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