The imperative for teaching science inquiry in K-12 classrooms to promote future
scientists has prompted academicians and practitioners to focus on problem-based or
inquiry teaching/learning. This presupposes that students can be taught, and will learn to
think like scientists. To this end, teacher preparation programs explore the nature of
science, science inquiry and thinking like scientists, and examine expert/novice profiles
with the goal of making the scientist's knowledge and heuristics explicit and available to
learners. The issue central to this research investigation is to identify the metacognitive
process of the expert scientist for transfer to the learner via teacher educators, 3rd grade elementary school students, and back to preservice science methods' students.
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