9. Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen (UCPH)
The Department of Science Education (DSE) is an independent unit of the Faculty of Science at the University of Copenhagen. The Department does research, development work, communication and teaching within the field of science didactics and science education (including mathematics). It has activities on all educational levels, but mainly within upper secondary and tertiary education. With a staff of 10 in June of 2008 DSE is the largest Danish actor in science education research. Research at DSE is concentrated in three areas: Didactical design of science education: Learning theory, design tools, design aspects, educational practices Relationships between science as a research profession and a school/university subject: Curriculum development and implementation, approaches to teaching and subjects, epistemological aspects of science education. In-service and pre-service teacher education at tertiary and upper secondary level. Also, the DSE at UCPH is leading the scientific literacy work package for the Mind the Gap project, whose results will also be useful to this project. Teaching at DSE The Department aims to bringing didactical and pedagogical knowledge to faculty staff and students as well as providing courses for PhD.-students (Introduction to University Pedagogy) within science didactics. In particular, the Department is in charge of the pedagogical training of newly appointed assistant professors (Course in Higher Education Teaching). Furthermore, it provides ad hoc workshops and short courses to a variety of users. Some of these activities are open to students and staff from other universities. Task allocation The main task attributed to the DSE at UCPH as leader of S-TEAM WP8 is to produce a report which connects teacher competence development with scientific literacy using examples from such programs around the EU. UCPH will incorporate its numerous existing methodologies for achieving competencies based on the paradigm of scientific literacy into a training package for teachers. UCPH will also lead partners in producing training materials targeted both at specific disciplinary areas and at more general teaching problems in scientific literacies. Staff members who will be undertaking the work: Jens Dolin, Ph.D., Associate Professor, will be the WP8 leader. Dolin, who is head of the Department, has done research in teaching and learning science (with a focus on dialogical processes, forms of representation and the development of competencies), general pedagogical issues (bildung, competencies, assessment and evaluation) and organisational change (reform processes, curriculum development, teacher conceptions). He has led a number of cross institutional research projects (Validation of PISA in a Danish context, Motivation and Learning, Potentials and Barriers for School Development and others), and has authored a 'Competence Description of the Sciences' in relation to scientific literacy and ultimately, science teaching. Robert Evans, PhD, Associate Professor, will be an assistant WP8 leader. He has many years of experience teaching science teaching methods courses to preservice teachers. He has helped lead a teacher induction program to extend university support and education to new science teachers. His international research in personal capacity beliefs has focused on understanding factors affecting new science teachers and devising programs of support for them.