Publications including this keyword are listed below.
This article presents an example of how a public science party was evaluated. The main goals of the science party, to increase the positive image of science and present an attractive science event, were evaluated in two ways. First, web surveys were used to determine the image of science before and after the event among paying visitors, invited guests, and a control group (N = 149). Second, during the event, visitors were interviewed about their experiences at the event (N = 124). The survey study showed that the image of science was very positive among all three groups of respondents. As no differences were found between pre- and post-tests, participation in the event did not lead to a more positive image of science. The results of the interviews suggested that visitors highly appreciated the event. In the Discussion, the evaluation study is analyzed and possibilities/limitations for future general use are discussed.
Basing mainly on author's direct involvement in some science communication efforts in India, and other reports, this contribution depicts and analyses the present science communication/ popularization scenario in India. It tries to dispel a myth that rural people don't require or don’t crave for S&T information. It discusses need for science and technology communication, sustaining curiosity and creating role models. Citing cases of some natural, 'unnatural' and organized events, it recounts how S&T popularization efforts have fared during the past decade and a half. It's made possible using print, AV and interactive media which, at times, require lot of financial inputs. However, this contribution shows that a number of natural and other phenomena can be used to convince people about power of S&T and in molding their attitude. The cases cited may be from India, but, with a little variation, are true for most of the developing and under- developed societies.
The idea to link European citizenship and science education is surely new and uncommon in Poland, but we think, as SEDEC project, that can enrich both the panorama of science popularization outside and inside school system. I checked carefully curricula for every stage of school education looking for the topics concerning the developing of the European citizenship. I found that they are usually connected to the history, geography and some activities developing of the knowledge about generally defined citizenship. The spare topics connected directly to the science are present especially in grammar school curriculum. They may be divided into three groups: exploiting the common heritage, common object of interest and scientific community respectively. In that paper I would like to show how the activities in each of the group may influence the EU citizenship developing process. I am going to emphasize the good choice of science as a context or a medium for EU citizenship education. It may be an important point especially in Central Europe. Additionally I would like to present some auxiliary events that are enable through the external educational resources such as museum and planetarium.
To design teaching materials starting from the subject matter in Science field, from the contents of textbooks or by studying the syllabuses are regular practices within schools. The SEDEC project proposes concrete and innovative modalities of conceiving teaching materials starting from teachers perception of science and by talking with them about their ideas and needs regarding teaching Science. A deep discussion of the relationships between science education and European citizenship has been another important ingredient of this new process of didactic design.
Probably among the first to deal with it, nearly sixty years ago, Norbert Wiener, the founding father of cybernetics (The human use of human beings. Cybernetics and Society, Houghton Mifflin Company, London, 1950), prefigured its opportunities, as well as its limitations. Today, it is a quite common belief. We have entered (are entering) a new, great era in the history of human society: the age of information and knowledge.
The first step of the SEDEC project has been a survey on teachers and pupils perception of science, scientists, and the European dimension of science. Different research actions have been organized for the different targets, and have been held in the six countries involved in the project: Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Romania. This article will present the results of a questionnaire distributed between European teachers. A research on the scientific imagery should have an opposite perspective to the one of a teacher at school; whereas the latter, the keeper of a knowledge, has the usual task of transferring and checking the knowledge in their students, a researcher has to record and describe their interior world relating to science – the information, but especially the images, the expectations, the emotions related to it.
The first step of the SEDEC project has been a survey on teachers and pupils perception of science, scientists, and the European dimension of science. Different research actions have been organized for the different targets, and have been held in the six countries involved in the project: Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Romania. This article will present the analysis of more then 1000 drawings realized by 9 and 14 years old pupils and representing "a scientist". Form the drawings emerge stereotypes, fears, desires, expectations and more, a whole imaginery that has to be taken in account for an effective educative adn communicative action.
Two concepts seemingly distant from each other, scientific education and European citizenship, have been the basis for "SEDEC - Science Education for the Development of European Citizenship", a European project funded by the European Commission in the framework of the Socrates/Comenius programme, aiming at producing training material addressed to European teachers. Started in autumn 2005, the project will end in 2008 with an in-service training course for European teachers and educators.
In the course of the last decade the European debate on the concept of citizenship has shown that a definition of this concept in strictly legal and jurisprudence terms is reductive. Indeed a behavioral element is present, which goes beyond the defence and request for defence of rights and duties, but actually stresses the importance of acting within a community (or within several communities). A citizenship belonging to a given space/time context which, to be authentic, requires know-how and know-how-to-be that can be gained in different training opportunities (formal, informal etc.) with various active learning methodologies and through experience. The SEDEC project aims to investigate which teaching methodologies and activities specifically developed for the teaching of sciences can be applied in other learning contexts, in order to sustain actions for developing an active citizenship.
IUFM is a centre for the in-service training of teachers and the development of didactic research. IUFM contribution to the SEDEC project is essentially built on a reflexion on educational implications of the links between science and European citizenship. We are convinced that European citizenship may be developed in scientific activities in school, by the introduction of communication moments, where pupils have to express and defend their ideas, and also to understand and accept the others’ ones. We have implemented two activities using the results of the SEDEC survey on science perception, that make the pupils get a better view on scientific research, especially in the knowledge of two scientific “jobs”, astronomer and botanist. Our approach consists of allowing the children express their conceptions of these jobs, of organising a debate to clarify these ideas, and of confronting them with other pupils’ opinions in Europe, with the history of the involved science and with direct testimonies of scientists. The project should be pursued in allowing classes in Europe to communicate about a scientific problem and so, to live their European citizenship.