New Perspectives in Science Education

The education in various science disciplines like chemistry and physics has been for a long time disregarded as not feasible in primary schools or early middle school grades.

Since 2011, at the Private Catholic School Centre School Sisters of Notre Dame Vienna a concept was created to initiate pupil’s motivation to develop interests in science and technology, bearing the name “Science Garage”.

The aim is not only to start this particular interest but to design it so enriching that it lasts for several years, most desirably for the following individual school careers, including any tertiary education.

Several hands-on experiments were developed based on experiences first made by some primary schools in Vienna, additional experiments were reviewed in numerous EU & US-institutions such as [1, 2, 3], partly due to the author’s exchange year as science teacher overseas [4].

Emphasis was laid on selected science chapters, new topics are being added and at present some included fields are thermodynamics, properties; compounds and reactions; electricity and magnetism. A Fact Book is being developed for the use of accompanying teachers at various levels of service to achieve more insight in scientific explanations intensely using discussion forums.

The increasing heterogeneity issue developed in urban Vienna schools over the past more than three decades has to be taken into account resulting in different approaches by pupils to science topics in terms of language and literacy [5, 6, 7].

Our newest topic being incorporated into the intensely visited Science Garage is the field of Robotics. Based on serious interest in Asia science education such as [8, 9, 10] , in late Oct. 2012 the concept of the Science Garage was presented to the National University of Education (NPUE) in Pingtung, Taiwan, Science Department, aiming to create mutual cooperation made initially possible by assistance of Asian Chemical Education Network. Upon the enthusiastic reaction to this concept, it was commonly agreed to develop together further Science Garage topics [11, 12].

[1] Evaluation reports (1999-2011), “tryscience.com” New York Hall of Science, NY, USA.

[2] Andersen, E. & Brown, A. (2012), The effect of heat: simple experiments with solids, liquids and gases,

Science in School 24, 23-28.

[3] Experiment Designed by Ed Sobey (2012), “kidsinvent.com & inventions-center.com”, Redmond, WA, USA.

[4] Vienna Exchange Program VIE (2008), Viennese School Board Publications.

[5] Wellington, J & Osborne, J. (2001), Language and Literacy in Science Education, Open Univ. Press, Philadelphia, PN, USA.

[6] Cobern, W. (1998), Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education, Kluwer AP, Dordrecht, NL.

[7] Abels, S. (2012), Including Students with Special Needs in Inquiry Based Science Education, in: 21. TU Dortmund Symp., 163 f.

[8] Seo H-A. (2008), Factors Affecting High Achievers in Science and Engineering in Korea, in Promoting Successful Science Education, 19^th Symposium on Chemical and Science Education, Univ. of Dortmund, May 2008.

[9] Rosenthal, J. (1996), Teaching Science to Language Minority Students: Theory and Practice, Multilingual Matters Ltd, Levedon, UK.

[10] Kerschbaumer, M. (2010,2012), International Chemie-Olympiads, Students from India, China, Taiwan, Chemie-und-Schule, 3/2010,24-25 + 3/2012, S. 26-27.

[11] 5^th. NICE Conference, July 25-27, 2013, National University of Education NPUE, Pingtung, Taiwan.

[12] 15^th. MILSET Conference, July 19-25, 2015, Brussels, Belgium.