Following two years of teaching practice, confidence
in student teachers’ ability to teach science increased
from a mode of 4, on the six point Likert scale, to 5 (see
Table ). All participants also reported being well
prepared by their pre-service science course. They
mostly (9/12) indicated that they were confident or very
confident about their ability to teach science. All
(12/12) credited their pre-service science education
course as a reason for this. A smaller number credited
their experiences in the classroom or their associate
teachers.
There was a slight improvement in reported ease of
teaching science over the first two years of professional
practice (see Table 2). This was reflective of the
increased confidence, though none found it very easy to
teach the subject. Some illustrative examples of
interview comments that confirm this are: “I am not
always confident before I teach a new concept, but I do
a lot of background learning and teaching, it then
improves my confidence (Female teacher, 2008); and
“Improved from first year, and teaching with more
confidence. Need to have more time in practising
experiments before teaching them. Haven’t taught all
the units in Y10” (Male teacher, 2008).