New
Perspectives for Learning - Briefing Paper 33
Understanding innovation in
science teaching
Context of the Research
Innovations in science education are
increasingly needed in order to foster greater scientific literacy. Results
from science education research and the additional technological resources
now available are contributing to a change of views with regard to the
content, teaching/learning processes and methods, and the role of teachers
in science classes. Challenging new ways of teaching and learning are
becoming available but can only be implemented when teachers feel faithful
to adopting them.
This
project has focused on understanding the conditions that may enable
curricular innovations to be transformed into successful implementations by
science teachers. At secondary school level, the project studied the
implementation of informatic tools (for modelling, simulation and for
real-time experiments); the implementation and use of specific images; and
the implementation of innovative teaching sequences.
Within five countries (France,
Italy, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom) the project observed
experienced science teachers in real classroom situations. The teachers had
volunteered and were well motivated to adopting the curricular innovations.
The observation of their classes could give relevant clues to the process of
introducing innovation in real science classes.
Key Conclusions
1.
The introduction and embedding of didactic innovations into the
school system for natural and normal usage is a complex process.
2.
The innovations need to be flexible and robust, in order to ensure
that the intentions of a designed innovation are shared by teachers, who
have to proactively implement them.
3.
Didactic innovations go through a “metabolic process”, which may
be long, before they are fully “naturalised” i.e. thought and used as
natural and appropriate strategies/tools for teaching/learning.
4.
Internalising innovative approaches entails broad acceptance of their
rationale and also means becoming capable of implementing them in different
contexts and situations and interpreting them in resonance with their
didactic intentions and potentialities.
5.
Although, initially, an innovation needs to utilise specific content
within a particular classroom context, the transformations done during its
take-up can transverse to other contexts.
Specific conclusions relating to the
use of informatic tools: -
6.
Very few teachers have a lot of experience in using computers and
many teachers have very little experience.
7.
There is still a lot of uncertainly about the role of computer as an
integral part of education.
8.
In all the countries studied, there are policies to develop computing
in schools but there are substantial differences in the actual provision of
computers.
9.
Generic software seems to prevail with word processing packages used
the most, followed by spreadsheets.
10.
Simulations are strongly used by a few teachers, however their use is
not generalised yet.
11.
Modelling tools are rarely used despite some very strong arguments in
favour of their importance.
Specific conclusions relating to the
use of images: -
12.
As information society is creating a culture in which images acquire
a higher profile as a way of communication, the use of images in science
teaching is increasing.
13.
Images should be presented as a coherent whole of different elements
aiming at conveying a message.
14.
Images are not trivially understandable. It is important to know
which are the features of the images that might lead the students to have
difficulties in interpreting them.
15.
Students tend to make narrative readings of the images, i.e. to
interpret them as if they had a story-like structure giving excessive
relevance to elements (as arrows) or compositional structures (as left to
right arrangement) that can convey such a message.
16.
The teachers’ awareness of the students’ difficulties reading
images is not always very high. The interpretation of the difficulties
expressed by their students should be emphasised.
17.
When facing documents
(images and text) that do not include all the information students need to
interpret them, students often resort to interpreting mechanisms that can be
related with lack of scientific background and/or insufficient knowledge of
the visual language. That is, misreadings are observed when necessary
information is missing from the document.
Key Recommendations
The following general
recommendations were made: -
1.
Teachers need positive assistance in coping with the transfer of
innovations into actual class-work. To favour the take-up of innovations,
appropriate teacher training is a crucial element, even if this alone cannot
guarantee successful adoption by teachers of the innovation.
2.
In order to acquire the know-how needed for the successful adoption
of innovations, teachers need to be supported in becoming well aware of why
the innovations are proposed. There should be emphasis on problems deriving
from traditional teaching with examples of both students’ learning
difficulties and inefficient teaching strategies.
3.
The training should address explicitly and extensively why the
“old” approaches need to be avoided, modified, integrated with the
“new”.
4.
As critical details of an innovative approach may deeply affect its
impact, training should explicitly explain, show and illustrate, through
real examples, that without appropriate detailed actions the innovative
effects are easily reduced or nullified.
5.
However, teachers’ choices and actions depend on various factors,
which include the disciplinary knowledge, convictions about teaching and
learning processes, viewpoint about the role and relevance of lab-work,
interests and objectives, image of science, social and communication
capabilities.
6.
Training should focus on helping the teachers become aware of and
grasp a holistic view of innovation including topics, concepts, and
approaches and not fragment into small-unrelated pieces. There should be
emphasis on establishing links between the scientific contents that
constitute a didactical unit, as well as between the proposed activities,
questions, specific episodes, etc.
7.
Special focus is needed on increasing teachers’ awareness about
careful planning of the cognitive dimensions of class activities as well as
of their practical aspects.
8.
Training should extensively explain and show the need to be extremely
careful with all types of language used. Care is needed in drawing, reading
and interpreting graphs, schemas and diagrams. It is necessary to be able to
express scientific terms in everyday language, as well, to correctly use the
scientific language in the scientific domain. To cross both domains has been
detected difficult for teachers as well as for students. Therefore, an
analysis of the understanding of new scientific concepts and words should be
carried out in order to verify their correct usage.
9.
There should be analysis of existing teaching materials (texts,
images, activities, worksheets) in order to avoid needless misunderstanding
or misleading of the concepts.
10.
Special attention should be paid to encourage students to interact
verbally with peers about the tasks and activities proposed, in order to
improve understanding and learning.
11.
Teachers should be trained about the grammar of visual language so
that their drawings, schemes, graphs and diagrams convey the ideas and
concepts that they desire.
12.
Students and teachers should have specific training in the use of
real-time graphs produced in experiments based on computer driven sensors.
The optimisation of image’s readability and the interpretation of the
unique features of real-time graphs, including artefacts, should be
particularly addressed.
13.
Authors and designers of images should collaborate with curriculum
(didactic) experts to optimise the suitability of images and concepts
according the level of students’ understanding.
Specific recommendations were made
relating to the use of informatic tools:
14.
Training should consider that the use of IT in science is still
‘fragile’ and ‘patchy’, even this situation is changing rapidly.
15.
Attention should be focused on the new opportunities created by the
use of IT in science courses. The IT “real-time experiments” saves time
of capturing data in labwork, and allows teachers to have more time for
students’ interactions, for the analysis of different variables and for
the rapid repetition of experiments.
16.
Claims that IT helps deepen understanding need to be backed up with
specific examples of classroom activities and an analysis of the benefits
that are felt to be associated with them.
17.
Training should aim at creating clusters of teachers in each school
in order to diffuse expertise among fellow teachers and potentially greatly
increase the take-up of innovations based on IT.
Further Information
The full title of the project is
“Science Teacher Training in an Information Society” with the final
report completed on 30 April 2001.
Full
report, Abstract,
Summary,
Partner
details, Website
Contact
Person
Dr.
Roser Pinto
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Departament de Didàctica de les Ciències Experimentals
08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona
Spain
Visit http://www.pjb.co.uk/npl/index.htm
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Last updated
28 June 2007