Holly is an aspiring science teacher who had just encountered inquiry science teaching for the first time in graduate school. Despite living through an era of multiple science education reforms which called for students of all grade levels to use scientific inquiry and appropriate tools, she professed to have never seen it in her entire K-20 (Kindergarten - Graduate School) experience. Instead she recounted learning experiences where she sat through lecture after lecture and test after test that covered abstract concepts with an occasional state-mandated ‘cookbook’ lab thrown in.

During the first month of an elective science education graduate course, Holly and her classmates investigated the principles of heat transfer in a problem-based learning environment using temperature probes, computers and digital microscopes. The guided inquiry approach provided experiences for novice teachers to learn what it means to learn science by inquiry. The National Science Education Standards (NSES) first announced in 1996 calls for students to learn to collect, analyse and discuss their own data using scientific tools. These NSES have now gone through a complete revision and are now being replaced by the Next Generation Science Standards (Schweingruber et al. 2012) These reform standards, backed by decades of research, argue students do science when they are engaged in asking questions, planning and conducting investigations, using appropriate tools and techniques to gather data, thinking critically and logically about relationships between evidence and explanations, constructing and analysing alternative explanations, and communicating scientific arguments. The vision prescribed by these documents contends when students learn with inquiry, they are practicing what scientists think, say and do in their regular work—using cultural tools for like microscopes, computers and probeware to mediate their learning, speak, thinking and acting.

Yet, according to Holly and her peers, guided inquiry lessons were an anomaly. Were Holly and her classmates oblivious to the efforts of their former teachers or had school practices continued their traditional course, unabated from the numerous calls (AAAS 1989; NGSS Lead States 2013) for science teaching reform? As pre-service teachers (PSTs), they had all been placed in two student teaching assignments, and Lortie estimates PSTs take in over ‘… 13,000 hours of direct contact with classroom teachers’ (Lortie 1975, p. 61) in their K-20 preparation leading to their first science teaching job. We ask, ‘How could this bright, articulate Honors Biology student profess ignorance that she was unaware of any another way to teach?’ It is into this resilient context that we place technology into the hands of teachers and assume change will naturally occur. In the following sections we will elaborate on the complexities of teacher change and the promising potential for technology to facilitate what our national science education reforms demand.

Inquiry has been the framework for guiding reform-based science instruction since the writings of John Dewey (Barrow 2006). Olson and Loucks-Horsley (2000) argued that students at all grade levels and in every domain of science should have the opportunity to think and act in ways associated with inquiry. Because the implementation of inquiry can look very different in science classrooms (Mintzes et al. 2000), it is important to define an inquiry framework. Windschitl (2003) reviewed the work of science educators promoting and studying inquiry teaching and developed an ‘inquiry continua’ (p. 114) or levels of inquiry that provide structure to this construct. This continuum identifies increasing levels of complexity and student independence in constructing meaning from Confirmation Exercises to Open Inquiry. It is at this highest level which places the full responsibility of learning on the student where inquiry tools bring unobservable evidence to the fore, enable abstraction and analysis, and engage students in the active co-construction of scientific knowledge and interpretation.

The arrival and rapid evolution of so many varieties of tools (e.g., computers, tablets, simulations, peripherals) have convoluted the landscape for science teachers because there has been gross neglect for professional development (Cuban 2001; Oppenheimer 2004) and a variety of contextual influences on implementation so that teachers are not sure where to use tools in the curriculum, what tools to use and how to use them (McCrory 2008; Waight and Abd-El-Khalick 2011). When introducing technology into science lessons, teachers and teacher educators alike confess their lack of knowledge, their needs and their interest in learning more to teach technology better (Settlage, Odom, and Pedersen 2004).

There is very little support to develop the necessary pedagogical skills and knowledge to implement them effectively (Cuban 2001; Harris, Mishra, and Koehler 2009; Oppenheimer 2004). Though the obstacles for teaching science inquiry through technology have been thoroughly explored elsewhere (Berger et al. 1994; Ellington 1993; Jonassen 1996; Lawrenz 1993) suffice to say that, on the whole, schools deter innovative technological and pedagogical choices for teaching inquiry (Cuban 2001; Waight, Chiu, and Whitford 2014).

There has been a widespread debate among researchers as to the teaching value of technological tools such as computers (Cordes and Miller 2000; Cuban 2001; Mehan 1989; Mistler-Jackson and Songer 2000; Oppenheimer 2004; Williams and Linn 2002) and effectiveness, which dates back to the first insertion of tools into schools (Cuban 1986). Researchers argue it is unlikely that PSTs learned science using technology (Niess 2008) and very likely that their pedagogical and content knowledge of science is rudimentary (Angeli and Valenides 2008). Despite these deficiencies in technological, pedagogical and content knowledge, science educators can improve a pre-service science teacher's knowledge base by providing them with multiple opportunities to practice teaching with technology without formally evaluating them. Angeli (2005) recommends that PSTs consider using technology as ‘… a learning tool for enhancing their teaching practices and not just a delivery vehicle for supporting old ones’ (p. 385). PSTs need to be able to take risks during their teaching practice with tools they did not learn with or watch their teachers use.

Some authors have characterised learning to teach with technology as a strongly connected web of domains that prevents it from being treated as simply imparting technological knowledge. Building off the foundations of Shulman (1986), the framework of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) posits that many areas of knowledge influence a teachers selection, implementation and evaluation of teaching with technology (Mishra and Koehler 2006). They referred to teaching as ‘a highly complicated form of problem-seeking and problem-solving that derives from flexible and integrated bases of knowledge’ (p. 3). These bases of knowledge serve as theoretical frameworks for discussing pre-service teacher education and the requisite knowledge universities can impart or foster to prepare excellent teachers. Authors argue that neither pedagogical, content, nor technical knowledge can be omitted from any discussion of effective teaching (Angeli and Valanides 2008; Koehler and Mishra 2005) and all are needed to facilitate student learning.

McCrory (2008) has provided one framework through which science educators and PSTs can view effective integration of technology. His conceptual framework encompassed three basic realms of technology implementation: (1) Where teachers should use technology in the curriculum, (2) What technology teachers should use and (3) How teachers should teach with technology. McCrory (2008) proposed that PSTs use technology in parts of the curriculum that are hard to teach and in places where technology is integral to learning about science.

It was from this orientation that we examined two educational technology course electives offered to science teacher candidates and to explored which experiences added to their proficiency to teach science with technology supporting inquiry teaching. We examined the technological, content and pedagogical knowledge (Mishra and Koehler 2006) of pre-service science teachers prior to graduating with a secondary science teaching degree. The PSTs in this study all entered school during when the NSES (NRC 1996) were released and entered high school at a time when schools focused on meeting the requirements of No Child Left Behind [NCLB] (2002). Within this context we asked the following research questions,

What academic experiences influence PSTs interpretation inquiry teaching with technology tools?

A bounded, case study approach (Creswell 2007) was used to explore PSTs’ understandings of how to teach science using inquiry and technology. Twelve PST graduate students who had completed a Bachelor's degree in science and were finishing a Master's Degree in science education were asked to participate in learning content through inquiry using specific teaching tools like probeware, software, digital microscopes, laptops, digital video cameras and other co-constructive tools. Enrolled in an elective educational technology course, they were also asked to prepare and teach lessons using these tools in local middle school classrooms during the semester. These lessons would be recorded, and PSTs were expected to compile a portfolio or exhibit demonstrating their use of the tool in context and their learning about teaching with technology.

Students modelled their lessons after those they had participated in their elective course. Guided inquiry lessons (Windschitl 2003) introduced students to scientific tools that enabled them to collect their own data to analyse and use as evidence to support their findings, which they eventually shared with their peers. Following each example lesson PSTs deconstructed the lessons to define the role technology had played during instruction.

Our research design was framed by the concept of ‘research as praxis’ (Britzman 1991; Lather 1996), which has at its core an assumption that research can and should affect teachers’ actual practice. Therefore, our collection of artefacts and methods for conducting interviews were influenced by our philosophical stance as teacher educators that, if novice teachers were going to be successful in teaching science, they would likely need to understand both philosophical and practical implications of technology choices on children's thinking, their planning and their lesson implementation.

Multiple sources of data were collected from each of the PSTs. These sources included: formal interviews with each PST, a 41-question survey, collected lesson plans, and the PSTs’ own video reflections, constructed to report the success of their devised lessons. A digitally recorded interview was conducted with each of the PSTs on and off campus and later transcribed. The interview covered six areas of pedagogical, content and disciplinary knowledge. In addition, a 41-question survey using a Likert scale, was administered anonymously to the PSTs to avoid the experimenter effect (Bracht and Glass 1968) regarding teaching science with inquiry and technology. Embedded in the survey were 17 open-ended questions, which enabled the PSTs to expand on their experiences, using technology and inquiry. While there was no statistical significance for a such a small survey sample, the survey directed us to the PSTs definitions for central notions like inquiry and their related content, technological and pedagogical choices.

We collected their personal video-recorded reflections explicating their individual learning outcomes and conducted final exit interviews to corroborate the claims PSTs made regarding their design and implementation of technology in their teaching. The use of video to capture instruction and PSTs’ was a specific measure in our design to both elucidate the explicit use as well as provide meaning for the intentions of implementation as in other studies (Borko et al. 2008). Video enabled teachers reflecting on their teaching to conduct repeated viewing which fostered connections between the pedagogy, ideas about student thinking and the use of the technology simultaneously. The PSTs collected video of their lessons, edited the video to a final product and used the remaining clips to tell a narrative about their science lesson. They followed the same process when constructing a video of their interviews with their students and mentor teacher.

Data Analysis was completed in three phases including initial coding, axial coding and the development of case studies from narrative analysis. Following initial coding of the interviews using selective coding techniques (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) categories were developed describing themes observable across the data set. These categories included such themes as use of technology, learning science, pedagogical choices and others which allowed researchers to break down interview and video data and conceptualise it into manageable parts.

After using open coding procedures to produce categories, axial codes were generated to reveal relationships between subcategories within the categories. Researchers used these axial codes to see patterns in the data which eventually led to the assertions made in the findings which gave meaning to the subsequent case studies (Creswell 2007). These quotes were used to support or refute assertions and gave clearer refinement to the assertions clearly articulated across the data and led to finding explicit differences between teachers.

It was important to consider what PSTs thought was prominent about their use of technology and how they chose to represent their teaching and learning actions (Wertsch 2000; Richardson 1996). Narrative analysis was used to identify the pedagogically mediated actions PSTs chose to discuss about their use of technology. It served as a sociocultural lens to PSTs actions and intentions. Though observation studies, surveys and other methodological approaches may report an outsider's view to technology practices, narratives allow for the interpretation of mediated actions during the teaching of their lessons (Riessman 1993). The interview questions and video reflections provided the PSTs with the opportunity to choose what reconstructions participants make meaningful. This qualitative analysis technique enabled researchers to interpret intentions, goals and values from the PSTs’ constructive responses of past learning and teaching.

In this study, the PSTs were provided with probeware, laptop computers, a digital video camera and digital microscopes with expectation that they would use these tools to teach and reflect on their practice with select Cooperating Teachers in environments where pedagogical experimentation was welcomed. Though PSTs professed having not witnessed inquiry tools in their K-16 learning experience, they each were able to define a central moment where they were encountered and changed their practices through their enrolment in a single field-based, technology-rich, reflection-driven technology course. They used this new knowledge to successfully design and implement a science lesson as teachers with middle and high school students in public school classrooms.

Without the opportunities offered by this elective science course, PSTs would have graduated professing never to have been exposed to such tools, pedagogies or assessment methods. If the role of higher education is to prepare teachers for such visions of science teaching, clearly one course is not enough. However, it should be noted that every student who completed this educational technology course had a successful experience learning to teach using inquiry and intended to practice it more in their next job. We gather from our data that students wished they had been exposed to alternatives earlier and that too much traditional teaching drives students’ motivation for learning downwards.

We must ask the question, ‘Why haven't calls for inquiry science teaching reform and technological integration into science classrooms taken root?’ Several studies demonstrate the strong influence of placements and mentoring of PSTs (Windschitl 2003; Gado, Ferguson, and van t Hooft 2006; Anderson 2002; Lotter, Singer, and Godley, 2009). Other studies suggest the general resilience of schools contexts to change (Sarason 1982). Still other factors researchers argue include professional development, assessment-driven curricula, poor administrative support and a host of other factors. If we are serious about changing science classroom instruction to embrace the latest tools for inquiry, we must strongly attend to more than one of these factors at a time and consider larger decision-making knowledge frameworks like TPCK and others which explore a richer set of data than just technological knowledge.

Reformers, futurists and technological zealots have argued that classrooms will change when this next generation of learners join the ranks of teachers. We disagree. How can they? What knowledge and experiences will they have to draw upon when they become teachers? How long will Holly, Nicholas or Peter resist the barrage of traditional school practices with peers and administration insisting they conform and keep up with the pacing guide? These PSTs are now leaving and entering schools of education with strong perceptions of what it means to be a science teacher during an era when the results of high-stakes tests have a greater influence than ever before. Without classroom experiences that enable PSTs the opportunities to teach science with inquiry supported by technology, PSTs can never gain confidence, experience or competence required ‘to integrate technology in their classroom practices in more sophisticated ways’ (Angeli and Valenides 2008, p. 22). The experiences out in real classrooms contributed to the development of their TPCK that would have clearly been insufficient without such factors as supportive Cooperating Teachers, modelled practices, exemplary tools, creative teaching spaces and facilitated reflections on central literature framing the issues.

Educational technology courses can teach how to use technology but Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue it cannot teach them how to use technology to teach the practice of science without clearly connecting it to requisite pedagogical content knowledge to make sense of the instruction (McCrory 2008). It seems misguided to hold out hope for the next reform vision without supporting PSTs to learn tools, in a content specific environment, with mentors who can observe and advise, as students are encouraged to safely try out new pedagogies and approaches with real children. We have shown it is possible, albeit labour and resource dependent. But since when has anything worthwhile not required significant investment? We believe in the value of the current Next Generation Science Standards and calls for the use of inquiry tools in the classroom and hope beyond hope for the next generation of science teachers and learners get the support they need to make the necessary changes.