An inquiry based approach to physics teacher Education: the case of found properties

In this paper we describe some results of an approach to Pre-Service Physics Teacher Education whose general aim is to analyze how Problem-Based activities in pre-service teacher education courses can support the understanding of content, the development of inquiry skills and of pedagogical competences, as well as the merging of these in a form of knowledge appropriate for teaching. The experimentation has been performed with a group of non-Italian Trainee Teachers engaged in one-month mobility activities at University of Palermo, in the framework of the EU Project “Move’in Science”, focused in Physics and/or Mathematics Pre-Service Teacher Education. We briefly discuss a Teaching/Learning Unit about Mechanical Wave propagation, developed at University of Palermo and experimented, during trainees’ mobility. Some preliminary results of the experimentation are presented, with particular reference to mental models about wave propagation evidenced by Trainee Teachers. Their understanding of the relevance of pupils’ mental model knowledge, in the framework of what a teacher should do to be an “effective” teacher, is also discussed.