The “The MAP project” aims to enhance the quality of Science Education on the European level by encouraging transactional cooperation among five European universities. Additionally, “The MAP prOject aims to contribute to professional development of staff directly involved in the teaching of Science.
Science Education as well as History of Science are the two main pillars in the development of this dynamic website that can function as a science teacher training e-curriculum. History of Science provides materials and case studies that with the synergy of contemporary Science Education principles are the basis of this project for a science teacher e-training program. This e-curriculum aims to help science teachers reflect and probably hopefully re-examine their views about crucial aspects of science teaching such as the Nature of Science (NOS), the Nature of Learning (NOT) and the Nature of Teaching (NOL), and how these aspects affect the picture of science portrayed in science lessons, the role of the teacher, the role of language in learning science and the role of learning activities.
Nature of Science, Nature of Learning and Nature of Teaching are important parts of both school science curricula and teachers professional development programs. “The MAP prOject” aspires to provide opportunities for teachers who teach science to broaden their knowledge and skills in those areas by studying representative examples (the fall of bodies in the paradigms of Physics of Aristotle, Galileo and Einstein). Also it offers concrete teaching and learning strategies applied in these examples and take steps toward transforming the science teacher’s actual practice by changing the nature and the type of practices and discourses that take place in science classrooms.
The MAP prOject’s partners expect that the project outcomes would help in service teachers to:
1. Improve their knowledge about History of Science and how material or case studies from History of Science could be used to improve science teaching.
2. Understand the contribution of different cultures in scientific progress (Science has not been developed in a social vacuum. Its progress has always been dependent on the social, economic and even the religious environment in which scientists have lived and worked).
3. Become able to teach science in a more dialogical way using a variety of learning and teaching strategies (teaching with historical texts, teaching with experiments, teaching with games, teaching with video & role play, teaching with simulations, debates - argumentation, drama, collaborative inquiry and group work) and also be informed and develop their own metadidactical strategies.
4. Become able to teach science through the History of Science in order to promote metacognitive skills and attitudes that encourage the education of future citizens in the context of scientific literacy.
