From Talk to Experience: Transforming the Preservice Physics Methods Course

This report of a collaborative self-study describes and interprets our pedagogical approach at the beginning of a preservice physics methods course and outlines the strategy that we used to create a context for productive learning. We focus on our attempt to engage teacher candidates in dialogue about learning physics and learning to teach physics by engaging them in brief teaching experiences in the first month of a preservice teacher education program, before the first practicum placement. Self-study methodologies are used to frame and reframe our perceptions of teaching and learning as we enacted a pedagogy of teacher education that was unfamiliar both to us and to our teacher candidates.