Perception of the next generation science standard instructional practices among Vietnamese pre-service and in-service teachers

Abstract

The STEM education has been emphasized in many countries around the world because of its benefits for students in the new century. In response to the STEM education, Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) has released a new vision of science education in which learning disciplinary content and crosscutting concepts is to engage science and engineering practices. Thus, science teacher education programs need to have training for pre-service teachers to implement these science and engineering practices. To prepare better for pre-service teachers, it is necessary to know their perception of the science and engineering practices. Besides, understanding in-service teachers’ science instruction and principals’ direction of teaching at school helps prepare better training. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the perception of pre-service teachers and in-service teachers’ implementation of instructional practices aligning with the NGSS approach as well as school principals’ views of science teaching. A convergent parallel mixed-method research design was employed in which quantitative data is obtained from a survey of science instructional practices from 187 pre-service teachers and 100 in-service teachers and qualitative data is obtained from interviews of 10 school principals in Can Tho City, Vietnam. The finding indicated that pre-service teachers highly appreciated science and engineering practices in teaching science while in-service teachers’ implementation of these practices was lower. In-service teachers tend to use more traditional instruction and incorporate students’ prior knowledge in their teaching. Although school principals revealed their appreciation toward teaching science through practices, they admitted that currently, implementation of these practices has been still limited