In August 2005, over 500 researchers from the field of science education met at the 5th European Science Education Research Association conference. Two of the main topics at this conference were: the decrease in the number of students interested in school science and concern about the worldwide outcomes of studies on students’ scientific literacy. This volume includes edited versions of 37 outstanding papers presented, including the lectures of the keynote speakers.
Highlighting Rita L. Irwin’s significant work in the fields of curriculum studies and arts education, this collection honors her well-known contribution of a/r/tography to curriculum studies in the form of arts based educational research and, beyond this, her contributions towards understanding the inseparability of making, knowing, and being. Together the chapters document an important beginning, as well as an ongoing transitional time in which curriculum understood as aesthetic text is awakening to the ways in which art practices stimulate a social awareness at the level of other embodied practices. Organized in three themes, gathering, transforming, and becoming, this volume brings together a selection of Irwin’s single and co-authored essays to offer a variety of rich perspectives to scholars and students in the field of education who are interested in the ways in which arts-based research allows the possibilities of bringing together the artistic, pedagogical, and scholarly selves of an educator.
This book provides a fascinating insight into the on-going process of self- reflection in the Science|Environment|Health (S|E|H) community. The basic vision of a new S|E|H pedagogy is to establish a transdisciplinary dialogue between the three educational fields of science education, environmental education, and health education. This approach finds growing interest among science educators. Since 2014, the ESERA special interest group S|E|H has united both experienced and junior researchers all over Europe in a burgeoning research community. This book presents a selection of results of these vibrant activities. Systems theory has turned out to be a stimulating theoretical framework for S|E|H. The limits of predictability in complex living systems result in structural uncertainty for decision-making, and they ask for emphasising and rethinking the role of pedagogical concepts like informed citizenship and scientific literacy. They challenge crude scientific determinism in environmental and health education, which all too often ends up with students’ eco- and health depression. Instead, S|E|H conceives coping with uncertainty in terms of an interplay between cognitive and affective factors. The horizon of the future remains always open. Hope must never die in a new S|E|H pedagogy. Chapter 3 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Though in the past online learning was considered of poorer professional quality than classroom learning, it has become a useful and, in some cases, vital tool for promoting the inclusivity of education. Some of its benefits include allowing greater accessibility to educational resources previously unattainable by those in rural areas, and in current times, it has proven to be a critical asset as universities shut down due to natural disasters and pandemics. Examining the current state of distance learning and determining online assessment tools and processes that can enhance the online learning experience are clearly crucial for the advancement of modern education. The Handbook of Research on Determining the Reliability of Online Assessment and Distance Learning is a collection of pioneering investigations on the methods and applications of digital technologies in the realm of education. It provides a clear and extensive analysis of issues regarding online learning while also offering frameworks to solve these addressed problems. Moreover, the book reviews and evaluates the present and intended future of distance learning, focusing on the societal and employer perspective versus the academic proposals. While highlighting topics including hybrid teaching, blended learning, and telelearning, this book is ideally designed for teachers, academicians, researchers, educational administrators, and students.
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
The National Science Foundation funded a synthesis study on the status, contributions, and future direction of discipline-based education research (DBER) in physics, biological sciences, geosciences, and chemistry. DBER combines knowledge of teaching and learning with deep knowledge of discipline-specific science content. It describes the discipline-specific difficulties learners face and the specialized intellectual and instructional resources that can facilitate student understanding. Discipline-Based Education Research is based on a 30-month study built on two workshops held in 2008 to explore evidence on promising practices in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This book asks questions that are essential to advancing DBER and broadening its impact on undergraduate science teaching and learning. The book provides empirical research on undergraduate teaching and learning in the sciences, explores the extent to which this research currently influences undergraduate instruction, and identifies the intellectual and material resources required to further develop DBER. Discipline-Based Education Research provides guidance for future DBER research. In addition, the findings and recommendations of this report may invite, if not assist, post-secondary institutions to increase interest and research activity in DBER and improve its quality and usefulness across all natural science disciples, as well as guide instruction and assessment across natural science courses to improve student learning. The book brings greater focus to issues of student attrition in the natural sciences that are related to the quality of instruction. Discipline-Based Education Research will be of interest to educators, policy makers, researchers, scholars, decision makers in universities, government agencies, curriculum developers, research sponsors, and education advocacy groups.
A call to action that pulls together all of Sir Ken Robinson’s key messages and philosophies, and that challenges and empowers readers to re-imagine our world, and our systems, for the better. Sir Ken Robinson changed the lives of millions of people. The embodiment of the prestigious TED conference, his TED Talks are watched an average of 17,000 times a day--a figure that Chris Anderson, Head of TED, says is the equivalent of selling out the Millennium Dome every night for fifteen consecutive years. A New York Times bestselling author, Sir Ken’s books have been translated into twenty four languages. In his final years, Sir Ken was working on a book that would serve as his manifesto. This book was being written for both new and dedicated audiences alike as a coherent overview of the arguments that he dedicated his life to, and as a pivotal piece of literature for the education revolution he began. When Sir Ken received his cancer prognosis in August 2020 he asked his daughter and collaborator, Kate Robinson, to finish writing this manifesto and continue his work. At its core, Sir Ken’s work is a love letter to human potential--a celebration of what we as a species are capable of doing, and of being, if we create the right conditions. It is a rallying cry to revolutionize our systems of education, and the ways in which we run our businesses and structure our social systems, so that they bring out the best in each and every person. Sir Ken often observed that what separates us from the rest of life on Earth is our power of imagination: the ability to bring to mind things that are not present to our senses. It is imagination that allows us to create the world in which we live, rather than just exist in it. It also gives us the power to recreate it.
Experiential education is a philosophy and methodology for building knowledge, developing skills, and clarifying values by engaging learners in direct experience and focused reflection. To understand experiential education, what should one be reading? This sourcebook introduces philosophers, educators, and other practitioners whose work is relevant to anyone seeking answers to this question. Following brief snapshots of John Dewey and Kurt Hahn, the book is organized in four sections: Philosophers and Educational Theorists Nature Educators and Outdoor Educators Psychologists and Sociologists School and Program Founders. Each chapter focuses on an individual whose philosophy and practice exemplify a biographical and historical model for reaching a deeper understanding of experiential education. An appendix includes short biographical sketches of forty-five additional people whose contributions to experiential education deserve a closer look. This volume provides a much-needed overview and foundations for the field – for students in courses addressing experiential education, challenge education, outdoor experiential education, recreation education, and related fields; for learning theorists and curriculum specialists; for experiential educators; and for educational philosophers.
This book explores the relationship between the content of chemistry education and the history and philosophy of science (HPS) framework that underlies such education. It discusses the need to present an image that reflects how chemistry developed and progresses. It proposes that chemistry should be taught the way it is practiced by chemists: as a human enterprise, at the interface of scientific practice and HPS. Finally, it sets out to convince teachers to go beyond the traditional classroom practice and explore new teaching strategies. The importance of HPS has been recognized for the science curriculum since the middle of the 20th century. The need for teaching chemistry within a historical context is not difficult to understand as HPS is not far below the surface in any science classroom. A review of the literature shows that the traditional chemistry classroom, curricula, and textbooks while dealing with concepts such as law, theory, model, explanation, hypothesis, observation, evidence and idealization, generally ignore elements of the history and philosophy of science. This book proposes that the conceptual understanding of chemistry requires knowledge and understanding of the history and philosophy of science. “Professor Niaz’s book is most welcome, coming at a time when there is an urgently felt need to upgrade the teaching of science. The book is a huge aid for adding to the usual way - presenting science as a series of mere facts - also the necessary mandate: to show how science is done, and how science, through its history and philosophy, is part of the cultural development of humanity.” Gerald Holton, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics & Professor of History of Science, Harvard University “In this stimulating and sophisticated blend of history of chemistry, philosophy of science, and science pedagogy, Professor Mansoor Niaz has succeeded in offering a promising new approach to the teaching of fundamental ideas in chemistry. Historians and philosophers of chemistry --- and above all, chemistry teachers --- will find this book full of valuable and highly usable new ideas” Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University “This book artfully connects chemistry and chemistry education to the human context in which chemical science is practiced and the historical and philosophical background that illuminates that practice. Mansoor Niaz deftly weaves together historical episodes in the quest for scientific knowledge with the psychology of learning and philosophical reflections on the nature of scientific knowledge and method. The result is a compelling case for historically and philosophically informed science education. Highly recommended!” Harvey Siegel, University of Miami “Books that analyze the philosophy and history of science in Chemistry are quite rare. ‘Chemistry Education and Contributions from History and Philosophy of Science’ by Mansoor Niaz is one of the rare books on the history and philosophy of chemistry and their importance in teaching this science. The book goes through all the main concepts of chemistry, and analyzes the historical and philosophical developments as well as their reflections in textbooks. Closest to my heart is Chapter 6, which is devoted to the chemical bond, the glue that holds together all matter in our earth. The chapter emphasizes the revolutionary impact of the concept of the ‘covalent bond’ on the chemical community and the great novelty of the idea that was conceived 11 years before quantum mechanics was able to offer the mechanism of electron pairing and covalent bonding. The author goes then to describe the emergence of two rival theories that explained the nature of the chemical bond in terms of quantum mechanics; these are valence bond (VB) and molecular orbital (MO) theories. He emphasizes the importance of having rival theories and interpretations in science and its advancement. He further argues that this VB-MO rivalry is still alive and together the two conceptual frames serve as the tool kit for thinking and doing chemistry in creative manners. The author surveys chemistry textbooks in the light of the how the books preserve or not the balance between the two theories in describing various chemical phenomena. This Talmudic approach of conceptual tension is a universal characteristic of any branch of evolving wisdom. As such, Mansoor’s book would be of great utility for chemistry teachers to examine how can they become more effective teachers by recognizing the importance of conceptual tension”. Sason Shaik Saeree K. and Louis P. Fiedler Chair in Chemistry Director, The Lise Meitner-Minerva Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISRAEL
This book starts with the premise that beauty can be an engine of transformation and authentic engagement in an increasingly complex world. It presents an organized picture of highlights from the 13th European Science Education Research Association Conference, ESERA 2019, held in Bologna, Italy. The collection includes contributions that discuss contemporary issues such as climate change, multiculturalism, and the flourishing of new interdisciplinary areas of investigation, including the application of cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and digital humanities to science education research. It also highlights learners’ difficulties engaging with socio-scientific issues in a digital and post-truth era. The volume demonstrates that deepening our understanding is the preferred way to address these challenges and that science education has a key role to play in this effort. In particular, the book advances the argument that the deep and novel character of these challenges requires a collective search for new narratives and languages, an expanding knowledge base and new theoretical perspectives and methods of research. The book provides a contemporary picture of science education research and looks to the theoretical and practical societal challenges of the future.
