Science education

Each of the models for teacher education is aligned implicitly or explicitly with a particular theory or theories of learning and has different implications for the nature of a teacher development program, because different models predict different roles for teacher and instructors/trainers, different training materials, different curriculum organization, and different time-frames.

The traditional teacher-centered model in which knowledge is “transmitted” from the trainer to the trainee is being rapidly replaced by alternative models of teacher development (constructivist and sociocultural ones) in which the emphasis is on guiding and supporting teachers as they learn to construct their understanding of the culture and communities of which they are a part (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Rogoff, 2003). In the process of shifting our attention to the constructive activity of the teacher, it is recognized we need to anchor learning in real-world or authentic contexts that make teacher development meaningful and purposeful. The current emphasis is to embed knowledge and competencies appropriation within a framework of teacher development, collaborative programs, and interactive research within a community of learners.

We believe that professional development should be seen as a social process of enculturation in work practice. So we propose a model of professional development that will be based on participation and not merely in the acquisition of knowledge (Bruner, 1996). If teachers want to transform their views and their ways of teaching science based on contemporary views about NOS, NOL and NOT, they should be involved in a professional development program with the above characteristics.

For the designing of science teachers’ training program we adopted socioconstructivist and sociocultural learning principles based on the potential role that History of Science has for promoting the learning of science. Our aims are:

• to make the contemporary views about the NOS explicit through the exploitation of authentic historical science events
• to include a variety of teaching and learning strategies (e.g. laboratory work, debates – argumentation, drama, museum, group work, role play, dialogue, inquiry, simulations) that exploit authentic historical science events in the topic of falling bodies.
• to facilitate learning/training and development through collaborative inquiry activities between trainer and in-service science teachers (learning is an inherently social-dialogical activity). A training programme oriented in collaborative inquiry should involve teachers in conversations about common experiences and in development of collaborative projects (e.g. construction of a website).
• to involve science teachers in collaborative activities in order to develop their own educational instructional material (e.g. worksheets). We believe that when teachers are given the opportunity to research their own practice on site, collaboratively and with support, they establish what works for them and their students. This could become a creative transformative process that is participant-driven.
• to contextualize training, learning, and joint productive activity in the experiences and competencies of in-service science teachers (knowledge is embedded in practice) and to anchor training/professional development in real-world or authentic problems of science teaching that make science teacher development meaningful and purposeful [learning is embedded in the activities and practices in which it occurs]. This means that the activities of the programme should actively engage teachers in taking responsibility for solving “real science classroom problems” [knowledge is context dependent].

 

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