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Like most education systems all over the world, Egypt’s schools and universities turned to online teaching at the end of March 2020, after face-to-face classes had been brought to a halt by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. While few teachers were prepared for delivering their lessons online and for dealing with the stress and anxiety of the situation, this article showcases a group of teachers who had just acquired collaboration skills in peer communities of learners (PCLs), which proved to be an immediate source of support in this time of crisis. The authors present the results of a rapid study they conducted in June 2020 on a sample of 49 teachers from 17 schools in Egypt who had participated in a school–university partnership for reform. This included a continuous professional development (CPD) project which ran from February 2017 to March 2020. Within the project, these teachers had already successfully created PCLs in 43 schools partnering with faculties of education (FOEs) in three large Egyptian universities. The reform partnership, an ERASMUS+ initiative funded by the European Union (EU), was the “School University Partnership for Peer Communities of Learners” (SUP4PCL). By March 2020, the participating teachers had already significantly changed their teaching styles, school culture, identities and attitude towards their profession, and they continued to communicate with their peers in the PCLs they had created during the project. Prompted by the emergency situation of the pandemic and inspired by the work of Etienne Wenger and others on communities of practice, the authors’ study investigates the sustainability, viability and effectiveness of the project PCLs, their relationship to lifelong learning and their value in offering psychosocial support. The article concludes with a consideration of the usefulness of PCLs for reforms to ensure quality learning in crisis situations and more generally.

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.

This research was conducted as part of the professional development for in-service Science and mathematics teachers Research group with support of the Excellence Research Centre of Science and Mathematics Education - King Saudi University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This study presents a typology of continuing professional development (CPD) activities and provides a discussion related to each. The typology includes 2 main themes, which investigate the various types of activities and the content presented in CPD programmes. The study used qualitative methods (open-ended questionnaires in addition to semi-structured interviews) with Saudi Arabian science teachers. The main theoretical framework for this study centres on the socio-constructivist theory of learning. Discussion of the findings leads to a depiction of what science teachers ‘need’ to learn and ‘how’ they want to learn. The aim of this study is to provide a framework for socio-constructivist science teacher professional development based on an attempt to understand how teachers learn effectively in CPD programmes and what science teachers need to learn.

The aim of this study was to investigate science teachers' views of continuing professional development (CPD) provision in Saudi Arabia and science teachers' perspectives of the CPD contextual issues that have an impact on putting the learning emerging from the CPD programmes into practice. The study used mixed methods (open-ended questionnaires and interviews) with Saudi Arabian science teachers framed by a socio-cultural perspective. This study argues that science teachers' voices concerning their professional development needs should be the key guide for their CPD. Our study shows the significance of engaging critically with science teachers' voices and views of their CPD programme. One of the unique findings of this study indicated CPD programmes should take place at school where teachers have the opportunity to collaborate with others in an authentic context and where they can participate in the content of the CPD that directly meets their needs within their work context. The study has shown that science teacher development can be effective and successful when science teachers are able to talk with each other as part of the learning activities of the CPD programmes about what they are doing in the classroom, and how they can implement the ideas of the CPD programmes into their classroom and school settings. This might shed light on why teachers were either able or unable to put some aspects of their CPD learning into practice.

In the current research study the use of Wikis as an online didactic tool to apply project-based learning in higher education was reported. The study was conducted in university teacher education programmes. During the online activities, participants developed interdisciplinary projects for the primary school working collaboratively in small groups in a Wiki virtual environment within the Moodle platform. Science was at the core of the projects and acted as an organising hub to finding links with other disciplines. A mixed-methods approach involving the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data was adopted in the current research study. The authors developed the following three instruments in order to measure both processes and outcomes of the online activities: the interdisciplinary project-based learning questionnaire, the reflection questionnaire and a rubric for assessing interdisciplinary projects. The current paper focuses only on the qualitative data, which were subjected to an inductive...

This study reports on Egyptian science teachers’ experiences in collective action research projects with a focus on education for sustainable development (ESD). Science teachers were enrolled in a study course “Teaching Strategies” that had been revised with a focus on sustainability. The course was introduced in the spring semester of the academic year 2011/2012. Throughout the course, 29 teachers worked in groups to develop projects that promote sustainable development through classroom teaching practices that encourage involvement with local communities around school premises. The framework that guided the study was based on experiential, constructivist and transformative learning theories known collectively as ‘ExConTra’. A mixed methods methodology was used where teachers’ responses to three open-ended reflective questions produced qualitative data that were analysed by identifying themes and patterns. The author developed two quantitative instruments: a Concept Mapping Rubric and a Sustainable Development Questionnaire. The former was to probe the cognitive organisation participants had in relation to the concept of sustainable development before and after developing the action research projects. The latter instrument was used to identify participants’ attitudes towards teaching for ESD and their knowledge of classroom pedagogical practices. Statistical data analysis using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences indicates that teachers in their post-tests had developed: better cognitive organisation for the concept of sustainable development; positive attitudes towards teaching for sustainable development and ESD classroom teaching practices. Involvement in the action research projects where teachers were experiencing, reflecting, conceptualising, constructing, acting and transforming within the context of ESD may be responsible for these results where there are promises to help achieve successful implementation to include ESD in science education.

This paper explores science teachers’ experiences, views, and preferences of what constitutes effective teacher professional development. The research method utilised both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The former was used with responses from closed-ended questions while responses to an open-ended question were analysed qualitatively. The questionnaire was administrated to science teachers in Saudi Arabia of both genders with a variety of teaching experiences, science specialisms and to those teaching in primary, middle and secondary stage schools. The findings indicate that teachers have concerns about continuing professional development (CPD) programmes offered to them. Teachers’ description of CPD showed that they were passive recipients of a pre-packed programme paving the way to how they form their professional identity. Teachers reflected on the aspects that can lead to effective CPD. Drawing on the findings, this paper presents a framework for effective CPD for science teachers where teachers are collaborative, proactive as leaders of reform and with positive professional identities in a context of reform.

This chapter describes a study conducted in higher education in the Egyptian context. A blended e-learning cooperative approach (BeLCA) was utilised with pre-service teachers (PSTs) in a science teaching methodology course. The chapter introduces a literature review on blended e-learning, cooperativeness, in addition to an approach that combines the two aspects together. The proposed approach (BeLCA) is based on social interaction between participants within the blended e-learning environment, where social constructivism theories play a crucial role. The chapter illustrates the effectiveness of utilising this new approach on participants’ achievement, attitudes towards e-learning, and cooperativeness by adopting a quasi-experimental setting. The chapter also highlights on the instructional design utilised in the course development. The course design was based on Dick, Carey, and Carey’s (2001) model: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Execution (ADDIE).