Journal of Baltic Science Education

216-218

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

In recent years education space is saturated with various discussions and thoughts about the so-called digital teaching and learning. New technologies consistently and rather aggressively keep penetrating into educational practice. Therefore, we have to discuss in essence the urgent problems of digital teaching, to analyse the emerging challenges both for the teachers and students. On the other hand, it would be impossible to single out any one age group people. It is urgent both for the pupils and teachers of comprehensive schools and for the teachers and students of higher schools. However, it can be basically asserted, that for younger students these questions are much more urgent. Their experience in the sphere of new technologies is varied and at the same time inadequate to current teaching and learning practice. Let’s say, not a small part of today’s youth use the services of various social networks such as, Facebook, Twitter and other. The problem is that very often we don’t know or poorly know what the educational meaning and use of such services is. Moreover, how to effectively use new technologies which are actively used by the pupils, in educational sense? Sometimes an impression is made that existing educational practice reacts unwillingly to such challenges. It is obvious, that a rather sudden shift takes place in the system “classical pedagogy” – “online pedagogy”, isn’t it? There is also another shift in the system that is closely related with this shift, “from teaching to learning”. It can be confidently asserted, that the latter shift is considerably overestimated and groundlessly given too much importance. Effective and productive learning is not possible without a proper teaching. These are two education system elements which are closely interrelated and influence each other. Only the weight of these elements differs in certain age periods. Therefore, a narrow and primitive interpretation of this shift is not acceptable. After all, in real educational practice also the third significant shift occurs, or more exactly, problem situation in the system “digital activities” – “non-digital activities is observed. How to keep a proper balance?

229-242

Authors: Pavol Prokop, Muhammet Usak, Mehmet Erdogan

In this study 103 children (aged 7 – 12 years) from two distinct countries with relatively low (Slovakia) and high (Turkey) wolf population density were interviewed to examine children's overall interest in wolves, their knowledge of wolves, the effects of their keeping pets and their reading stories about wolves. Children in both countries showed considerable factual knowledge about wolves, but the importance of wolves in nature was poorly understood. Perceptions of wolves in stories were generally negative and there was a significant effect from stories which generated fear and sympathy towards wolves suggesting that stories may have a significant impact on children's emotions. Turkish children reported their experience with less drastic stories about wolves and their interest in wolves was significantly higher and their fear of wolves was conversely lower, compared to the reactions of Slovakian children. The more the students were engaged in nature related activities, e.g. watching natural history films and walking in areas of nature, the less they demonstrated fear of wolves.

261-276

Authors: Sebastian P. Szyjka, Frackson Mumba, Kevin C. Wise

This study describes the modification of an instrument originally developed for measuring attitudes towards statistical graphs to instead measure elementary pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards line graphs in science. As a result of context-modification and in utilizing Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), the finalized instrument comprises 32-items that incorporate constructs of enjoyment, confidence, usefulness and learning preferences. The revised instrument was found to exhibit adequate ranges of internal consistency and reliability. Based on a variety of completed analyses, the revised instrument appears to have maintained original psychometric fidelity and is recommended for use as an assessment of pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards line graphs in science.

285-299

Authors: Sharareh Majidi, Terhi Mäntylä

Textbooks often provide teachers and students a conception of how scientific knowledge is organized. Therefore, it is of interest to recognize what is the picture of knowledge conveyed by the textbooks. In this study, the knowledge organization in three university physics textbooks is analyzed from the viewpoint of how the basic elements in the topics of Biot-Savart and Ampère’s law are structurally linked. The method of analysis is based on the interpretative analysis, which (a) recognizes basic elements of knowledge and (b) identifies the categories of links that connect basic elements. Concept maps are used to represent knowledge organization of textbooks. The results indicate that content knowledge of textbooks consist of somehow identical basic elements but different categories of links and thus different knowledge organizations. The possibility to recognize these differences in the curriculum materials is a first step towards developing more effective teaching and learning solutions and curriculum plans.

144-145

Authors: Jongwon Park

Divergent thinking, which indicates the capacity to generate multiple alternatives or solutions, received attention as a component of creative thinking after the “Sputnik shock” of the late 1950s. Since then, numerous special programs for fostering creativity in convergent, critical, associational or analogical thinking have been developed. As a result, an article in 1993 reported that there were about 250 programs for improving creativity, and in 1998, a researcher classified various teaching strategies used in the programs into 170 types.

156-167

Authors: Mustafa Cakir

The purpose of this study was to situate prospective secondary science teachers in an authentic scientific investigation, that of hypothesis testing of inheritance patterns of cats, and then to examine prospective teachers’ developing understandings of basic Mendelian genetics, scientific inquiry, and their perceptions of the learning environment. The context of the study was a teaching and learning course focused on inquiry and technology. Data obtained from the twelve participants included: a) pre-post tests of Mendelian genetics concepts; b) videotaped class presentations; c) inquiry project reports; d) audio taped semi-structured interviews; and e) classroom discussions and observations. The findings suggest that engagement in hypothesis testing, within a socio-constructivist framework; can be used to support the integrated acquisition of conceptual knowledge in science. After the module, there was clear evidence that inquiry-based instruction, enriched with computer simulation and collaboration, promoted students’ conceptual understanding of Mendelian genetics and understandings of scientific inquiry.

183-194

Authors: Maija Nousiainen, Ismo T. Koponen

In this study, a parsimonious set of quantities is developed to characterise and evaluate the quality of concept maps. It is shown here how such a set can be based on measurements of the connectivity, clustering and cohesion of concept maps. A structural model of the data is introduced so that concept maps can be evaluated and classified by using only two quantities called here richness of content (D) and quality of structure (q). The model is used in monitoring changes in the concept maps (N=33) consisting of two sets of maps (initial and final ones), made before and after teaching. Such an approach gives access to monitor changes of the concept maps during a teaching sequence.

72

Authors: Bulent Cavas

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in science education has become widespread and been developed increasingly by many science educators in our digital time. Students’ and teachers’ use of new technologies both in the classrooms and out of school have enhanced science learning more meaningful and permanent. In recent years, new technologies such as scientific visualizations, statistical modeling, real time data collection, dynamic modeling software, and collaborative group work environments has been used widely in science education. However, many researches have showed that the success and effect of these technologies use in the classroom highly depend on teachers’ knowledge, skills and experiences in this area. It is apparent that, in the innovative classroom environments that are designed with ICT tools, the expenditures will be in vain if science teachers have no enough knowledge, skills and experiences in these technologies.

87-97

Authors: Özlem Sadi, Jale Cakiroglu

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of hands-on activity enriched instruction on sixth grade students’ achievement and attitudes toward science. In this study, Science Achievement Test and Science Attitude Scale were used to assess students’ achievement on sense organs and students’ attitudes toward science respectively. Two teachers with four classes and total of 140 sixth grade students were participated in this study. One class of each teacher was assigned as experimental group and treated with hands-on activity enriched instruction and other class was assigned as control group and treated with traditional instruction. The Science Achievement Test and the Science Attitude Scale were administered twice as pre-test and after three week treatment period as a post-test to both experimental and control groups to measure students’ achievement and attitudes. Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA) results revealed that hands-on activity enriched instruction were more effective than traditional instruction. However, the statistical results failed to show a significant difference between the experimental and control groups’ attitudes toward science.

114-126

Authors: George Vorvilas, Thanassis Karalis, Konstantinos Ravanis

In the present paper, a genre-based conceptual framework for interpreting and designing content for learning objects is proposed. Learning objects are considered here as multimodal macrogenres. These macrogenres are constituted of content objects which are in fact types of digital microgenres. The successful and coherent information linking of these content objects inside a LO can be achieved through particular rhetorical relations. The knowledge of the several types of digital microgenres as well as the rhetorical relations between them, can equip an author/teacher with a repertoire of semiotic concepts, which make him capable of interpreting already made material, as well as creating new and coherent material, in order to affect and motivate students in particular ways, through his intended communicative and educational purposes.

4-5

Authors: Jari Lavonen

The best way of describing what and how a teacher should teach science or what a student should learn in a national level curriculum is not self-evident. Descriptions of “learning outcomes” are increasingly used and have been considered as an important basis for the quality of science education. However, there are variations in the descriptions and also whether they are written as a form of teacher behaviour or as a form of student learning. For example, in the UK the descriptions in the beginning of 1990 in the National Curriculum were written in the form of what students should learn. But the policy has changed and the new curriculum will describe what topics a teacher should introduce to students. Definitions, uses and descriptions of learning outcomes were discussed in mid-March 2011 in an international seminar in Kiel, organised by the IPN - Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Kiel and the Science Education Group at the University of York. Some outcomes of the discussions among the science education researchers from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Switzerland, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA will be briefly described here.

17-26

Authors: Nejla Yürük

The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of the relationship between pre-service elementary teachers’ anxiety about teaching science and their self-efficacy beliefs about science teaching, their perceptions of the nature of their past experiences in science teaching, the number of science courses they took in college and their previous grades in these science courses. The data was collected from 82 pre-service elementary teachers enrolled in an M.Ed program. The results indicate that personal science teaching efficacy and number of science courses taken in college are the significant predictors of science teaching anxiety. Pearson correlations among the variables show that their perception of their experiences in science teaching, grade point average of science courses and perception of science background indirectly influence science teaching anxiety. The effect of these variables on science teaching anxiety was mediated by personal science teaching efficacy.

36-52

Authors: Bernardino J. Lopes

This study aims to characterise the pathways of students’ conceptualisation during a problem solving task in order to understand the role of conceptualisation in conceptual learning and to identify salient points for the practice of teaching physics. The study took place in a Portuguese classroom with 15 physics students, all aged 17. The “global conceptualisation” emerged from this research as an important construct to explain how students mobilise their conceptual knowledge during a problem solving task Six other salient characteristics of the pathways of students’ conceptualisation were also identified. In addition, some conditions related to teaching which could help to improve students’ conceptualisation and conceptual learning were also uncovered. These results are discussed and are presented alongside conclusions about the focus and direction of teacher intervention.