New Perspectives in Science Education

International studies of students‘ performance (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) are decisive in rethinking school-based teaching and learning in many participating countries. These studies conceptualize the ability of students to apply knowledge in meaningful situations as key competence for full participation in society in contrast to the mere reproduction of knowledge. Not least because of the poor performance of Austrian students in PISA and TIMSS, new educational standards were implemented in the Austrian school system. This paradigmatic shift in the educational policy requires a major change in teaching. Teaching and learning should no longer focus on the acquisition and reproduction of subject knowledge but should enable the development of competences, which cannot be taught only by instruction but are developed by dealing with application-oriented tasks.  

Experience shows that releasing guidelines (by the Austrian Ministry of Education) as well as additional support materials for teachers and short-term teacher professional development courses turn out to be insufficient in supporting teachers to grasp the concept of competence-oriented teaching and learning.

Therefore the “LehrerInnen-Podium” (a nationwide platform for biology teachers in secondary education) at the Austrian Competence Centre for Biology Education (https://aeccbio.univie.ac.at/) launched an initiative: A new ministerial directive in 2011 – new guidelines for examination tasks at the school leaving examination – was used as a motivational force to engage biology teachers from all over Austria in an in-depth dealing with the requirements for competence-oriented task development. Since 2012 the “LehrerInnen-Podium” has invited biology teachers in Austria to participate in the joint development of a pool of competence-oriented examination tasks. In order to get access to the pool teachers have to submit a self-developed examination task which needs to meet the requirements of the new guidelines. Members of the “LehrerInnen-Podium” analyse the submitted tasks and give feedback electronically in order to enhance the competence-orientation of the task.

At the conference we will present this ongoing initiative to foster biology teachers’ ability to develop competence-oriented tasks. We present findings from the analysis of initial submissions regarding the degree of competence-orientation and show the gain in quality of the tasks after giving feedback to the teachers.