Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Education |
2013
Abstract
Children’s prior knowledge or children’s alternative conceptions are an important part of pedagogical content knowledge. This paper evaluates an effort to increase the preservice elementary school teachers’ skills needed for the diagnostics of children’s understanding and conceptions of social phenomena.
Preservice teachers were given a task to interview children about their conceptions of economic and politic relationships. Different groups of student teachers received different kind of support before the interview.
The typology of resulting interviews is presented. Scaffolding seems to be essential in the development of students’ questioning skills.