TPACK levels of physics and science teacher candidates: Problems and possible solutions

Measurement and Assessment department in the Ministry of Education in Palestine showed some data on the past examination records of the National Examinations in the last five years, 2007-2012. The report showed continuous unacceptable performance in mathematics and science. This is followed by the poor results of TIMSS in 2007 and 2011 in Palestinian territories.

These numbers revealed a dangerous deterioration in science and mathematics education in our schools. According to the GSSC data, the percentage of students who joined Science Field in the Secondary schools in 2013 was 18%. However, the percentage of science students in secondary schools was 75% in 1995. Students continue escaping from science field toward humanity fields.

Several studies were done to investigate the reasons which stand behind this deterioration in the results of National Examinations and TIMSS. Many educational aspects were studied to clarify the problem in science results, but few studies focused on science teachers preparation programs and the gained skills in the university. This approach leads to discuss the selection process of students at colleges of education in some Palestinian universities.

Science teacher must be carefully selected. College of Education must select the best students to join the Department of Science Education. Internationally, some Colleges of Education depend on GSSC¹ scores in selecting their student-teachers, while others depend on entrance examinations, which may include investigating the thinking skills and intellectual abilities of the candidates.

However, in most of the Palestinian Universities, the criteria used in selecting candidates depend on the GSSC scores only, which does not always reflect the ability to work as science teachers in the future.

Thinking abilities of the new science teachers are one of the indicator of how the preparation program is doing, what the selection standards look like in practice, and how students are doing in relation to expectations. "Abstract thinking is one of the thinking skills, which is necessary for good science teacher" (Adey, and Shayer, 1994). Also, critical thinking and reasoning are two thinking skills needed for teachers in general (Afana, 1998).

Abstract thinking level is highly related to academic achievement. How student understand and learn depends on their cognitive processing capability and abstract thinking level. The results of researches in the same field confirm that the high abstract thinking levels do predict good achievement in mathematics and science (Shayer, 1999:10).

The ability to think abstractly has long been considered a core skill for different teachers. Literature confirm that, science teacher must have a high level of abstract thinking, that may facilitate teaching science and abstract concepts properly (Harb and Darwish, 2005). The ability to think abstractly is associated with the ability to transfer what is learned from one context to another (Ylvisaker and Hibbard , 2008). In general, abstract thinkers students are able to reflect on events, ideas, and relationships. They can perform deductive and inductive reasoning, analyze possibilities and utilize abstract ideas (Velasquez, 2013: 34).

The Palestinian Curriculum Analysis Taxonomy in secondary and intermediate schools, demands formal operational processes (Darwish, 1998, Darwish, 2001). Consequently, formal thinking is required for science teachers as well as students. So, the tests used entrance examination in some colleges of education in USA depend on investigating the student's use of higher-order mental processes such as the hypothetic-deductive reasoning and logic (Dunn, 2006; Ginsburg and Opper, 1988).

The current study tries to find the abstract thinking levels of student-teachers in science departments, this may help to partially predict whether the selection process in the university produces the best candidates for science teachers in the light of possessing some necessary thinking abilities or not. Particularly, it tries to investigate whether the student-teachers have some of the required thinking skills for teaching science in the future. Also, the study tries to investigate the relationship between the abstract thinking level and the achievement in science for student-teachers in the Department of Science Education.