Mentoring novice elementary teachers in science teaching

This dissertation explored how novice elementary teachers learn to teach science, how their preparation for teaching affects their classroom practice and their students' learning, and how they may be mentored toward more reform-based science practice. The instructional practices of four novice elementary teachers, two from traditional and two from alternative preparation programs, were studied as they worked with mentor teachers toward building pedagogical content knowledge for reform-based instruction in science. Data collected from interviews of novice and mentor teachers, from classroom observations of science lessons, from observations of mentor-novice conferences, and from student work were analyzed to discover patterns of information that may lead to understandings about effective practices for mentored learning to teach in science.