“Inquiry-Based Education in Science and Technology – i-BEST” (National project / National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics / 2013-2016)
Partners:
- National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics
- "Gheorghe Asachi" University from Iasi
- SC Computer Power S.R.L
The major goal of the project, to educate students for the knowledge-based economy, by increasing young generation interest in science and technology carriers and by promoting creativity and innovative thinking, will be achieved through a novel, mixed project-based / inquiry-based educational model for science teaching in schools at primary and lower secondary school levels. Emphasis will be placed to overcome the deficiencies Romania has as compared to the European achievements in science education at pre-university level.
A second goal of the project is to build-up a democratic citizenship both to school students and local authorities, through a participative contribution of the general public, by involving them actively into weather/ environment monitoring research projects. By its new approach, the project is an exploratory one, as it proposes a new educational paradigm based on a real time, virtually collaborative web-based platform.
The third aspect to be considered in the project is the support the continuous professional development (CPD) of in-service teachers, based on various project activities, which by themselves constitute inter-disciplinary investigations (the project will imply physics, chemistry, biology, geography, IT).
In the project frame are planned the following activities to be carried out:
A. Inexpensive teaching aids (experimental kits, educational videos, training courses and demo sessions for teachers) will be developed in order to complement the written resources available or that which will be further developed. In this way, teachers will have an easy access to practical instruments (kids, demo video) to support directly science education and will be more efficient in spending the time allocated to science lessons.
B. Assistance in using the teaching aids will be provided either through training courses or an e-learning platform (http://81.181.130.13/teachscience/).
C. A set of collaborative projects engaging a higher number of Romanian schools will be a good opportunity to have a broader dissemination of the inquiry-based science education principles in Romania. Such a program will be diversified by:
- extending the observations to a set of topics related to weather and pollution monitoring (UV radiation, water quality, noise pollution);
- runnning of measurements using data loggers and sensors;
- building-up of a virtual community of schools.
All these will be premiers and will set a track on science teaching in relation to the environmental studies. An extended database will be developed with students’ investigations results heading to multi variable, multi annual investigations performed by school communities (http://81.181.130.13/ibest/).
D. The use of data acquisition systems and sensors for field measurements will be associated to geography and mathematics. In this way, a cross-curricular approach will assist integrated science teaching.
E. Generally, Romanian teachers lack the direct interaction with foreign expertise for several reasons: financial constrains to travel or attend events abroad; poor foreign languages management; some sort of introversion because of real or imaginary complexes. To fill this gap and bring the outside world experience for a direct contact several activities are run: translations from foreign languages of learning units; organization of workshops/ courses for Romanian teachers delivered by European leading experts.
F. Through conferences and workshops, journal publications and conference papers, and project web site the project results are promoted. This will assure a better visibility of Romanian educational system on the international stage, and further participation of Romanian teams to European funded projects is encouraged (Society in Society, Life long learning, networks, twining schemes).
G. The project will be also a test bed for the use of data loggers in large collaborative projects run with school students at quite early age of education (8 – 14 years old). Based on the collected results school students will be thought elements of data mining and comparative interpretation in relation to weather and environment pollution.
Every year the international conference “Science Education in School” is organized. Special pages on the project site are dedicated to teachers’ projects in order to build a national network of inquiry-based learning practitioners, and to assist interested parties in exchanging ideas and best practice. The great success of this project in Romania is proved by the impressive number of visitors registered on the project web site.