructivist approaches, and the latter provides them with an opportunity to apply what they have acquired to actual teaching. This study shows that exposure to constructivism affected the teachers' beliefs and initial choice of science teaching approach. Evidence further demonstrates that successful experience with action research reinforced their beliefs, and made them more willing to employ constructivist science teaching approaches in their teaching practice. Introducing these reforms in Taiwan has the potential of enhancing the competency of prospective science teachers. Key words action research constructivism educational change physical sciences science education teaching practice Introduction In 1995, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan put forward three major changes regarding the legislation of pre-service teacher education. They were: (a) all universities can offer teacher education programs; (b) prospective teachers are required to have one year of full-time teaching practice after graduation; and (c) the assessment system for teacher certificates is to be decided by professors of the universities offering such programs. Since then, more than 15 universities have begun to offer secondary school teacher education programs. In the meantime, the call for educational reforms has also become a nationwide issue in Taiwan. These changes not only imply a more competitive job market for teachers, but also reveal the urgency and need of future teachers to be more competent in implementing and realising the goals of educational reforms. With the enactment of the new legislation, university supervisors assume a key role in deciding whether the prospective teachers can be awarded a teacher certificate, judging according to the criteria laid down by them. Aiming to provide a better teacher education for physical science teachers, the author has begun to examine the existing problems and explore better ways for preparing more competent physical science teachers. In Taiwan, rarely do we encounter prospective teachers immediately putting into practice instructional strategies that they have acquired. With a similar opinion, Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981) expressed that the effects of teacher preparation experience are often lost during the first year of teaching as the teachers are socialised into their classroom environments. Leib, cited in Gold (1996), also noted that much of what teachers have learned disappears when they enter the classroom. Furthermore teachers appear to be 'imprinted' by their first-year experiences, which in turn influence future behaviour (Gold, 1996). These studies indicate that the school environment influences whether teachers would put training into practice. Another possible factor may be that our pre-service teacher education program does not require them to put training into practice. She's studies (2000a; She, Len, & Sue, 2000) have reported that, if required, prospective teachers will force themselves to apply their acquired training to actual practice despite difficulties abounding. Another common observation among prospective teachers is that they believe the traditional methods they experienced as students will lead to better test scores, which is of utmost importance to any Taiwanese wishing to achieve academic success. Others argue that they do not have the time either to experiment with other ways of teaching or to search for information on alternative teaching approaches. …