ACQUISITION OF EARTH SCIENCE CONTENT THROUGH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSIONS

Content should be viewed as a way to promote better student learning and a more positive attitude toward science. Teachers with better content knowledge make greater cognitive demands on their students and can engage confidently and enthusiastically in daily interactive teaching and learning of science with their children through active, hands-on science teaching. Elementary science teachers traditionally are certified K-6 and although they are expected to teach science, they often have minimal science content courses. If teachers lack a sufficient content background they may not have the personal interest, commitment, or pedagogical strategies to develop instructional activities. There are those "teachable moments" that a teacher might not be able to take advantage of if they do not have either the content knowledge or the experience. As a result, they enter the classroom with misconceptions about the nature of science and perpetuate this through their students. We are producing another generation of elementary students with negative experiences and attitudes towards science. Eight-four teachers, participants in professional development sessions on earth, life, and/or physical science content, completed questionnaires. Questions related to demographic information and to teacher's motive for acquiring content knowledge, sources of that knowledge, and how it was expected to affect teaching and student learning. Selected teachers responded to the last two categories a minimum of six months after participation in a content session. Although teachers acquire content knowledge from a variety of sources, results indicate that content delivered in the context of an inquiry-based, active-learning environment that can be easily translated into the classroom has the greatest impact not only on the teachers, but also on their teaching and their students' learning.