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In recent years, the interest of governments and schools in challenging gifted and talented (G+T) science students has grown (Taber, 2007). In the Netherlands, the government promotes developing science programmes for talented secondary science students. This causes a need for training teachers, but what should an effective professional development programme about promoting talent development look like? Junior College Utrecht (JCU), a cooperation of Utrecht University and 28 secondary schools (van der Valk & Pilot, 2012), has developed such a course in a design-based research. It is based on important objectives for promoting excellence in science education, including the key components of honours teaching approaches (Wolfensberger, 2012) and on characteristics of effective professional development programmes (pdp). The course was implemented and evaluated in two phases. The first phase resulted in a scenario for dissemination. During the second phase, the pdp was implemented in two institutions. The effectiveness of the pdp was investigated using a questionnaire that was conducted at the end of the course. The main criteria for effectiveness were (1) the participants’ appreciation of the course and (2) having attained the pdp objectives as well as the participants’ personal objectives. Moreover, being a learning teacher was investigated as being a factor that promotes the effectiveness of the pdp. Results showed that the pdp was effective in reaching its objectives and in the participants’ personal objectives. The more teachers considered themselves to be a learning teacher, the more they had learned an appreciated the professional development programme.

This poster presents five, multilingual, web-based learning environments (LEs) that have been designed using the learning and teaching platform of STOCHASMOS as part of the CoReflect FP7 project. CoReflect brought together eight diverse and multi-disciplinary teams from six European states and one associated country to collaborate for the iterative design, enactment and research of problem-based innovative inquiry LEs. Using STOCHASMOS, each web-based LE was developed by a Local Working Group (LWG), which consisted of researchers, designers, scientists, and practicing teachers to address the research-practice gap. Each LE was piloted in authentic classroom conditions at the local level and revised based on design-based research principles. Subsequently, the LWGs translated their LEs to English. This allowed for sharing their LE with a collaborating LWG (cLWG) in another partner country. The LE was then translated in the cLWG local language and enacted in a different cultural context. The LEs focus on socio-scientific issues and target primary and secondary school students. Five out of seven are presented here: Biotechnology and Climate Change - Cyprus, Nicotine Addiction - Israel, Extraterrestrial Life - Sweden, and Fog control - Greece. They are available in English and in two additional languages each, for widespread use by primary and secondary school educators. Empirical, quantitative and qualitative results on the effectiveness of these five LEs in authentic classrooms are presented.

In a laboratory activity students study the behaviour of a bouncing ball. With the help of a high-speed camera they can study the motion in detail. Computer modelling enables them to relate the measurement results to the theory. They experience that reality (measurements) is not automatically in line with the predictions of the theory (the models), but often even strikingly apart. This stimulates a process of repeated cycles from measurement to interpretations (how to adapt the model?), and in this way it realizes a rich and complete laboratory activity. The activity is made possible by the integrated ICT tools for measurements on videos made by a high-speed camera (via automated point-tracking), and for modelling and simulations.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Computer technology has received much attention as a means of reforming educational practice in Physics. It is widely believed that technology could function as a medium for bringing about the necessary reform to improve learning standards and in particular to promote the conceptual understanding and reasoning skills that so many of our students lack after traditional instruction. The Learning in Physics Group has a coordinated program combining research with the development and validation of curriculum for secondary and high school grades. We have undertaken a systematic analysis of the capabilities of a range of computer-based tools that are conducive to improving the quality of the learning and teaching of Physics. This type of analysis leads to the detailed formulation of a series of competencies relevant to Physics that could be developed with appropriate use of these tools. In this paper, we concentrate on the development of modeling skills and we outline the methodology we have developed followed by typical results. We also demonstrate how our results could be used in the design and development of innovative learning environments. Finally, we discuss the constraints to the effective use of educational technology and implications for Physics teaching as well as for the preparation of teachers and the development of curricula.

It is widely acknowledged today that an Inquiry-Based approach to Research and Innovation processes can improve the interest of students in studying scientific topics. Such approaches can enable students to have the opportunity to interact with cutting edge topics, research results and work with researchers and other societal actors to better align research processes and their outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of today's society. However, there is still no clear consensus between researchers about the impact that inquiry-based approaches have on the student scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding at different ages and cultural levels. This paper discusses these aspects from a vertical and interdisciplinary curriculum perspective. Firstly, the impact of a series of inquiry-based learning activities on the acquisition of scientific knowledge and in the development of pupils' positive attitudes toward science in pupils aged 10–13 is discussed. Secondly, a discussion on important preconditions needed for an introduction of cutting-edge topics to the classroom, and the role of the inquiry that has to be offered to students to effectively construct knowledge is considered at the pre-university level. Following this, an approach adopted by three large scale European projects (ESTABLISH, SAILS and OSOS) that focus on enhancing science education curricula, pedagogy and assessment practices and supporting science educators in embedding Inquiry-Based Education or Responsible Research and Innovation principles in science education is presented. Finally, an innovative Doctoral Degree in Sustainability Science, which seeks transformative education that challenges the attitudes of both professors and students is presented and some of its most relevant aspects are discussed.

Strand 14 of ESERA addresses an internationally increasingly recognized complex field of science education research: in-service teacher education and continued professional development of science teachers. It is obvious that the value and success of any educational system strongly corresponds with the quality of its teachers’ competences and practices. In this sense, it is not surprising that the strand on in-service science teacher education is always one of the most active strands of ESERA. Compared to the last ESERA conference proceedings, the number of papers presented in this strand was growing from 10 to 32 pieces.

This cross age study was designed to investigate students’ predictions in novel situations and the role that analogies play in their reasoning. It was a small scale study in which a total of 41 students from three different age groups and three different schools in Greece were recruited. A mixed method approach was used with data being collected through the use of written questionnaires and audio-recorded group interviews. Students’ responses were analysed to ascertain how they made their predictions, whether these drew on the use of analogies, and if so, the nature of the analogies that they used. The study found that students regularly used analogies in order to make their predictions. In many cases students’ reasoning was based on their experiential knowledge which led them to make predictions that were not compatible with the scientific view. The analogies used by different students, when presented with the same novel situations, were, in many cases, similar irrespective of their year group. The findings of the study suggest that teachers need to be more aware of the nature of the analogies used and how, and why, reasoning on the basis of such analogies can, in many cases, lead students to make scientifically incorrect predictions.

The language of science has the potential to aid high order conceptualexplanation and provide an effective means of communication, but emphasis onverbal correctness can frequently limit children’s ability to conceptualise scientific ideas. Furthermore as children are introduced to the discourse of science they may experience cultural insecurity, limiting identity with the subject and potentially resulting in underachievement. This qualitative study takes a socio-cultural perspective and investigates whether an approach that minimises the use of scientific terminology in the classroom can impact the learning of primary age children. The work was carried out in schools serving socially disadvantaged communities where the issue of cultural disaffiliation from the practices of science can be more significant. Planning meetings were carried out with teachers in which concepts were isolated from the scientific terms traditionally associated with them. The discourse of the teachers in these meetings and in follow up interviews was recorded, being supplemented by recordings from classroom observations. Data was analysed for evidence of identity with particular modes of discourse and the level of exploratorydiscourse that took place. This analysis has indicated that there was an increased focus on exploratory discourse in the classroom with enhanced confidence in explaining concepts using everyday language. Evidence was also seen of greater identity affiliation with the social discourse of science for both staff and pupils, particularly among less able boys and those with literacy difficulties. The study reveals the significance, for children at a formative stage in their education, of cultural identity with science’s discursive practices and the importance of pedagogical approaches that focus on language and conceptual development.

In recent years, we designed and tested a longitudinal teaching sequence for middle school students (11-14 years old) in a class of the Cipro-Ascoli Institute in Milan (Italy). Our research aimed to promote students’ cognitive and metacognitive development about few physics and astronomy core ideas through a longitudinal three years long pathway. In this paper, we present the context’s characteristics, the methods used to design the teaching proposal, some examples of collected data about students’ knowledge development and a possible criterium to organize and analyse the huge amount of data. Our analysis reveals an emerging result: students’ growing mastery of scientific practices and increasing ability in performing scientific investigations. This perspective was inspired by key results of K-12 science education framework (National Research Council, 2012): core ideas; scientific practices; learning progressions.

This paper describes the background for, realisation of and author reflections on anetwork workshop held at ESERA2013. As a new research area in science education,networks offer a unique opportunity to visualise and find patterns and relationships incomplicated social or academic network data. These include student relations and interactions and epistemic and linguistic networks of words, concepts and actions. Network methodology has already found use in science education research. However, while networks hold the potential for new insights, they have not yet found wide use in the science education research community. With this workshop, participants were offered a way into network science based on authentic educational research data. The workshop was constructed as an inquiry lesson with emphasis on user autonomy. Learning activities had participants choose to work with one of two cases of networks. In the one case participants studied learning processes based on student interactions as represented by a social network. In the other they investigated howtext represented as networks could lead to different interpretations of the meanings embedded in the original text. In both cases they created and analysed networks using the commonly used and freely available software Gephi (gephi.org). Reflecting upon why science education researchers might be hesitant to adopt network methodology we identify a key problem for networks in science education research: The cost in resources of learning how to include network methodology in one’s research might supersede the perceived benefits of doing so. As a response to that problem, we argue that workshops can act as a road towards meaningful engagement with networks and highlight that network methodology promises new ways of interpreting data to answer questions about the processes of learning science.

The ESTABLISH FP7-funded project is involved with development and implementation of professional development workshops to support teachers in adopting more inquiry based approaches in their teaching. Identifying teacher views, goals, practices and the challenges they face in implementing inquiry activities, can inform teacher educators of the needs of their participating teachers. This can also inform them to provide the appropriate support in order to help teachers overcome obstacles and develop their own practice in inquiry. This paper outlines the initial results from a profiling instrument used to examine teachers’ beliefs about IBSE, attitudes to teaching science and teaching by inquiry and some ideas about their current practices. The data presented in this paper outlines the profile of the teachers when they came to the first of the ESTABLISH teacher workshops in a number of European countries. This paper outlines a summary of the development of the evaluation tool, how the evaluation data was collected and analysed and highlights the key findings. FP7SiS project (ESTABLISH) CSA-SA Project No 244749

The aim of this research is to verify hypotheses regarding the importance of understanding situation in mathematical word problems that follow from Reusser’ s SPS (Situation Problem Solver) model by exploring efficiency of children’ s mathematical word problems solving as a function of age, problem type and situational context of the problem. Children of three age groups participated in the study: preschool kindergarten group, first grade and second grade students. The final sample was formed of 67 kindergarten children, 79 first grade students and 85 second grade students. Testing was conducted by 20 specially trained senior psychology students. Two categories of word problems were used: change problems and compare problems. Every child was tested twice, one time with neutral context problems and other time with familiar context problems. Repeated measures analysis of variance with age, situational context and problem type as independent variables was performed with children’ s performance as a dependent variable. The main effects of age, situational context and problem type were significant, as well as the interaction of age and problem type. Our research results indicate that older children are more successful than younger children in solving mathematical word problems and that the children’ s performance on the change problems is better than on compare problems. Results also showed that children’ s performance on the problems with familiar context was better than performance on the problems with neutral context. These results confirm Reusser’ s essential hypothesis that adding additional sense to the problem text would facilitate designing the situational model of the problem.

U istraživanju su provjeravani stavovi gimnazijalaca prema matematici, njihova uvjerenja vezana uz matematiku (je li sposobnost za matematiku urođena i je li matematika muška domena), u kojoj je mjeri kod gimnazijalaca prisutan strah od matematike te postoje li razlike u tim varijablama ovisno o usmjerenju izabrane škole i spolu učenika. Analize su provedene na podacima dobivenim od 510 učenika svih četiriju razreda dviju jezičnih i jedne prirodoslovno-matematičke gimnazije. Upotrijebljena su dva mjerna instrumenta: Ljestvica za ispitivanje stavova i uvjerenja prema matematici te Ljestvica za ispitivanje straha od matematike. Rezultati za cijeli uzorak pokazuju da sudionici istraživanja imaju neutralan stav prema matematici, da uglavnom ne vjeruju da su matematičke sposobnosti urođene te da se ne slažu da je matematika više muška nego ženska domena. Usporedba rezultata s obzirom na obrazovno usmjerenje pokazala je da učenici prirodoslovno-matematičke gimnazije imaju nešto pozitivniji stav prema matematici i da manje vjeruju u urođenost matematičkih sposobnosti od učenika jezičnih gimnazija. Kod uvjerenja da je matematika muška domena pokazalo se da se ispitani učenici s time ne slažu, a to neslaganje jače je izraženo kod djevojaka i učenika prirodoslovno-matematičkog usmjerenja nego kod mladića i učenika jezičnog usmjerenja. Strah od matematike na cijelom uzorku slabo je izražen, a s obzirom na gimnazijsko usmjerenje i spol, pokazalo se da je nešto jači kod učenika jezičnog usmjerenja i kod djevojaka. Interakcijski efekti spola i obrazovnog usmjerenja nisu dobiveni ni na jednoj ispitanoj varijabli. Rezultati su komentirani s obzirom na odabir školovanja sudionika i različitom socijalizacijom učenika različitog spola., In the study the authors investigated what general attitudes secondary school students have toward mathematics, whether they see it as a male domain, whether they think that math abilities are inborn and whether they experience math anxiety. The participants in the study were students from all four classes of two language oriented and one science-oriented secondary school (N=510). Two scales were used in the study: Scale for measuring attitudes and beliefs toward math and Scale for measuring math anxiety. Looking at the sample as a whole, results show that participants have neutral attitudes toward mathematics, that they mostly do not believe that math abilities are inborn and that they do not agree that math is more a male than female domain. Results show that science-oriented students, in comparison to language- oriented ones, have somewhat more positive attitudes toward math and that they believe less that math abilities are inborn. In respect to the belief that math is more a male domain, results show that students as a whole do not agree with this belief. Such disagreement is more pronounced in girls and science- -oriented students than in boys and language-oriented students. In the whole sample, math anxiety is rather low in intensity, and it is somewhat stronger in language-oriented students and girls. There were no significant interaction effects between educational orientation and gender on any variable. The obtained results were commented in regard to students' educational orientation and different gender role socialization process., Mit dieser Untersuchung sollten die Einstellungen von Gymnasiasten zur Mathematik ermittelt werden, ihre diesbezüglichen Überzeugungen (Ist die Befähigung für mathematische Operationen ein angeborenes Talent? Ist Mathematik eine Männerdomäne?) sowie die Fragen beleuchtet werden, wie weit die Angst vor der Mathematik unter den Schülern verbreitet ist und ob es hinsichtlich dieser Variablen je nach Schule und Geschlechtszugehörigkeit des Umfrageteilnehmers Unterschiede gibt. An der Untersuchung nahmen 510 Schüler aller vier Oberklassen zweier sprachlichen Gymnasien sowie eines naturwissenschaftlichmathematischen Gymnasiums teil. Es wurden zwei Messinstrumente eingesetzt: eine Tabelle zur Ermittlung von Einstellungen und Überzeugungen bezüglich der Mathematik sowie eine Tabelle zur Ermittlung von Angst vor der Mathematik. Die Untersuchung ergab, dass sämtliche Schüler eine neutrale Einstellung zur Mathematik teilen, dass sie im Großen und Ganzen nicht der Überzeugung sind, mathematische Fähigkeiten gingen auf eine angeborene Begabung zurück; ebenso wenig sind sie der Meinung, dass Mathematik eher eine Männerdomäne sei. Ein Vergleich unter den Schülern im Hinblick auf das Lehrprogramm ihrer Schulen ergab, dass sich die Mathematik im naturwissenschaftlich- mathematischen Gymnasium eines etwas besseren Rufs erfreut und dass im Vergleich zu den sprachlichen Gymnasien weniger die Meinung vorherrscht, dass Mathematik eine angeborene Begabung erfordere. Auch die These, wonach Mathematik eine Männerdomäne ist, stieß nicht auf Zustimmung, wobei unter den Schülerinnen und Schülern des naturwissenschaftlich- mathematischen Gymnasiums die Ablehnung stärker ausgeprägt ist als unter ihren Altersgenossen in den sprachlichen Gymnasien. Sämtliche Umfrageteilnehmer zeigten wenig Angst vor der Mathematik; lediglich unter den Schülern, zumal den Schülerinnen des sprachlichen Gymnasiums war sie etwas stärker ausgeprägt. Interaktions-Effekte von Geschlechtszugehörigkeit und Lehrprogramm konnten hinsichtlich keiner der untersuchten Variablen nachgewiesen werden. Abschließend kommentieren die Verfasser die Untersuchungsergebnisse vor dem Hintergrund des jeweiligen Lehrprogramms sowie der jeweils unterschiedlichen Sozialisation von Schülerinnen und Schülern.