New Perspectives in Science Education

In the last decades the development of virtual and useful tools for teaching science at school has increased really fast and “even without going totally virtual, the Internet can provide a rich and valuable learning environment for anyone interested in the sciences” [Doherty, 1996]. Anyway the largest part of  the web production is in English and it seems not to be really well known and regularly in use by Italian teachers. The purpose of this research is: 1) to evaluate Earth science teachers’ attitudes towards digital tools; 2) to understand the need for appropriate digital tools for science teachers in Italian; 3) to select the main topics it should deal with; 4) to build it; 5) to test it on in-service teachers. The aim of the project is to develop a web site to host a repository of the most interesting and useful Earth science tools currently available, adapted for Italian schools. This will provide effective support to Italian science teachers without a geological background.

The first part of the research is about understanding teachers’ needs and selecting the themes to work on.  It has been carried on using a questionnaire sent to the teachers who inscribed their schools at the last Natural Science Olympiad (more than 400 schools for 20 different regions). Analysis of the data indicated which topics were of most importance and a pilot session has been developed in order to test it and analyse its effectiveness.  At the moment the pilot session is ended and its under evaluation by the starting sample of teachers, but also to new ones. For the feedback an adequate questionnaire has been written in order to analyse the website’s effectiveness. After that other themes would be developed and the whole web tool will be assembled.

References:

1) Doherty, F.; Trends in Cell Biology 1996, Volume 6, 160-162.