New Perspectives in Science Education
BioScientix - a new program for biology teacher education
Doris Elster, University of Bremen, Institute for Science Education, Department Biology education (Germany)
Abstract
This study presents emprical results about the science teacher educational program BioScientix. This is a six-Credit-Point-course for ongoing biology teachers in the second semester of their Bachelor study program. The goal is to develop an innovative learning environment, a „Community of Practice (CoP)“ (Wenger, 1998) of scientists, science educators and media educators to link research and teaching. The CoP has a blended learning (Reinmann, 2005) structure, where face-to-face meetings and exchange via an e-learning platform are offered (Elster, 2010). Teacher students explain the scientific content in the field of ecology and cell biology didactical and medial using “explain-it” videos.
On the system level the affordances (Gibson, 1977) and the arrangement of the learning environment is the main research question of BioScientix. On the personal level the participants’ professional development, their development of subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is of interest. We investigate these questions using qualitative and quantitative methods: questionnaires (pre-post-design) and participants’ portfolios and videos.
34 biology teacher students participated in the BioScientix study program. They developed fouteen “explain-it” videos and evaluated them with peers. The evaluation findings demonstrate an increase of subject and didactical knowledge of the participating teacher students. Most of them highlight the relevance of the BioScientix for the future career as teachers. The affordances of the learning environments encourages students' interest and motivation.
References
Elster, D. (2010). Learning Communities in Teacher Education. The Impact of e-Competence. In: International Journal of Science Education 32 (16), Routledge: Taylor & Francis, 2185 - 2216
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The Theory of Affordances. In: R. Shaw & J. Bransford (eds.), Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing, Hillsdale: N. J. Erlbaum
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, Identity, Cambridge: University Press.
