Pragmatism, Pedagogy and Philosophy: A Model of Thought and Action in Primary Technology and Science Teacher Education

This article reports on one outcome from a three-year study with pre-service primary teachers at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the influence of participants' prior educational experience and beliefs about the relationship between design & technology (D&T) and science on their lesson planning for these subjects during school placements. Data from the study support a three-domain model of pre-service teachers' thinking and action. When operating within the pragmatic domain, participants are primarily concerned with survival in the classroom, resulting in short-term planning which may contradict their epistemological and curricular beliefs. In the pedagogical domain, the focus shifts from the pre-service teacher themselves and their immediate survival to the learning potential of the activities they plan. There is evidence that some participants have progressed to operating within a philosophical domain, leading to clasroom practice which reflects and re-conceptualises pre-service teachers' core beliefs about the nature of, and relationship between, D&T and science.