This study investigates beliefs about teaching held by preservice science teachers and their influences on self-perceived microteaching outcomes within interactive secondary science teaching methods courses. Hermeneutic methodology was used in cooperation with seven preservice science teachers (N=7) to infer participant beliefs about teaching and to draw connections between these beliefs and student perceptions about their performance of assigned microteachings. The foci of this study were 1) discerning participant beliefs about the teaching of science, 2) discerning beliefs about microteaching within the Purdue science teaching methods courses, and 3) connecting participant perceptions of their microteaching assignment performances with these beliefs.

Each student was interviewed before the first microteaching assignment and again after each microteaching episode in order to develop co-constructions of participant beliefs about teaching. Participants were interviewed about each of their microteachings in conjunction with reviews of videotapes of their performances. Refinements to emergent models of participant beliefs were made in each subsequent interview by the use of directed interview questions and the tracking and discussion of participant actions during microteachings. Rich emic detail was provided by the active, daily, and assessed participation of the researcher in the fall course alongside study participants.

The interpretations offered suggest that participants' beliefs, rather than instructor- or peer-based assessments, serve as the primary determinant by which preservice teachers perceived personal success in microteaching situations. Apparent beliefs were observed as enacted, private social norms within participants' simulated teaching roles. Explicit, instructor-planned interpersonal challenges to specific preservice teacher beliefs within these courses were generally treated as anomalous by participants, and therefore often rejected as valid sources of change to either knowledge or beliefs. Intra- and interpersonal interactions within the science teaching methods courses apparently resulted in the creation of pedagogical content knowledge for many students. However, many other interactions were devalued or ignored for a variety of personal, experientially based reasons, reaffirming the fundamental role of preexistent belief systems in the selective creation and processing of preservice teacher knowledge and the creation of PCK.