Enhancing science and mathematics teacher education: evaluating an enhancement module for science pre-service teachers

Motivated and well-trained science and mathematics teachers are a requirement for sustaining an industrialized economy. The Australian government has funded several projects to satisfy this requirement designed to improve pre-service teacher education in regional and rural Australia. One such project uses a collaboration nexus model with lesson feedback and reflection modules in an iterative process using a repeated sequence comprised of an Enhancement Module, a subsequent Teaching Lesson and a Reflection Module. This paper reports on qualitative investigations of the effectiveness of the collaboration nexus in the Enhancement Module and comments on the value of the iterative process. Results from small-scale trials with pre-service teachers indicate that the Module positively engages participants, pre-service teachers, university scientists and specialist educators. The Module and its iterations appear to be effective in grounding pre-service teacher education in targeting regional contexts relevant to the daily lives of both pre-service teachers and their classroom students.