Pre-Service Teachers' Attitudes toward Graphing Calculators in Math and Science. Case Study 10

The need exists for methods courses to address the pedagogy issues of using graphing calculators. There needs to be a teacher candidate forum to examine their pedagogical perspectives on using graphing calculators in teaching, to explore when and how to use graphing calculators in the classroom, and to provide opportunities to practice teaching with graphing calculators. A recent study by Lyublinskaya, Donoghue and Zhou (2006) tracked the effects of such training on elementary and secondary pre-service teachers in methods classes for math and science. All students were divided into two groups. The first group consisted of undergraduate and graduate students preparing to teach secondary science and math, and who were enrolled in math and science methods courses. The second group consisted of undergraduate students preparing to teach in the elementary schools and who were enrolled in science methods courses. This study concludes that the perspectives and attitudes of pre-service teachers in their methods courses strongly depend on the intensity and length of experience they have with use of graphing calculators and calculator-based data collection devices (probe ware). The study also concludes that participants' confidence in the use of technology is somewhat independent of their perspective.