Date

2018-09-03

Author

Tahancalıo, Semra
Çakıroğlu, Jale
Köseoğlu, Fitnat

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It is remarkably pointed out in the literature that “museums and schools need each other to create the coherent learning environment essential for initiating and sustaining engagement with science” (Bevan, 2007, p.3). Similarly, National Science Teachers Association (NSTA, 1998, p.30) stated that “informal science education complements, supplements, deepens, and enhances classroom science studies”. Although it is an efficacious strategy to integrate informal education into the teaching process, especially in science education, to improve classroom curriculum and formal education work (Duran, Ballone-Duran & Haney, 2010), school trips to science centers and museums are not organized in such a way to enhance learning (DeWitt & Osborne, 2007). This may be because of what Behrendt and Franklin (2014) claimed that preservice teachers are not educated in science teacher education programs about how to plan and organize a field trip. In Turkey, the number of teacher training institutions are ninety-two in sixty-eight different cities. In spite of the fact that each city has at least one museum, the number of science centers in cities is very low besides some of them are not fully equipped one (Tasdemir, Kartal, & Ozdemir, 2014). Tasdemir, Kartal and Ozdemir (2014) also claimed that only twenty percent of preservice teachers can directly profit from these science centers and this percentage is quite low compared to the number of education faculties. Thus, most of the preservice teachers graduated without being aware of the opportunities of science centers. Correspondingly, teachers do not know how to organize a successful trip to informal science settings and integrate their science teaching (Kisiel, 2003a; Tasdemir, Kartal, & Ozdemir, 2014). However, the importance given to informal learning environments such as science centers in our country is increasing day by day. In 2017, the out-of-school learning environments were highlighted in the adopted strategies and methods by the Ministry of National Education's science curriculum. “Class / in-school and out-of-school learning environments are designed according to the inquiry-based learning strategy so that students can learn meaningfully and permanently. In this context, informal learning environments (school gardens, science centers, museums, planetarium, zoo etc.) are utilized” (MEB, 2017, pp. 11-12). In addressing the above-mentioned issues, a professional development program was proposed to The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) as a project, derived from various literature about informal science learning, nature of science, self-efficacy and research into science centers, inquiry and cooperative learning. The aim of the BİLMER project is to raise teachers’, teacher candidates’ and science centers’ explainers’ awareness about science centers; improve their utilization from science centers in their lessons; and increase their efficacy in this area. Moreover, it is hypothesized that if the professional development (PD) program developed by BİLMER project is implemented to science teachers, it can potentially lead teachers to better use of the learning opportunities in the science centers to maximize the influence on the students’ learning. Consequently, the main aim of the current study is to reveal how the PD program developed by BİLMER project improve science teachers’ way of conducting field trip to a science center. More precisely, the researchers aim to answer the following question: “How is science teachers’ instractional planning including strategies for a field trip to a science center improved throughout PD program?”

URI

https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/23/contribution/43456/
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/78446

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Conference / Seminar