The chemistry education of the elementary pre-service teachers

Abstract

During the past fifteen years, students of the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Teacher Education learned chemistry within the course Introduction to Natural Sciences. In the realization of this course, teachers from three faculties of the University of Belgrade (the Faculty of Biology, the Faculty of Physics and the Faculty of Chemistry) were engaged. Elementary teachers educate children ages 6 (or 7) to 10. At the beginning of work we usually faced with the situation that the elementary preservice teachers did not like chemistry and they did not feel confident in their knowledge of chemistry. Because of that during the previous period we continually developed syllabus for chemistry teaching and learning within science education of elementary teachers and changed the activities in the classroom in order to improve their knowledge, skills and attitudes toward chemistry and to prepare them to teach chemistry contents within science effectively. In this presentation the structure of syllabus for elementary pre-service teachers’ education in chemistry, the directions of its development, the activities in the classroom, as well as the formative and summative assessment will be shown. We will also consider the problems and obstacles in the education of elementary teachers in the field of chemistry and sciences that are, despite our efforts, remain unresolved.