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.