Scientific Culture in Initial Teacher Education: What Constitutes It and How Is It Built?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22600/1518-8795.ienci/2025v30n3p205Keywords:
Initial Teacher Education, Science teachers, Critical Scientific culture, Critical discourse analisys , Scientific culture, Constructivist grounded theoryAbstract
This research offers a theoretical approach to scientific culture, from the understanding of the cognitive frameworks that potentially shape it within the context of initial science teacher education. This case study took place within teacher education programs at universities in central-southern Chile. Data collection involved 35 semi-structured interviews: 24 with pre-service teachers and 11 with academic instructors. The analysis was conducted using Constructivist Grounded Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis in its epistemological version. Subsequently, the findings were contrasted with the content of the National Standards for Science Teacher Education in the country. The findings show that the narratives are structured around three semantic spaces, where three main positions regarding science and its teaching converge, leading to three discourses: (i) the theoretical discourse; (ii) the political-activist discourse; and (iii) the practical discourse aimed at improving teaching. Each of these discourses appears to reproduce and validate cognitive frameworks of a similar nature, which interact with a contextual model defined by the curricular norms. It is concluded that, within the studied context, discourses are grounded in epistemological and ideological/political positions about science and its teaching. These discourses reproduce and validate cognitive frameworks that form a teacher scientific culture of a vertical/deficit nature, paradoxical, and rooted in power relations.References
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