Aiming for responsible and competent citizenship through teacher professional development on teaching socioscientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL)

A mixed-methods approach was applied in the study to gather evidence on the pre-service primary teachers' confidence levels and SSIBL teaching practice needs, as well as their reflections in and on the three-step SSIBL activity (Appendix 1). In the following section, the context of the study, the participants, and the data collection and analyses are delineated.

The context of the study and the participants

The SSIBL TPD courses were embedded in a TPD programme run at one of the biggest and most well-regarded universities in Sweden which provides regular courses for pre-service primary teachers. In the research context, the pre-service teachers needed to study one semester of science and technology education courses for grades 4-6, and the SSIBL TPD courses were embedded into that semester as part of the programme.

In accordance with the PARRISE project, teacher educators' reflections influenced the design of two rounds of SSIBL TPD courses by PARRISE consortium members in their local TPD programmes. In the case presented in this article, the two rounds of the SSIBL TPD courses were designed and implemented for the first time in autumn 2015, with the second round planned for autumn 2016 based on the authors' (also the teacher educators') reflections on the pre-service teachers' responses. However, due to the need to have this course every semester (two semesters per year in our university education context), and the fact that the authors could not join the course in person, a distance course was conducted in spring 2016. A third course took place in autumn 2016. Therefore, a total of three cohorts of SSIBL TPD courses through three different instructional designs in three cohorts were developed and implemented.

The three cohorts' instructional designs shared both differences and similarities. The content was the same, but the total time and the sequencing of content were different; the first cohort followed an onsite top-down (OSTD) approach, the third cohort an onsite bottom-up (OSBU) approach (Table 1), while the second cohort was conducted via videotaped lectures - distance top-down (DTD) approach,. But still, the pre-service teachers were asked to do PCK reflection while designing their SSIBL classroom activities. Distance education and its effects have been discussed since the 20th century (e.g. Sumner, 2000), and hence it is also of interest to know its effect with regard to the SSIBL TPD course in this study. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate three groups of pre-service science teachers' confidence levels and SSIBL teaching needs within three different cohorts (OSTD, OSBU and DTD) in the SSIBL TPD courses.

As previously mentioned, the three cohorts were organised between autumn 2015 and autumn 2016, over three semesters. The detailed timeline and the number of participants are shown in Table 1. The three groups of pre-service teachers (a total of 76 participants) were seen as three cases occurring in a TPD programme focusing on developing pre-service teachers' competence in teaching science and technology. As argued by Yin (2009), the boundary between the phenomenon and its context is blurred, so the loose definition of case study was adopted, which is to see the case in its context.

Table 1. The number of participants in each instructional group.

Instructional group/cohorts	Semester	Timeline	Participants	Validated samples
OSTD	Autumn 2015	10 hours face-to-face lectures/activities over three days	28	26
DTD	Spring 2016	10 hours distance lectures over three days	24	23
OSBU	Autumn 2016	6 hours face-to-face lectures/activities in one day	24	22
Total			76	71

The data collection, instruments and data analyses

In order to answer research question 1, quantitative pre- and post-cohort questionnaires relating to the pre-service teachers' perceived level of confidence and SSIBL teaching needs were conducted using the Likert scale, before and after each cohort. The validated data shown in this article were from the 71 participants (20 males and 51 females) who completed both the pre- and post-cohort questionnaires. The dropout rate was approximately 7%, which was judged acceptable. Concerning the bias that might have been generated through the Likert scale survey, it is worth noting that the authors were not involved in participants' final examination tasks. The limitations of the study were the small sample size and unequal distribution of the genders, but these factors were unavoidably dictated by the actual context (i.e., regular, mandatory courses).

The data included the pre- and post-cohort questionnaires, including the two main aspects of teachers' confidence in the teaching strategies and their need for further education (scored 1 to 7 from 'not so confident' to 'very confident'). There were 10 items in the pre-cohort questionnaire (Appendix 2) on SSI and IBSE teaching and an additional five items were added for SSIBL teaching (since the concept of SSIBL was new for the participants), to the post-cohort questionnaire (Appendix 3). Additionally, another five items (also Likert scale) were added to obtain the participants' general feedback on the courses (scored 1 [disagree strongly] to 6 [agree strongly], and 0 [I do not know]) (Appendix 3). The data analyses involved descriptive analysis and one-way ANOVA statistics (SPSS version 23). The significance was examined using the Mann-Whitney U test as a nonparametric test to compare the outcomes of two independent groups.

In addition to the pre- and post-cohort questionnaires on teachers' confidence and needs, two kinds of PCK reflection sheet were developed for 'reflection-on-action' and 'reflection-in-action' to answer research question 2. The reflection sheets (relating to the SSIBL activities developed for primary education by the teacher students during three rounds of TPD courses) were completed in groups of 2 to 4. The 'reflection-on-action' sheet was used after the teacher students had experienced a three-step SSIBL activity (Appendix 4) and were reflecting as a group on the link between the three-step SSIBL activity and the SSIBL framework (including SSI, IBSE, CE, and RRI). The PCK reflection sheet was developed to support the pre-service teachers' reflection-in-action while designing a SSIBL activity for 4-6 graders (Appendix 5). The qualitative reflection data of nine groups from the three cohorts were collected. Descriptive analysis was used to investigate the participants' reflection-on-action regarding the three-step SSIBL activity and the SSIBL framework. Thematic analyses (Guest, MacQueen, and Namey, 2011) were applied to analyse the participants' reflection-in-action on the design of the three-step SSIBL activity with the three aspects of PCK.