Reflections from a Science Teacher Educator: Supporting Pre-service Teachers to Teach Science in a Contextualized Manner

The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on the promise and challenges to translate the research findings, presented in the empirical chapters, into the preparation of future science teachers, through the lens of a science teacher educator. In doing so, the author draws some themes about how some of these ideas can be implemented in training pre-service teachers and in shaping teacher education programs, mainly in the urban settings. The author views contextualization as a guiding framework to design and transform science methods courses. By utilizing a contextualization framework, we can develop our pre-service teachers’ understanding of what it means to learn science within context, allowing voice to their students (and their families). By including contextualization as a leveraging practice in teacher education programs, we can hope for a better scientifically literate generations of students, fulfilled teachers, and content families.