Student Teachers’ Mental Models of Everyday Control Systems - The Sensors that Operate the Door

Abstract

This study aimed to identify student-teachers’ mental models of everyday life control systems to develop appropriate instruction processes that help them understand subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1987) needed for teaching control issues in K-6. The research group consisted of student-teachers from Beit Berl College, Israel studying in preservice programs for kindergarten and primary school teachers.

Introduction: Student-teachers study systems and system controls while experimenting with and coding a robot’s behavior. Prior to this, student-teachers are asked to explain in text and graphics how the ‘automatic door’ works. It is important to understand student-teachers’ perceptions as in their future career as technology teachers they will have to explain these subjects according to their concepts. Methods: The student-teachers’ textual and graphic explanations are analyzed on the followings levels: the student-teachers’ structural and functional characteristics and their control process mental models. Findings and conclusions: It was found that student-teachers’ mental models are partial, most of them have a structural model that contains only the visible components that are part of the operation unit and not the control unit. Moreover, their functional mental models are also missing. However, most of them explain the behavior of the system with rules (If…Then…) and as a sequential process (a,b,c…). From these findings, it is clear that a very systematic instruction unit must be developed to assist the student-teachers to construct their appropriate “runnable” mental models of a self-regulated system and PCK enabling them to teach this topic properly to their pupils.