Studies on the links between the science education research and teacher training have chiefly sought to integrate into training projects the results of research concerning students’ conceptions, pedagogical methods and content analysis, to define curricula and competences and to study the teachers’ conceptions about science or teaching and learning.
Research has shown that student-teachers have their own conceptions and beliefs on teaching and learning, very often based on quite simplistic and conservative models considering teaching as transmission and learning as absorption. This leads teachers to adopt methods based on lectures and experimental demonstrations, removed from the proposals of research in education, stressing the need for an active construction of knowledge by students.
This paper proposes to introduce a direct use of research publications as documents to analyse and discuss with students teachers. It argues this choice and describes one such experiment conducted at the University of Udine. It also stresses the importance of training teachers using didactic model similar to those recommended for use in schools.
It is a matter of accustoming student teachers to gain a new perspective, to view teaching practice “differently” and to help them to develop a more scientific approach to teaching-learning phenomena (e.g. formulating hypotheses about pedagogical activities and evaluating their actual results). Moreover, the custom of reading and analysing research papers should be an independent objective in teacher training, with a view to promote a higher professionalism among teachers.
This practice can also foster a narrowing of the gap between didactic research and the reality of schools, in a reciprocal movement in the two directions. In fact, much research seems too far from this reality, so teachers may feel it is too abstract and not understand the links with problems they have to deal with every day. Probably, this is due not only to teachers’ difficulties but also to research, sometimes too confined in its self-referring community.