New Perspectives in Science Education

The Center for Science Education and Training – CSET (http://education. inflpr.ro/ro/home.htm) at the National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics was involved in the last six years in several projects focused on the use of modern methods, mainly inquiry-based, in science and mathematics teaching at pre-school, primary school and middle school level: Fibonacci, Discover, Chercheur en herbe, Creative Little Scientists, Instem, Sustain.

Inspired by these projects, we decided to look further into teachers’ attitudes on science education and to design a survey. Our intention was to have a more profound understanding of what teachers are thinking about their capabilities to improve science teaching at pre-university level and the way their participation to various projects could influence their practice in science classes. We run this survey by the end of May – beginning of June 2014, in the context of the national project “Inquiry-Based Education in Science and Technology: i-BEST“ (http://education.inflpr. ro/ro/IBEST.htm) CSET coordinates in Romania. The invitation to participate to the survey was addressed to over 600 Romanian educators, they are kindergarten educators or pre-school teachers, primary and middle school teachers and high school science teachers, who took part in the past, in a way or another, to previous educational projects coordinated by CSET. The invitation for participation was done either directly, or through counties school inspectorates and teachers training centers (Casa Corpului Didactic). In the first two weeks from the call launch, more than 337 teachers enrolled in this activity and 279 of them answered all questions.

The study targeted several aspects related to teachers perception in relation to: the means of science teaching, the resources they use to prepare science lessons, the way participation to educational projects assist them in their continuous professional development, the major obstacles they encounter in implementing science classes, the best approaches to be employed in disseminating projects best practice, their opinion on the use of inquiry-based strategies in science teaching. The paper summarizes our endeavor to clarify some aspects related to Romanian teachers’ attitudes in relation to science teaching and their involvement in educational projects.

The authors acknowledge the financial support received from the grant 223/ 2012 of the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI), project “Inquiry-Based Education in Science and Technology: i-BEST”.