Development of a pre-service teacher training course on integration of ICT into inquiry based science education.

In order to be able to integrate ICT into Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE), teachers need much time and support for mastering ICT tools, learning the basis of IBSE, and getting experience in applying these tools in pupil investigations. For this purpose, we have developed a course within the teacher education program of universities in the Netherlands. During the course, pre-service teachers learn to use and apply one of three ICT tools i.e. data logging, video measurement, or modeling to design and implement an inquiry-based lesson in the classroom. The course participants are expected to study on their own most of the time through a blended setting including life sessions, in-between tasks, and an online platform with support materials and with close supervision. The challenges are the lack of time and the heterogeneous background of pre-service teachers, many of whom opted for teaching later in life, not immediately after university and already hold first year teaching jobs. This paper presents the first case study on implementation of the course in early 2013 with 12 pre-service teachers. The learning scenario was implemented quite faithfully as the life sessions were executed pretty smoothly, and finally, almost all participants went through a complete cycle of designing, implementing, and evaluating an ICT-IBSE lesson. Within a limited time, the heterogeneous group of pre-service teachers achieved a reasonable level of competence regarding the use of ICT in IBSE. There was still a considerable difference between intended inquiry activities and actual realized inquiry which parallels result from the literature [1], [8]. The blended setting with support materials contributes to this result if course participants really spend considerable time outside the life sessions. Also discussed in this paper are revision for further rounds of development based on case studies in the Netherlands and investigation on applicability of the course setting and materials in different contexts e.g. in-service training, other countries.