54.3 The Context of This Study
This study occurred under the umbrella of a formal collaboration between the
Faculty of Education in a New Zealand (NZ) university and the schools it worked
with to deliver the school-based part of an Initial Teacher Education (ITE)
programme—the Collaborative University School Partnership (CUSP). In the
CUSP partnership the Faculty of Education staff worked with the school’s mentor
teachers to co-construct a more seamless, coherent and relevant school-based
experience for pre-service teachers enrolled in thefirst year of a primary teacher
undergraduate programme. In science, if the school-based component was to suc-
cessfully complement the university-based programme then the associate teachers
needed strong PCK for science inquiry learning to support their students’active
engagement with ideas and investigations where the students are thinking and
working scientifically (Tytler et al. 2008 ). Evaluation of thefirst trial of the new
science school-based ITE suggested the PCK of many associate teachers did not
support achievement of the aims and practices of reform-based science education,
as modelled by lecturers. For example, the associate teachers experienced diffi-
culties in understanding the science tasks set by the university for the school-based
component; there was general absence of authentic scientific inquiry learning
opportunities in the associate teachers’science programmes and pedagogies; and
the science teaching and learning had a low profile in schools’science programmes.
Anecdotal evidence from the pre-service teachers suggested many found them-
selves in situations where their associate teachers seemed either reluctant to col-
laborate on the science tasks, or happy to let them take sole responsibility for
planning and teaching the science lessons. These situations resulted in significant
numbers of pre-service teachers being unable to work collaboratively with their
associate teachers designing reform-based science pedagogies.
54.4 The Response to the Challenge in the Science
Curriculum Area Within CUSP
The teacher educators recognised this situation might be symptomatic of the wider
issues in science education around falling levels of student engagement and
achievement in science. In the NZ context these falls are also beginning in the
primary sector of schooling and are being attributed to: the low status of science in
NZ primary school curricula generally; the widespread lack of knowledge and
confidence in teaching science amongst primary teachers; and minimal systemic
support for NZ science teaching (Bull et al. 2010 ). However, researchfindings into
teachers’professional learning in science education also pointed towards possible
ways to redress the situation by strengthening teachers’PCK, and the teacher
educators saw opportunities to take affirmative action under the CUSP umbrella.
To explore possibilities, one of the university lecturers approached the Principal of
802 A. Hume