Search

This paper studies the presence of contents related to early infant feeding (API), breastfeeding (LM), in Primary Education textbooks. Our hypothesis is that we would find limited contents and misconceptions. The aim is i) to establish the presence or absence of contents related to health and mammals, included in the school curriculum: Health and living beings; ii) detect contents promoting or reinforcing misconceptions about API. Our purpose is to contribute with this research to a field that has been little explored in Science Education, despite its relevance. Actually, we have found a limited presence of proper school contents and, furthermore, a large amount of images containing misconceptions. So we have concluded that this analysed textbooks could promote the absence of learning and the misconceptions related to the early infant feeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional school science and technology curriculum, school textbooks and teaching and learning classroom practices abusively uses the two logical positivist epistemic factors, the empiric reference and the logical reasoning, together with its epitome the mathematical language, which sustain the truth and objectivity as if they were the essential values of science. This abusive domain of the epistemic factors produces a main remarkable consequence on science teaching: the exclusion of all those educational features that oppose them, such as the social, cultural or affective features of science and technology, as they are considered inappropriate, nonscientific and incompatible with the objectivity of science, though they may be educationally valuable. However, the multiple criticisms on logical positivism coming from the philosophical, sociological and historical analyses of science have highlighted the presence of the affective, attitudinal and emotional aspects, among others, on the construction of scientific knowledge. This paper argues for the recovering of the attitudinal and affective aspects as vital resources in science teaching and learning. This first part of the paper reviews the evidences and arguments coming from the general education and the current challenges that tackle science education, because of the neglect of affective factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the learning results with regard to science that future teachers of early childhood education hope to obtain when they prepare teaching units while studying "Teaching Science Education" as part of their Pre-school Education degree at the Valencia University. In order to carry out this objective, an analytical tool has been created, based on expected learning results, as regards the professional competencies specified by the accredited degree program for our area of knowledge. This tool has been used by three independent researchers to analyze 19 teaching units, prepared by 76 students during the last year of their degree during two academic years, when they studied the subject of Teaching Science. The results show that, as the specificity of expected learning results in the area of science increases, they become the less consolidated, which raises the necessity for a revision of teaching contents and their development in university curricula to improve the training of early childhood teachers in the field of teaching of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the huge expansion of science education research in recent years, at the expense of its increasingly interdisciplinary. The expansion involved the addition of multiple nomad concepts (thesis of conceptual migration), which have extended the traditional disciplinary matrix towards a more and more interdisciplinary one. The data drawn from main science education international congresses allow empirically confirming the thesis of conceptual migration, mainly from psychology and pedagogy. Research on science education should recognize the original research in these areas as a primary source for science education. However, two widely-spread biases within research act against it: the preference to inbreeding self-citation and to neglect the other areas as original sources. Further, Hattie's paradigmatic meta-analysis on visible learning that discriminates the psychological and educational variables according to their impact on learning (thesis of interdisciplinary foundation) is analysed. The conclusions suggest that the new provider disciplines (psychology and pedagogy) should be recognised as necessary foundation for research and teacher training in science education. To this aim, science education research must assume its interdisciplinary, correct its self-referential inbreeding, and funding interdisciplinary concepts in the (psychological or pedagogical) original primary sources, to avoid the risk of "reinventing the wheel" or deforming the new concepts in science education, and to promote a science education research more coherent with the primary sources and attaining better quality and quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of Secondary Education textbooks to know whether they incorporate animal welfare contents. The sample consists in 12 textbooks of Biology and Geology at all levels of secondary education. We have studied both, the theoretical contents of the texts and the activities. In the absence of specific treatment of animal welfare, it is discussed in this paper the content and activities which is related to the nervous system function in animals, the protection of biodiversity and the conservation of ecosystems and the environment. None of the books analyzed is explicitly addressed animal welfare. However, some activities will be presented and discussed about experiences with animals and their care, to retrain students about different aspects related to animal welfare, such as actions aimed to the protection of animals, both domestic or wild. Our final suggestion is incorporation of the term animal welfare in the texts and slightly expands the meaning of the nervous system linking animal suffering with how animals respond to situations involving any abuse caused by humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability in the field of education emerges as an option for construction of responses and oriented solutions (Wiek, Withycombe y Redman, 2011), from a planetary ethic. Is a challenge for the human thinking and, for us as trainers of science teachers, also involves a challenge facing education for sustainability. This implies encourage teachers to see the classroom as a complex system, which is mainly characterized by the interaction between the parts which compose it. In this context, a key issue in teaching and learning processes is the reflection on how to stake the assessment, because the assessment influence the whole and the whole influence the assessment. From this view, the assessment system must be configured through the dialogue with the values framework in coherence with planetary ethic and sustainability; aspect that modifies not only tits structure but also its function. In this paper we present a thoughtful theoretical analysis on the implication of the configuration of that assessment system on the classroom of science teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contents of this paper address the following issue: What are we teaching with textbooks in Compulsory Secondary Education? First of all, we reviewed the works that have been published in Spain about these materials and, despite their importance in our educational system, we have not found many studies dealing with those textbooks published during LOE Reform. We focus on some essential elements in these methodological resources: the structure of lessons and their types of contents selected (concepts, procedures and attitudes) through the analysis of learning activities submitted by six textbook publishers known, on the Technology block "Electricity and electronics" 3° ESO, and its suitability or not to current regulations in CARM. The results show some of the shortages and deficiencies these textbooks have, and that, in general, they never comply with the official curriculum guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previous condition to effectively insert the nature of science in the science school curriculum requires setting up the agreements on the main features of the curriculum contents that should be explicitly addressed into the science classroom. This paper shows some agreements that have been attained through an empiric methodology of research, which is based on the assessment of the questions included in the Questionnaire of Opinions on Science, Technology and Society (COCTS) by a panel of 16 expert judges. The reached consensuses are limited here to the specific issues of the epistemology of the science, which not only include issues of philosophy of science but also the definitions of science and technology and their relationships. The results display both some appropriate traits as well as those more numerous inadequate traits revealed by the empirical analysis that has been carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issues about the nature of science are today considered a core content of the scientific and technological literacy for all. However, the inclusion of the nature of science in the science school curriculum is not easy and requires some conditions. One important condition is setting up previous agreements on the specific features and contents of the nature of science that could be translated into the classroom practice for its explicit use in school science education. This paper reviews some contributions of the science education research to achieve this condition. Finally, an empiric methodology designed to achieve consensus on the nature of science is put forward; the description embraces the agreements on the appropriate as well as on the inappropriate features of the nature of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]