This page is about the Mind the Gap project which is an ancestor of S-TEAM, also working in the field of Inquiry-based Science Teaching methods. The page will carry brief details of Mind the Gap and news about its activities and findings. All members of Mind the Gap are welcome to contribute to this page. Some of its members are also involved in S-TEAM. Professor Doris Jorde from the University of Oslo is the coordinator of Mind the Gap. There was a meeting of the project in Lyon 21/22 May - the notes are in text form on the two child pages (see bottom of page) and can also be downloaded in docx format here and here. MTG programme: Thursday May 21 SINUS as a model for successful professional development of science teachers 9:00-10:00 Welcome, introducing participants 10:00-10:45 Large scale professional development (PD) in Germany: the case of SINUS (Manfred Prenzel, IPN Kiel) 11:15 -12:15 Sharing and discussing the organisation of PD for science teachers within the 7 countries 12:15-13:30 Lunch break 13:30-15:00 The need for new initiatives in PD - chances and framing conditions for an improved science education 15:30-16:45 How SINUS works: organising the programme and its impact on teachers and schools (Christoph Hammer, SINUS-coordinator for Bavaria) 16:45-18:00 Discussion: institutional aspects of PD in the 7 states; important stakeholders and prerequisites Friday May 22 Contribution of the Mind the Gap project to integrating IBST into science education 9:00-10:45 The role of "argumentation and communication" in IBST (Sibel Erduran, University of Bristol; Maria Pilar Jiménez-Aleixandre, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela; Andrée Tiberghien, CNRS) 11:15-13:00 Scientific literacy and IBST (Jens Dolin, Robert Evans, Jesper Bruun, University of Copenhagen) 13:00-14:30 Lunch break 14:30-16:15 ICT tools for IBST (Silvain Laube, Université de Haute Bretagne Rennes 2) 16:30-17:00 Summing up and further steps PG - I was only fully present on the Friday so it would be useful to hear from others as to what happened during the sessions on Thursday. My overall impression is that there are some strong 'products' coming from MTG such as the Pegase website and of course the SINUS materials. However, whilst it is relatively easy to make these available to national organisations in science education, e.g. the Norwegian Centre for Science education (http://www.naturfagsenteret.no/mandat_en.html)as represented by Anders Isnes, or the Association for Science Education (http://www.ase.org.uk/) it is not always easy to see how they would actually be used. The meeting had a number of ideas in this direction. Partners in MTG University of Oslo Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique University of Copenhagen - link here for the Mind the Gap scientific literacy page University of Bristol Université Rennes2- Haute Bretagne Leibniz Institute for Science Education at the University of Kiel Hungarian Research Teacher's Association Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Friedrich Schiller University of Jena | |