ABSTRACT
Elementary teachers are often generalists, having no special training in either science content or pedagogy (Cox & Carpenter, 1989; Perkes, 1975; Tilgner, 1990). Elementary teachers are most often specialists in language arts education, with an interest and expertise in helping children learn to read and write. They are more often likely to avoid teaching science, or feel uncomfortable teaching science because they have not been adequately trained to do so. There have been recommendations that training in interdisciplinary science and literacy instruction can help elementary teachers improve their science teaching because they can use their strengths in language arts instruction in their science teaching (Flick, 1995). However, it should be noted that teachers could interpret interdisciplinary instruction as simply reading a book about science—after all, it is a book about science and it is reading, right? Without appropriate preparation, there is a risk that the science instruction is actually left out in an interdisciplinary 280science and language arts approach. So the real question remains—how do we help elementary teachers effectively use interdisciplinary instruction to enable their own students to meet language arts and science objectives?
