Database of Publications

ZAHRANIčNí STANDARDIZOVANé NáSTROJE PRO ZJIšťOVáNí ZPěTNé VAZBY Z VýUKY PříRODNíCH VěD (FOREIGN STANDARDIZED TOOLS TO ASSESS FEEDBACK FROM SCIENCE EDUCATION)

Martina Kekule, Vojtěch Žák (Charles University in Prague)

Masaryk University, Brno

2011

Czech

Conference Article

parents, School Directors, Young People, Researchers, Teachers, Policy Makers

3 – 10 pages

Physics, chemistry, and biology belong to the least popular subjects and relatively few young people choose their future career in these fields. According to large questionnaire research among students in the Czech Republic, physics is considered as distant, boring, difficult and old. Concerning low popularity of natural sciences, various national and international projects have been realized in Europe in order to strengthen the students` interest in these fields. In ideal case, higher popularity of natural and technical sciences should attract more applicants to study these fields at universities, which would provide sufficient number of workers in these fields. However, every new teaching method has to be properly evaluated, the innovators cannot rely on their impressions and intuition.
The objective of the ESTABLISH project is to enhance popularity of natural sciences, namely physics, using the inquiry-based science education (IBSE). It is necessary to assess the impact of ESTABLISH in several levels, especially the development of students’ analytical skills and learning processes, the impact on intrinsic motivation for learning science taking into account various pre-conditions, e.g. gender, cultural differences, the impact on student’s appreciation of the importance of science and technology in society, and the impact on student’s inclination towards taking up careers in science. For this purpose, the following international evaluation tools (their specific parts) are used: Epistemological beliefs assessment for physical science (EBAPS), Constructivist learning environment survey (CLES), Intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI), and The relevance of science education (ROSE) questionnaire. All mentioned tools have been adapted for the Czech environment to be used within ESTABLISH project. They are available in Czech version for the pedagogical community. Based on the tools, two questionnaires will be created separately for students and teachers of secondary schools.

The document is a paper from proceedings of 19th annual conference of Czech Association of Pedagogical Research. The article introduces the international project ESTABLISH. Although it is not a comprehensive report, the article is well structured and complete including references and contacts to the authors. The project necessity is well illustrated by state of the art of young peoples` motivation to study natural sciences. The project tries to change this state using of the inquiry-based science education (IBSE). The objective of the project is detailed described. Particular foreign evaluation tools which have been adapted for the project are described by detailed way. Perhaps due to the project has not been finished yet, no results are presented in this paper (questionnaires or statistic data based on them). However, the article may be useful for teachers, researchers, parents, policy makers and students as well.

Institute of Chemical Technology Prague