Sources Used by Student Teachers in Lesson Planning.

Pedagogical content knowledge is defined as the blending of subject matter knowledge, general knowledge of learning and teaching, knowledge about specific learners, and knowledge of instructional representations of subject matter such as activities, examples, demonstrations, analogies, and illustrations. This study was conducted to identify sources used by secondary school science and mathematics student teachers (N=14) in developing instructional representations of subject matter. All participants' preservice teacher education included classes in which teaching resource ideas were collected. Data were gathered through a questionnaire regarding sources of instructional representations. Data analysis suggests that: student teachers rely heavily on themselves for planning of instruction; curriculum material is seldom used as designed; teacher preparation course content or materials are not used; and the cooperating teacher and university personnel are considered important sources of materials and suggestions. Implications are that teacher education programs need to place more emphasis on how to effectively modify existing materials and create original products. (LL)