Investigation And Study On The Quality In Education Of Science Education Major

The 21st century is a science and technology century, which means that we ought to pay high attention to school science education and foster every citizen's science literacy since he/she is young. Obviously, high qualified science teacher is the key to carry out good school science education. Science education major (for bachelor) is a new major in China which aims to cultivate high qualified science teachers for elementary and middle school science education. This research has three purposes:(1) to exam the quality in education of science education major; (2) to find out factors which influence the quality; (3) to give some pieces of suggestion on how to improve the quality.Firstly, this research selected five universities in China with judgmental sampling, choosing the seniors and alumni of science education major as the population. Secondly, it used the semi-structured interview to interview the chosen seniors and alumnus of science education major which was selected by the snowball sampling. Thirdly, it used the axial coding and the method of difference to analyze the collected interview data to exam the quality in education of science education major and try to find out the potential factors. Finally, it discussed the factors and gave some pieces of suggestion.Results showed that the quality in education of science education major was rather low. Factors which could influence the quality were as follows:(1) the subject matter knowledge which was learned in universities had little relationship with the middle school study; (2) expository experiments in science education major were too much, which could not effectively foster students'basic experiment skills and mind; (3) knowledge about the nature of science was ignored in the education of science education major and teachers who gave lectures about the nature of science generally had limited knowledge on it, and what's worse, their instruction was usually bad; (4) inquiry knowledge and skills were also ignored in the education of science education major and teachers who gave lectures about the inquiry knowledge and skills generally had limited knowledge on them, and what's worse, their instruction was usually bad; (5) pedagogical knowledge usually had little relationship with the exact elementary and middle school classes, and what's worse, teachers who gave those lectures usually taught with incorrect instruction methods; (6) there are many problems in the services and management on student-teacher experience, which seriously impede the development of student-teachers; (7) integrated knowledge and skills were ignored.To improve the quality in education of science education major, pieces of advice were given as follows; (1) curricula on the subject matter should be systematic and in depth; (2) what studied in science education major should be based on the exact what's going on in elementary and middle schools; (3) the more open-ended experiments, the better; (4) knowledge about the nature of science should be emphasized; (5)employ specialist in the nature of science to teach students; (6) inquiry knowledge and skills should also be emphasized; (7) improve lecturers'instruction in pedagogical content classes; (8) build a good relationship between universities and elementary/middle schools to give students more practice on teaching; (9) pay high attention to student-teacher experience to make student-teachers develop better; (10) design suitable curricula to foster students'integrated knowledge and skills.