Journal of Baltic Science Education

1-2

Authors: Editorial Board

Cover, JBSE, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2014

4-5

Authors: Ryszard M. Janiuk

Science education is continuously changing in terms of goals, curricula and teaching methods. Such changes stem from major educational reforms and the development of new theoretical concepts related to science teaching. It has been long emphasised that the implementation of these changes in schools depends on the teachers, who need to identify with and support the innovations which are to be introduced, and to feel that change is necessary. An active involvement of teachers in the process of designing, developing and implementing innovation is one of the indicators of a sense of "ownership", which in this case can be understood as identifying with the innovation, feeling as if one is its owner. This psychological state can be achieved thanks to teachers’ investment in the innovation, and has the potential to reduce resistance and create a better climate for change. Ownership can have a considerable impact on teachers' involvement in further changes, if they notice that innovation has a positive influence on the effects of their work. Ownership also has a beneficial impact on their working environment, motivating other teachers to implement the desired change and thus helping spread the change throughout the teacher community. That is why teachers' ownership is often discussed together with sensemaking and agency, which influence teachers' attitude towards innovation. The issue of developing a sense of ownership is not limited to teachers, as in today's world many professions require constant adjustment to change, and personal involvement in introducing innovation is often necessary for being efficient and successful at work.

19-31

Authors: Mario Mäeots, Margus Pedaste

Inquiry has been regarded internationally as an effective learning approach for science learning; however, it is still not actively used in many schools. The current study argues that one of the reasons is incompleteness of the model for inquiry. This study seeks to open inquiry from a new angle by bringing in general inquiry knowledge, which could be regarded as an important limitation in enhancing inquiry. Next, it is empirically tested if general inquiry knowledge is related to the level of students’ transformative inquiry skills. General inquiry knowledge pertains to the nature of a coherent inquiry process as a whole, comprehending knowledge about transformative and regulative inquiry processes. In this study, students’ general inquiry knowledge and transformative inquiry skills were evaluated in a web-based learning environment Young Researcher. The analysis of the results demonstrated that the learning environment was suitable for improving students’ general inquiry knowledge, and these are related with the level of transformative inquiry skills.

46-58

Authors: Mustafa Serdar Köksal, Canan Tunç Şahin

In this study, the purpose is to describe advanced students’ motivational status to learn Nature of Science (NOS) and their understandings on NOS by using Ranking Questionnaire for “interest” and “importance” and modified version of Views on Nature of Science Questionnaire. The results indicated that the participants did not see NOS as an important subject compared to mathematics, science and social science subjects. Moreover, the participants were more interested in mathematics and science subjects than in NOS subject. The results on NOS understandings also showed that the participants were transitional in terms of “evidence and observation based science” and “subjectivity” while they had informed understandings on “place of imagination and creativity in science”. They were also naïve in terms of “existence of one method in science”, “no hierarchy between theory and law”, “tentativeness” and “difference between observation and inference”. The results explained an important motivational problem to implement any NOS teaching methods to change misunderstandings.

75-90

Authors: Boris Aberšek, Bojan Borstner, Janez Bregant

The findings of cybernetic pedagogy and didactics developed in the 1970s, which were in those times limited due to poor technological capabilities, are taken as a starting point in this research. A revised version of cybernetic pedagogy is proposed and is used to develop the hybrid cognitive model presented. It is not based purely on the symbolic notation of the teaching algorithm alone, as done in the past, but also on the connectionist model of our cognition, which draws on the brain’s characteristics and their physiological and functional structure, such as parallel data processing, content associative memory and divided presentations. The learning process algorithm can be, on the basis of this idea, re-defined as a hybrid cognitive model, i.e. a combination of a symbol system and a neural network, and named mRKP. The article concludes that an intelligent artificial tutor can independently, i.e. without the need for reprogramming, accommodate the learning process to the needs and possibilities of an individual student if it uses mRKP as its basis, and can eventually replace a human tutor in some situations, but a human teacher must decide where and when it should be used.

105-117

Authors: Selami Yangin, Sabri Sidekli, Yasin Gokbulut

This study reported herein aimed to reveal prospective teachers’ misconceptions about classification of plants and the effect of pre-service education program on their correct conceptions of this biological issue. Prospective teachers majoring in Elementary School Classroom Teacher Education constituted the target population of this study during the fall semester of the 2012-2013 academic years from Turkey. In order to reveal the difference between the misconceptions of prospective teachers who are at the beginning and at the end of their university education, the research was conducted as a cross-sectional study (78 first and 84 fourth class). The results showed that the prospective teachers in both groups have misconceptions and considerable confusion over the concepts of without-seed plants, seedy plants, vascular plants, non-vascular plants, gymnosperm plants, angiosperm plants, fruit and vegetable. In addition, the pre-service education did not seem to have an important effect on correction of prospective teachers’ misconceptions about classification of plants. In this context, prospective teachers are graduated with misconceptions about classification of plants.

133-145

Authors: Maria Ledzińska, Jordi Mongay Batalla, Maciej Stolarski

The present research aimed to determine whether the cognitive style of reflection – impulsivity (R-I) diagnosed in a standard way also manifests itself in the Internet environment. A special task was designed that involved searching for particular information on the Internet. Science students took part in two studies (pilot study, n=11, and replication, n=37). Data analyses revealed that indicators of performance in the simple computer task allow the differentiation of respondents in terms of the R-I dimension. The time spent on reading the command and thinking of a strategy for obtaining the information revealed a high correlation with R-I. The amount of explained R-I variance reached 82%, indicating that the online searching task is a valid indicator of this cognitive style. The practical conclusion is that the Internet environment may be used in cognitive styles’ assessment which, in turn, may lead to creating interactive, cognitive style-friendly hypermedia learning facilities.