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1.
SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME 1.1
The aims of the Seminar - The
Seminar aims to bring together those who are involved with the training of teachers
to teach physics throughout the school age range in order that participants will
be able to share ideas concerned with ‘how to teach student teachers to
teach physics in schools’.
- It
will focus on what teacher trainers can do with their students in preparing them
for work in school, but it will also consider the means, practices, resources
and support that encourage and enable physics teachers to achieve, maintain and
enhance good quality teaching throughout their professional lives.
- The
Seminar hopes to bring together teacher trainers, scientists from universities
and industry, researchers in education and school teachers united in a common
aim to improve the quality of physics education.
1.2
Why is the seminar necessary at this time?
- The many factors that
make the seminar timely include:
-
A new emphasis on the professionalism of teachers that requires a complex interaction
of subject knowledge with technical, pedagogical, social, administrative and organisational
skills.
- The
challenge, in many countries, to recruit and retain in the profession enough high
quality physics teachers, at a time when physics graduates have a wide choice
of careers available to them.
-
The educational demands of a scientific and technologically based society where
few citizens understand science well enough to take part in scientific debate
on issues of direct concern, and many public figures are proud of the fact that
they are not scientifically literate.
- The
need for teachers to improve their approach to teaching physics so that recent
and relevant scientific knowledge is taught to students in a highly motivating
way. Abstract physics must give way to physics in context for most, whilst at
the same time preparing others for higher education in physics which may be of
an abstract aproach. Tools and methods must be offered to students rather than
answers to questions which have not been asked.
-
The need for physics/science education -o begin at kindergarten and continue throughout
schooling. Young students have an enthusiasm for scientific investigation and
this needs to be nurtured early and encouraged for all students. Good physics/science
education is essential for those who teach our youngest children as it is known
that many future scientists have already decided to study science before they
leave primary school.
-
The likelihood that the mission, organisation and cooperation of Institutions
(Universities - Physics and Education Departments - and Teacher Training Colleges)
may need to change. There is more to teacher training, and training for other
professions too, than subject knowledge!
-
There exists of a vast amount of research on teaching and learning that should
be properly utilised in meeting the needs of the trainee teacher.
-
The interation of teacher training institutions and schools in the training of
teachers
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