New Perspectives in Science Education

TEMI is an acronym for Teaching Enquiry with Mysteries Incorporated. TEMI is a new FP7 Science and Society project, which started in mid 2013 and will run for three and a half years. The project is part of a response from the European Commission to tackle “the alarming decline in young people’s interest for key science studies and mathematics” (European Commission 2007), with a focus on inquiry-based science education (IBSE).TEMI aims to work with schools across Europe to develop and implement innovative training programmes, which assist teachers in using inquiry to teach science. Science teachers across Europe will develop teaching methods using mysteries, unexplained or discrepant events to improve their ability to capture the attention of their students. The idea is to use the mysteries or discrepant events to arouse and engage student interest at the beginning of a lesson, which will then motivate students to inquire further and find out the scientific explanations. The mysteries or unexplained events engage the observer in the learning process, which is the first step of the 5E enquiry process. Each partner of the project will work with 5 or 6 cohorts of science teachers in a series of two one-day workshops. In between the workshops teachers will try out TEMI ideas in their schools and will develop lessons themselves based on these ideas.

The TEMI project is coordinated by Queen Mary College, University of London. The other partners include: Sheffield Hallam University (UK), University of Bremen (Germany), The Weizmann Institute (Israel), University of Limerick (Ireland), University of Vienna (Austria), University of Milan (Italy), Leiden University (Netherlands), Charles University, Prague (Czech Republic), Sterren Laboratory (Netherlands), Hogskolen in Vestfold (Norway), CNOTINFOR (Portugal), TRACES (France).

The University of Limerick are the Irish partners in the TEMI project. We are currently working with 4 pre-service science teachers in developing materials for the TEMI lessons. These materials will be used in the first Teacher Training Workshop which will take place in January 2014. It is hoped that up to 10 in-service science teachers from 10 second-level schools will be involved in this workshop, where they will experience IBSE in the form of a TEMI lesson. They will also be informed about the 5E model as a framework for IBSE, be helped in developing their own TEMI lessons and be provided with an initial bank of prepared TEMI lesson ideas. The pre-service science teachers will share their experience of developing and using TEMI materials in their school placement. Details of the Teacher Training Workshop and the participation of the pre-service and in-service teachers of Cohort 1 in Ireland will be outlined in the paper, together with examples of the TEMI materials and approach.