Özet:

Preservice teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning have gained increased attention. Therefore, many studies in the field of educational research have focused on preservice teachers' beliefs to reveal their images of teaching and learning through different instruments. Preservice teachers’ drawings of teaching and learning situations constitute one of these instruments. Drawing is used commonly because it allows one to represent vivid images of mental models which may not be expressed verbally. In this study, the Draw-a-Science-Teacher-Test (DASTT) was used to reveal participants’ beliefs of teaching and learning of science. The research sample included 134 preservice science teachers from different grade levels. Also, the relationships between gender and among grade levels of the participants were investigated. The results showed that preservice science teachers had educational perspectives including characteristics of both teacher-centered and student-centered instruction. The results also showed that there was no significant difference between educational perspectives with respect to gender and the grade levels of the participants. However, senior students had different instructional understandings from other participants by giving science teachers a role of doing experiments or activities instead of spending the whole class time just by talking and standing in front of students. Similarly, the senior students imagined a science class as arranged with U-shaped rows or with oval tables, which allows their students to study in groups instead of a science class arranged in rows. 

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