Problems of Education in the 21st Century

4-5

Authors: Milan Kubiatko

The science education is fighting with a relatively big problem. Many academicians, teachers and also laic society are still perceiving difficulty in understanding of concepts from science subject and lack of interest about this group of subjects. In the past the teaching process was very formal focused on the memorizing of the facts without any deeper understanding of the processes in the nature. Pupils and students knew all definitions about concepts in the science subjects, but practical application was on the low level. The academicians, teachers and other people interested in the science education were eager to change system of education. They wanted to include new approach into science education. The inquiry-based science education (IBSE) seemed to be as the right way for the better understanding of science process by pupils and students.

18-26

Authors: Tony Burner

There is an increasing amount of educational research that aims at intervening in classroom teaching and learning practices, partly as a response to “what works” in education. However, few researchers ask the fundamental question of who actually “owns” the interventions, and not the least which ethical dimensions arise from intervening in classrooms. The present research investigates these two questions and relates them to the role of the researcher in formative intervention research, and by relating ethical dimensions to ethics of principles, consequences, relations and virtues. It suggests that interventionist researchers need to develop their reflexive sensitivity, both epistemologically and methodologically when they conduct formative interventions in classrooms, and that the idea of intervening requires different responses depending on the type of ethics that is applied. Interventionist researchers need to be more humble, more open to new ideas and changes in their original plans, and more able to share their contributions with the field of education compared to descriptive research designs. Also, they need to question the very idea of intervening in classrooms, legitimize it and reflect on it with ethical dimensions in mind.

45-61

Authors: Brunno Carvalho Gastaldo, Paula Homem-de-Mello, Sérgio Henrique Leal

Trying to understand the knowledge base for teaching, the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) was proposed as the main teacher’s knowledge. It amalgamates the specific knowledge and it is the difference between a teacher and a specialist. It can be both personal, deriving from practice, and canonical, which is cultural accumulation of what makes a good teacher. To acquire the last, preservice teachers (PSTE) take university classes, where theoretically their apprenticeship could be facilitated by the university teacher. Thus, it is important to understand how the university teacher best exerts his influence on PSTEs. In this paper, we show the impact of the university teacher’s interventions in the development of PCK based on analysis of a course taught to chemistry PSTE. The research was conducted in a qualitative approach, in a case study strategy. The classes from a chemistry teacher’s course from a federal university in São Paulo, Brazil were recorded for four months, to follow the development of the PCK. Qualitative forms of assessing the PCK, as CoRe, were used, and the tasks given by the teacher were collected to support the analysis. Our results show that the students’ knowledge integration responds to teacher interventions, particularly when those were customised to each individual. When the intervention was made by means of written exercises the influence on PSTE was lower than orally and when made by peers even lower or null. Being so, teacher’s interventions could be considered an INUS condition for the development of PCK in those students.

75-88

Authors: Frederick T. Tucker

College sociology lecturers are tasked with inspiring student interest in quantitative methods despite widespread student anxiety about the subject, and a tendency for students to relieve classroom anxiety through habitual web browsing. In this paper, the author details the results of a pedagogical program whereby students at a New York City community college used industry-standard software to design, conduct, and analyze sociological surveys of one another, with the aim of inspiring student interest in quantitative methods and enhancing technical literacy. A chi-square test of independence was performed to determine the effect of the pedagogical process on the students’ ability to discuss sociological methods unrelated to their surveys in their final papers, compared with the author’s students from the previous semester who did not undergo the pedagogical program. The relation between these variables was significant, χ 2(3, N=36) = 9.8, p = .02. Findings suggest that community college students, under lecturer supervision, with minimal prior statistical knowledge, and access to digital media can collaborate in small groups to create and conduct sociological surveys, and discuss methods and results in limited classroom time. College sociology lecturers, instead of combatting student desire to use digital media, should harness this desire to advance student mastery of quantitative methods.