Journal of Baltic Science Education

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.