Abstract:

Teaching and learning opportunities offered using ICT are very wide and have a extensive range of application in all domains and subjects in general and particularly in science across a range of topics and ages phases.

There are plethora of educational research that analyze, identify and propose how these resources should be designed and used in an efficiently way to teach and learn Science. In relation to ICT in Science Education, a considerably body of literature has reported, among others, what are benefits for teachers and for students, application and factors of an effective use of ICT.

Within this literature, research findings have demonstrate that ICT by themselves must not be considered as the central part of the instructional approach and that effectiveness of ICT is highly dependent on the context and the way it is used. How to embed this resource within an appropriate instructional sequence and how to align it within an appropriate teaching methodology would place a considerable pedagogical demand on teachers. Teacher preparation and/or teacher beliefs and attitudes in regards of the use of ICT correlate with their technological and pedagogical content knowledge and instead the way they perceive and would use them in a day-to-day science classroom.

This paper is the continuation of a previous one where we showed and instructional approach for pre-service teachers. There, pre-service teachers had to played the role of science students, through several immersion tasks, and using different strategies such as predict-observe-explain and observe-compare-predict playing with simulations We would like to continue exploring those scenarios and how pre-service teachers interact with them in regard to their beliefs about of a particular implication of ICT. Herein we explore some dimension related to the teacher’s technological and pedagogical content knowledge about that resource, before they run the immersion task. We will explore teacher’s beliefs and attitudes regarding how a particular application will meet some learning objectives and how they act as designers and perceive implications and challenges to teach Science at early years using ICT.

Keywords:

Pre-service teacher, ICT, science education, early years.