Gamtamokslinis ugdymas / Natural Science Education

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Authors: Editorial Board

GU/NSE, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2020; Cover page

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Authors: Eleonora Melnik

For the system of education in many countries of the world, the end of the school year 2020 was disordered by the appearance of a new virus - COVID-19. A big number of people being infected, made it a necessity to use distance learning tools in the majority of educational institutions. It is clear that for the younger age students according to their physiological and psychological development peculiarities, it is necessary to use all sense organs – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching in the process of learning. In practice it means that for the given category of children, for successful cognition of the world, it is necessary not only to see learning subjects, but also according to their possibilities to touch them, to smell them and to taste them. Complex understanding about the surrounding environment of a contemporary student is a combination of a real and virtual components of his life and activity. And, the more place virtual space occupies in a child’s intellect, the more positive is seen the involvement of a real natural component in their cognition of the surrounding world. One has to combine and develop the work with the textbook, i.e., theoretical knowledge, with the practical abilities and skills of the younger age students in mastering natural science subjects. Therefore, thematic excursions, research works, activities in nature are very important for the younger age students. Knowing the surrounding world of one’s own concrete place of living, a small part of the world, and establishing relationship between human and nature, a child acquires common understanding about the whole world.

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Authors: Rūta Girdzijauskienė, Gražina Šmitienė

STEAM education is named as one of the priorities of Lithuanian education, responding to the need to promote a culture of innovation at school and to develop students' creative and critical thinking. The search for opportunities of integration of the subjects of arts and sciences into teaching / learning processes involve researchers and practitioners from various fields (engineering, education, arts, culture, and technological innovation). The numbers of scientific publications on the concept of STEAM education and on the role of arts in it that have been increasing over the last decade testify to the scientific community's attention to the issue, however, they also raise so far unanswered questions about the integration of arts into STEAM theory and practice. Researchers address several problematic areas in STEAM education: insufficient analysis of practical cases, limited preparedness of teachers to implement STEAM projects, and one-sided interpretation of the purpose of arts. Not much is known about how teachers’ value personal experiences in arts integration, how effective the inclusion of arts in the context of STEAM education is, and what the dynamics of STEAM discipline integration is. The aim of this study is to find out why and how primary school teachers integrate arts into STEAM projects, what challenges they face, and how they assess their competencies to ensure arts integration. To achieve the aim of the research, a focus group discussion with teachers working at two Lithuanian primary schools and implementing STEAM projects was chosen as the main data gathering method. The results of the focus group discussion revealed that the teachers preferred an arts-enhanced model of STEAM subject integration mostly through visual arts (drawing, photography, collage, and sculptural elements by gluing). Arts were applied with the aim of diversifying students' academic activities and enriching them with emotional experiences. The research participants saw the following advantages of including arts in STEAM projects: increasing the choice of activities and tools, enhancing students' engagement in learning processes, developing leadership and cooperation skills, maintaining learning motivation, improving critical and creative thinking skills, and linking learning to life. The limitations of teachers' competence to integrate arts into STEAM projects became apparent as well: insufficient knowledge of forms and ways of artistic expression, distrust of their own artistic abilities, and a lack of experience in cooperation with art teachers and artists. Based on the research findings, the directions of further research were formulated, the most relevant ones being an analysis of specific STEAM projects and the modelling of multidimensional STEAM projects.

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Authors: Simone Canciani

The purpose of this analysis is to show that strong connections might exist between the teaching of mathematics, science and art. This is due to the particular geometrical configurations behind several paintings and other artistic creations. Therefore, the knowledge of this connection might be of help for the students to guess that mathematics and science also have possible applications to art. This is particularly relevant for the high schools of art. Since too often, mathematics is taught in high schools without any relevant link to reality, this can be one of the reasons of students’ disaffection for this subject. In this analysis, a teaching experiment developed by the author in an Italian (Udine) high school of art is proposed. In particular, Escher’s periodic drawings, and the ornamental motifs that characterize many products in reality, offer an interesting opportunity to make high school students understand the relevance of mathematics and especially of geometry in art. The discovery of mathematical laws, that derive from crystallography, behind Escher’s drawings should persuade students that such an artistry is reachable only by means of mathematical knowledge. In what follows the main features of the outlined didactical proposal are presented and discussed.

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Authors: Micaías Andrade Rodrigues, Agnaldo Arroio

Lesson study (LS) is a teaching improvement process that began in Japan more than 100 years ago. As the LS is still a new approach in the Brazilian context, this paper will discuss how it could be implemented in the pre-service physics teacher training. To accomplish this, a group was created with 6 pre-service teachers who held 11 meetings, which integrated two LS cycles. The data for this research were collected through field notes and materials produced by pre-service physics teachers. The collected data were analyzed by Bardin's content analysis. According to the results obtained, it highlighted that pre-service teachers had gaps in knowledge about the basic contents of Physics and LS showed that collective work with peers could promote reflection and enable classes that were closer to the students' reality, minimizing the difficulty and rejection by Physics in basic education, improving the students’ learning.

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Authors: Editorial Board

GU/NSE, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2020, Cover

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Authors: Eleonora Melnik

The main event of the beginning of 2020 should be called the emergence and spread of a new coronavirus infection - COVID 19 among the vast majority of the world's population. The infection affected not only the state of somatic and mental health of a person, but also many other aspects of his life and work - economics, politics, finances. A stable concept is rooted - distance. It has turned into a lifestyle: it has become an attribute of communication of many people of different ages in the household and professional level, part of a new reality. It is obvious that in the near future people will have to adapt to new specific living conditions, including the organization of the process of education of the population. Children of primary school age, and even first-graders, were also involved in distance learning. This fact posed not only situational questions to teach subjects, but also for assessing the value orientations of the modern education system in the near future. Separate results of conducted surveys of teachers on the subject of mastering distance learning have already appeared on the Internet. Teacher opinions indicate that distance learning works more successfully where students have the motivation to learn. At the end of the school year, the results of distance learning in various educational institutions will be known. Obviously, questions will arise about the further use of Internet services in this area. But in our opinion, the role of a teacher as a high-level professional remains the most important condition for a successful educational process.

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Authors: Amani Hamdan

This study aimed to explore modern trends in the field of curriculum research and science teaching methods. To achieve this aim, the research reviews the literature that is closely related to these trends, with a focus on contemporary Arab and foreign studies during the last ten years. Six main axes are identified that comprehensively represent contemporary global trends in curriculum research and science teaching methods: reform movements in teaching and learning science, modern scientific fields and their various branches, methods and strategies for teaching science, science education technology, evaluation of teaching science, and science teacher preparation. This study provides a complete breakdown of the main thrust of the research trends in each axis, while citing solid studies that reflect these trends. This study also provides a set of practical recommendations for developing curricular research and methods of teaching science, especially in terms of research plans and their specific directions in the Saudi context.

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Authors: Editorial Board

GU/NSE, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2020, End page

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Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page, Vol. 16, No. 2, GU/NSE

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Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

It is obvious that scientific writing is a special and complex part of academic activity. Researchers not only organise and conduct the research but also have to describe and publish them (or to spread information in other ways). Basically, there exist two very close, however quite different processes: scientific research organisation and accomplishment and the accomplished scientific research description. For the first process, the most essential are the abilities to carry out the research (plan, design, conduct, analyse, systematize and so on), whilst for the second process, the most essential are special abilities (find and evaluate print and electronic resources suitable for the academic text and to present original arguments based on academic goal search, to critically think and use the appropriate information while writing articles and so on). It is understandable that such descriptions have to correspond to general requirements of such type of works both in respect of structure, presentation, and content. Qualitative scientific works are written and submitted in a scientific style, correct, clear and accurate English (or other) language.

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Authors: Rita Makarskaitė-Petkevičienė

Today, increasingly more attention is given to knowledge construction. In this article it is discussed how much nature, its objects and phenomena features are important forming a certain system of knowledge about nature. Research show that features cannot be ignored, one should focus and reconsider how our students are guided towards feature identification. During the first years of life, the child already experiences specific environmental features. Later, the knowledge of features (to remember, cognize, define…) and understanding (to retell, explain...) guide further: teach to compare, group, classify. The analysis aim was to give methodological advice to primary school teachers and to all interested in natural science education on how to teach students to cognize and understand the features of natural objects, phenomena and to develop comparison, grouping and classification abilities. Aims: 1) to discuss what it is a feature; 2) to analyse what the feature’s expression is in preschool and pre-primary education programmes; 3) to present activity episodes, task examples on how to teach during nature cognition lessons to recognize features according to which the procedures of comparison, grouping, and classification are possible. Introducing what the feature is, the synonyms of features are introduced as well (feature, peculiarity, criterion, symptom), it is explained what the feature defines, what the difference is between quantitative and qualitative features. Discussing the feature expression in education programmes, 4 programmes were analysed on this question (preschool, pre-primary school, primary school world cognition programme and standardised world cognition programme). Clarity, accuracy, attention to detail of the discussed question has been noticed in the standardised world cognition programme. The questions of how to teach primary school students to be observant and to find natural object features, and what to do having found them are shared in the third part of the article. Several concrete recommendations are given here on how to teach to recognize some or other animate and inanimate natural object and phenomena features. Together are presented orientation questions, objective commentaries, possible students’ answers because the author has already tried these activities with the primary school students.

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Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

An annual scientific practical conference “Natural science education in a comprehensive school – 2019” took place in Aukstaitian town Kupiskis. It is known that Kupiskis is a town in the North East of Lithuania, in the eastern edge of Middle Lithuania lowland. The time of the conference is traditional – the second part of April, i.e., from 25th to 27th.. It is worth to remember that a conference “came travelling” from Little Lithuania (Lithuania Minor) to Aukstaitia (Lithuanian Highland) (In 2018, the 24th conference took place in Silutė Martynas Jankus Basic school). Thus, a conference is still “travelling”. On the first conference day, plenary reports and two section works took place. A useful plenary report was made by Eugenija Rudnickaite from Vilnius university. A fossil fuel collection was discussed and presented; some practical tips were given about the application of the collection for natural science education. The second report was made by dr. Agnaldo Arroio. The report was very actual because the actualities of modern media application in education were discussed, also there was a discussion on natural science literacy formation questions. The third report which was made by Vilnius university lecturer dr. Rita Makarskaitė-Petkevičienė, focused on the current natural science questions in primary school. The fourth report, which was made by Latvian university professor Andris Broks, completed the plenary meeting. As always, the professor analysed methodological, systemic natural science education questions. The latter report was focussed on the changes /alteration in nature, society, education and so on. Most of the conference reports were presented in the form of articles and published in the conference proceedings. One can find full texts in the database at: http://oaji.net/journal-archive-stats.html?number=1984&year=2019&issue=14379 Two conference days passed in the blink of an eye. Totally, 66 participants were enrolled in it. The work of the conference went smoothly, therefore it is worthy to thank all the members of the conference organisational committee, and especially the pro-gymnasium administration. Natural science education “journey” continues. The 26th conference will take place on 24th -25th April 2020 in Trakai Vytautas Magnus gymnasium. This gymnasium is the main partner of another conference. So, from Aukstaitia we move to Trakai, a city of Vilnius district, surrounded by lakes. What is more, Trakai is the cultural capital of Lithuania, 2020.

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Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page, GU/NSE, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2019

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Authors: Solange W. Locatelli

Basically, metacognition is composed of two central aspects, “knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition” (Schraw, 1998, p.113), being the last characteristic, fundamental in the teaching and learning of Sciences, since it is desirable that, from the previous knowledge of the students, the possibility of rethinking it, regulating it and, thus, approaching the scientific concepts. Usually, teachers use metacognitive principles in their classes, but they often do so in an unintentional way, which precisely distinguishes a common metacognitive strategy in which, intentionally, moments for reflection and reconstruction are offered to students. Regarding the regulatory aspect, the metacognitive strategies are promising in assisting learning in science. Schraw (1998) adds that the regulation provided by metacognitive activity may be a skill to be improved with these strategies in a conscious and intentional way by the student.

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Authors: Ümmüye Nur Tüzün, Gülseda Eyceyurt Türk

STEM is the process of integrating science, technology, engineering and mathematics in education. STEAM differs from STEM by a letter of ‘A’ which means arts, on the basic logic of science and arts mustn’t be decomposed from each other. This research aimed to assist tenth-grade students in learning through their own constructed materials for bringing up them as well-qualified individuals by using chemistry, technology, engineering, popart and mathematics (STEAM) integration which would improve their creativity and critical-thinking too. 33 tenth-grade students from a high school in Turkey participated in this qualitative research in 2015-2016 academic year. Student constructed materials, and student process evaluation worksheets were used as data collecting tools. Content analysis was utilized for the gathered data. Content analysis was cross-checked for the reliability of the research too. The results showed that students’ creativity and critical-thinking skills were enhanced through such a STEAM process, and this process was also helped to educate well-qualified individuals in the abovementioned fields.

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Authors: Algirdas Sulcius, Sergey Teleshov

One of the most difficult elements for students in chemistry is writing and balancing equations of chemical reactions. The aim of this research was to investigate the ability of the 8-9th grade students to write chemical formulas and equations of reactions. Verhovskij’s method, which involves using white and full-colour paper cards, was proposed as a chemistry teaching method for students. Some of the students suggested using non-paper-based cards, i.e. “domino sticks”. The obtained results proved that students who had participated in the building blocks activity showed significantly higher post-test scores than students who had not participated. The average grade of the students who used the cards for chemical formula formation and reaction equations increased respectively by 1.30 and 1.20. The average grade for writing and balancing of the reactions equations was lower because balancing requires strong knowledge in mathematics. The results have shown that the use of cards is a good method at an early stage of chemistry education.

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Authors: Editorial Board

End page, GU/NSE, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2019

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Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page, GU/NSE, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2018

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Authors: Eleonora Melnik

Scientific interests of the author of this article are natural science and humanitarian knowledge integration referring to systematic attitude toward younger students’ education in the environment sphere. Therefore, a prepared methodological book “Integrated education in a primary school: theory and practice” was a part of the author’s research. The author pays attention to the younger students’ preparation level. A rather wide ICT usage is accentuated in the education process. On the other hand, the students’ achievement level in the senior forms tends to decrease. Therefore, it is important to ascertain, why such tendency is observed, what reasons determine that. Thus, it is interesting to find out, what main teaching methods teachers use in the education process in different countries. For example, what are the ways of realisation of interdisciplinary and internal relations; is their integration carried out as a process; Does knowledge continuity/succession exist teaching students in various secondary school levels and much more?

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Authors: Laima Railienė

In Lithuanian general education schools, the main attention has to be drawn to a student in the students’ teaching/learning process, to his personality development. The student himself has to be an active teaching/learning process participant but not a passive listener in the lesson. Not only subject or general competencies, positive emotions are acquired when students actively take part in the lesson, do a particular task but also students are made to involve critical thinking into their activity. Not so few other general education subjects taught at school are integrated into geography subject teaching/learning programme. Learning geography, students very often have to use their history, biology, chemistry, physics, natural science and other subject knowledge. Every student’s individual abilities are also of quite a big importance learning geography. Seeking for the students to easier acquire the provided knowledge, learn to learn independently during geography lessons, be able to apply this knowledge in practice, it is important to concentrate students’ attention and activity, to encourage their creativity. It is very important for the students to learn to work individually and in a group. The most important thing is not only to acquire knowledge and general competencies but also learn to learn! Geography subject teaching is inseparable from information and communication technologies (ICT), which diversify geography teaching a lot. Using them, one can assign for the students to do practical tasks, their knowledge from geography subject can be checked. Also, it is very important that the use of ICT in the lesson allows students to acquire more self-confidence, because very often students carry out such tasks independently. Independent work task assignment in the lesson is very useful for those, who have less abilities. They need more time for carrying out the tasks. The tasks carried out independently during geography lessons, allow students to acquire geography knowledge and general competencies under favourable conditions, at a favourable pace of learning. Considering that not equal ability students take part in the lesson, it is important to model the lesson so, that all students successfully realise themselves in it, acquire the maximum knowledge and abilities. For that, it is necessary to individualise and differentiate the tasks for the students. The tasks have to be selected both for higher and lower ability students. Teaching geography, a few student individualisation and differentiation application methods are possible. It depends on whether a new teaching topic is given in the lesson, whether it is a revision, knowledge generalisation lesson. Individualised and differentiated tasks can be applied during the whole geography lesson. Students can be given individualised and differentiated tasks, doing concrete tasks, for example, during students’ independent work task. It is important to share the experience about the application of individualised and differentiated independent students’ work methods and tasks in the geography lesson, to reveal the importance of this method, seeking students’ geography subject and general competencies, taking into account students’ individual possibilities. In the article, geography lesson of this kind is given in the 6th form on the topic “Weather description”.

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End page, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2018, GU/NSE