Fostering pre-service physics teachers’ diagnostic skills and readiness through video vignettes and micro-teaching sessions: An exploratory single-case study

Abstract A primary duty for physics teachers is to provide students with opportunities to engage in subject-specific learning processes. Such processes are always accompanied by students’ (mis)conceptions. Consequently, diagnosing students’ conceptions is a daily, essential, and challenging task for physics teachers. Prospective physics teachers should, therefore, receive appropriate preparation regarding this task during their university-based teacher education. To meet this requirement, we developed a course for Austrian pre-service physics teachers that incorporates the usage of video vignettes and micro-teaching sessions as learning arrangements to enhance participants’ diagnostic skills. Within the present study, we followed a single case study design to explore if and to which extent the self-confidence in diagnosing students’ conceptions of pre-service physics teachers who participated in this course changed over time. Our data analysis revealed mixed findings, as our participants showed increases, decreases, and U-shaped change-patterns regarding their self-confidence in diagnosing students’ conceptions. These findings indicate that participating in our developed course may have highly diverging effects on different pre-service physics teachers.