Project Title: SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION: Investigation of how teachers should broaden their teaching views and practices, by adopting research based teaching design and reflection

Project Number: 4222

Project Acronym: STED

Host Organisation: University of western Macedonia – Department of Early Childhood

Principal Investigator: Prof. Petros Kariotoglou

Project Budget: 200.000,00€

Project duration (months): 18

Primary Research Domain: Arts and Humanities

Primary Research Area: Pedagogy and Education

Project synopsis:

In spite of the progress of the Greek compulsory education concerning teaching Science, it still remains significantly below the average of the PISA assessment. One important reason could be that Science teachers follow typically the textbook for the transfer of knowledge, instead of designing their teaching based on the specific characteristics of their students. Another reason could be that the content of teaching focuses on Science concepts and facts, skipping e.g. procedural and epistemological knowledge. These reasons result to the limitation of students’ choices to cover their psychological needs. This project aims to study the conditions and prerequisites of educating compulsory education teachers in designing their Science teaching, with the purpose to enlarge their views and practices about teaching. For this purpose, we develop new or we modify existing Teaching Learning Sequences (TLS) as both examples of good practice, as well as, core teaching materials, according to the teachers’ needs, after a relevant assessment. The teachers will be educated in these materials and then they will implement them to their classes. In the next step they will design their TLSs and then they will implement them to their classes. It is expected that teachers will broaden their views and practices concerning both the content as well as the process of teaching. It is expected, as a consequence, reflective discussion between the teachers who take part and the members of the research group in order to justify their teaching choices. The changes in the teachers’ profile during the project will be traced and a course curriculum for the Science Education program will be developed. Moreover, a set of six (6) TLSs, for compulsory education will be produced. The changes in teachers’ profile will be traced by means of individual interviews, by focus interest group discussion, as well as by classroom observations. These data will be analyzed with a bottom-up approach.