Action Research and Innovation in Science Education

Introducing infrared cameras in the study of pigs’ physiology and health as cognitive apprenticeship in vocational education

Jesper Haglund, Frida Henriksson — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0300

As part of a participatory action-research project, students at the vocational upper-secondary Natural Resource Use programme in Sweden were introduced to infrared cameras in their courses. Students were video recorded as they used infrared cameras in the investigation of pigs’ physiology and health in the school’s pig house and explained generated infrared images in whole-class dialogue, together with involved teachers and researcher. Students found that a pig’s injured leg has high temperature, but also, more surprisingly, udder abcesses with lower temperature than the surrounding healthy udder tissue. Students and teachers expressed excitement in explaining the results. From the perspective of seeing vocational education as a kind of cognitive apprenticeship, students’ investigations and dialogue with the teachers and researcher are characterised as an example of authentic activity in a community of learners, where expertise was distributed across all participants.

A Novice Teacher Researcher’s Action Research Project: Posing Problems to Promote Concepts of Graphs in Calculus

Tikva Ovadiya — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0300

A novice mathematics teacher researcher (TR) conducted an “interactive action research” (AR) to determine what problems would be most beneficial to teach her students about creating graphs based on a function’s attributes. After a number of trials that included adjusting her goals, the TR successfully designed problems appropriate for her goals. This paper describes the problem-posing process the TR used to derive the problems, and which include the four steps described in the literature: i) plan the problem, ii) pose it, iii) solve it, and iv) organize and complete it (see Güveli, 2015) plus an additional overall step added by this author, v) develop awareness of common perceptions (and misconceptions) that students have with respect to graphing. The contribution of this study is twofold. The first is the theoretical model of a five-step AR process, which can be used to guide TRs when conducting a mathematics posing problem AR: mathematical objective, source of inspiration, concerns related to formulation, mathematical uncertainties, and decisions taken. The second is that it demonstrates how TR’s formative assessment of the student’s solutions can improve her problem-posing heuristics and guide her to adjust her didactic goal(s). In addition, this paper documents her professional development on two aspects: developments and transitions in her thinking, and her development in skills required for reaching a didactic or mathematical goal.

First-Year Pre-service Primary School Teachers’ Conceptual Structure of Ecosystem Ecology Concepts

Christiana Glettler, Gregor Torkar — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0300

Science education research has been increasingly concerned with students’ and teachers’ conceptions of central scientific concepts over the past decades. However, science teaching today should not only convey knowledge but also values and science practices in order to empower students to become responsible citizens in a world that is facing ecological as well as social problems. Thus, a profound understanding of ecology and systems thinking skills are seen as paramount. This paper explores first-year pre-service primary school teachers’ conceptual understanding of ecology through the use of a word association test. Students were given four stimulus words and asked to provide five response words to each stimulus. Furthermore, they were asked to formulate a sentence related to biology, using each stimulus word. Response words were categorised and the frequency of the words was calculated. The findings show very limited understanding of the ecological concepts and their interrelatedness. Furthermore, the students showed numerous misconceptions regarding energy flow and food chain relationships. Thus our findings support other authors’ propositions that students often struggle with understanding ecology concepts. The findings further imply that the instruction students receive at school is not successful in replacing existing misconceptions with accurate science concepts.

Designing and Implementing an Interfaculty Elective "Sustainable Development" Course at a University: Concepts, Developments and Lessons Learned

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0300

This paper describes the case of a university course addressing Sustainable Development (SD). This interdisciplinary and interfaculty elective course is meant to serve the purpose of teaching sustainability. At the same time, it is also intended to serve as an instrument for the implementation of sustainability at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. The paper describes the conception and implementation of an interdisciplinary elective as a first appropriate step to implement SD at the University of Klagenfurt across disciplinary and structural barriers. Furthermore, the paper presents reflections of the course based on a series of interviews with the leading teaching team as well as the team's ongoing reflections. As it turns out: The major challenge is that a system based on individual freedom in research and teaching needs to intervene within its own system to create and initiate a new development.

Gamification in science education: a promising field for Action Research?

Nadja Belova — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0300

In this editorial I outline the basic connections between playing and learning and define what a “game” actually is and how educational processes can be “gamified”. I then try to find key arguments on why games are valuable for educational purposes. Because I believe that Action Research can con-tribute to a better implementation of games in the classroom, my editorial ends with a call for papers on this issue.