New Perspectives in Science Education

As a consequence of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic early in the year 2020 many countries in Europe and other parts of the world closed down important parts of the societies. In many cases this included education on all levels, from pre-school to universities. The students often were supposed to conduct their studies at home with different levels of digital support from their institutions. In science teaching, where laboratory work, field studies and other types of practical work are important parts of the studies, this is often more problematic than in some other school subjects. But, not only these typical characteristics of science teaching were hard to maintain, also the reflective parts, usually often in dialogue form, were suffering. Home studies often resulted in the collection and presentation of data and texts without apparent understanding of the scientific content. Compared to the classroom the home of the student seemed to lack the ability to stimulate a deeper understanding of the area studied, especially as teachers showed, at least in Sweden, an increased tendency to base their grading of the students mainly on written texts. This indicates the probability of creating a general lower degree of understanding outside the classroom as texts easily may be copied without content knowledge. In the classroom the presence of, not only the teacher, but also other students, seem to stimulate or even trigger the wish of deeper understanding. In the absence of this stimulating force the teacher has to behave otherwise when working in the digital word compared to in the classroom. Also the work of the students had to change in order to achieve knowledge useful outside the classroom. Based on interviews with teachers in different types of schools and out our own experiences we here present some of the basic problems in science teaching in a pandemic world and how they may be solved. Thus, some principles for the design and structure of home work tasks useful for teachers will be presented. Further, as the differences in the outcome of the performance of the students at home compared to what they do at school, often depending on different environmental factors undetected by the student, some ideas about how to overcome this problem will be presented. The suggestions presented will hopefully promote deeper understanding of learning processes and their environmental dependence and how to design science education supporting practical knowledge useful outside the classroom. 

Keywords: Covid-19, school close down, home studies, science education, science teaching.