Government schools in Abu Dhabi, as part of widescale educational reforms undertaken in the whole of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have undergone significant change since 2007 across cycles and across subjects including science. Science had been taught historically in the UAE using fairly traditional "chalk and talk", teacher-centered approaches. Nowadays, schools under Abu Dhabi Educational Council (ADEC) favour a modern approach towards teaching science, with new teachers being required to be proficient in teaching science skills such as inquiry-based learning in order to implement the curriculum effectively. However, there is a wide body of literature research to suggest that pre-service teachers hold beliefs about science education embedded from their own experience prior to their teacher-training, particularly from their own schooling experience, which can be difficult to overturn. In a didactic schooling system, Emirati pre-service teachers may have had few role models of the kind of teacher they will be required to be when they take up a post with ADEC upon graduation. We explored the schooling experiences of the first and fourth year pre-service teachers in our training college, comparing their teaching and learning experiences for differences due to the reforms in the UAE, and explored the ways in which these experiences may influence kind of science teacher they will become.