Browsing by Author "Koseoglu, Fitnat"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Article Citation Count: 12Improving Science Teachers' Views about Scientific Inquiry: Reflections from a Professional Development Program Aiming to Advance Science Centre-School Curricula Integration(Springer, 2019) Çiğdemoğlu, Ceyhan; Koseoglu, Fitnat; Public Relations and AdvertisingThe present study specifically focuses on science teachers' views about scientific inquiry and their use of scientific inquiry in their lesson plans, which were prepared at a professional development workshop designed for better utilization of science centers (SCs). As an impact evaluation research, qualitative data was collected from 41 purposively selected volunteer science teachers. The project team provided the participants with intense instruction in inquiry, and fostered them to learn nature of science and nature of scientific inquiry explicitly. The participants designed lesson plans that integrate school science curricula with exhibits at SCs before and after the workshop. An open-ended questionnaire about the views about scientific inquiry (VASI) was administered before and after the workshop, and teachers' post-lesson plans were analyzed to detect the presence of scientific inquiry aspects. The majority of teachers exhibited improved views about scientific inquiry based on the VASI instrument. Also, lesson plan analyses indicated that teachers, who showed more improvement in VASI, included more scientific inquiry (SI) elements in their post-lesson plans. It was observed that science teachers' lesson plans are limited in terms of teaching science in line with real scientific inquiries in SCs to make students learn about the nature of scientific inquiry while learning science. Only two groups embedded SI properly in the SC-oriented lesson plans, and teachers rather used inquiry-based methods of teaching (e.g., argumentation, predict-observe-explain) and process skills (e.g., questioning, explanations). Accordingly, further studies are suggested to develop a specific pedagogical content knowledge framework for teaching with/in SCs.Article Citation Count: 1Science Teachers' Professional Development about Science Centers Enhancing Science Teachers' Views Concerning Nature of Science(Springer, 2020) Çiğdemoğlu, Ceyhan; Cigdemoglu, Ceyhan; Kanli, Uygar; Koseoglu, Fitnat; Public Relations and AdvertisingThe purpose of this study is twofold: first, to delve into professional development (PD) of science teachers' views about nature of science (NOS) throughout activities linking NOS aspects to science centers (SCs), and second, to reveal how a science teacher uses NOS aspects while teaching in SCs. An instrumental qualitative case study method with different data sources was used. There were 18 elementary science teachers participating voluntarily in this study. Additionally, one science teacher among the participants was observed two times during her SCs visit with her grade 6th and 7th students. Researchers trained science teachers for using the facilities of SCs and supported their understanding of NOS. Before and after the workshop, open-ended VNOS-C questionnaire was administered, and follow-up interviews were conducted. Observations in SCs were made to check whether the teacher were able to use NOS concepts while teaching science. Findings revealed that the majority of science teachers exhibited improved views about NOS, and improvement was attained particularly on the aspects of tentativeness, methods of scientific investigation, social and cultural embeddedness, and creativity and imagination, while the least improvement was noted for scientific theories and laws. During the SC visits, the teacher employed all aspects of NOS except the theory and law tenet and mostly discuss about the observation, inference, and experiment while teaching. Further PD activities are suggested to support teachers to develop their own teaching plans specific to each exhibit by employing NOS concepts for teaching with/in SCs.