1,721,017 research outputs found
Introducing History (and Philosophy) of Science in the Classroom: A Field Research Experience in Italy
No full textFor quite some time, many EU and Italian Ministry of Education official doc- uments have warmly suggested the introduction of the history and the philosophy of science in the teaching of science disciplines at school. Accordingly, there is a shared agreement between pedagogists and science historians about the efficacy of this approach towards an understanding of the current curriculum content and the Nature of Science. What is missing, at least in Italy, is a concrete fieldwork in the classroom to show the validity of these declarations. This essay is a report of the experience of introducing history and philosophy of science into junior and senior high school classrooms in Apulia (Italy). The aims of this project are: (a) to build a model of research involving high school teachers and university lecturers in the design and construction of teaching units that use the story of science and epistemology for teaching science and (b) produce evidence that this approach is effective in getting more interest from students in science. We relied on many schools for carrying out the historical-scientific teaching modules. The modules were carried out through the case study approach. In the first phase, the participating teachers were trained by University tutors on the modalities of this particular teaching approach. In the second phase, the teachers carried out the modules in their classes and finally these modules were presented in a conclusive con- ference. Moreover, we evaluated the efficacy of the intervention through specifically created agreement questionnaires
Performascienza. Laboratori teatrali di storia della scienza a scuola
No full textIn che modo rendere lo studio della scienza più accattivante?
Inserendosi nei più attuali dibattiti nazionali ed europei sulla didattica della scienza e sulla promozione di strategie attive di apprendimento che incentivino l’appeal delle discipline scientifiche e l’orientamento alle carriere nel settore, il progetto “Performascienza. Laboratori sperimentali di Scienza e Teatro” ha sperimentato l’attuazione di laboratori a contenuto storico-scientifico attraverso la resa drammaturgica di case-study tratti dalla storia della scienza in scuole secondarie di primo e secondo grado di Bari e provincia.
Idea forte è l’applicazione dell’approccio storico-critico alle discipline scientifiche, orientato alla collocazione della scienza nel suo contesto ed alla strutturazione di un apprendimento complesso, interdisciplinare e ricco di ricadute metacognitive, che metta in grado gli studenti di “catturare l’esperienza” degli scienziati e di comprendere i perché della scienza.
Il volume ne documenta l’attuazione, con un’ampia indagine didattica sull’efficacia delle strategie utilizzate, sull’immaginario scientifico di studenti e insegnanti, sulle pratiche didattiche utilizzate nell’insegnamento scientifico e sul ruolo della scuola nell’orientamento a studi e carriere scientifiche.
Ricadute significative sono state il coinvolgimento attivo di tutto il mondo scolastico e la promozione di un dialogo costruttivo fra Scuola e Università, tradizionalmente troppo distanti tra loro.
Vincitore del concorso Principi Attivi - Giovani idee per una Puglia migliore (Regione Puglia, Assessorato alla Trasparenza e alla Cittadinanza Attiva), Performascienza è stato ideato e condotto dall’Associazione SCIENZ@PPEAL di Bari in collaborazione con il Seminario di Storia della Scienza dell’Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro” e il La.Ri.D. (Laboratorio di ricerca Didattica) della Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione della medesima università
IL RACCONTO DELLA SCIENZA DIGITALSTORYTELLING IN CLASSE
No full textCome insegnare la scienza ai nativi digitali della società della conoscenza?
Come costruire a scuola le competenze scientifiche nell’ottica del lifelong learning?
Il volume tenta di dare alcune risposte concrete a queste e ad altre domande che riguardano il processo di apprendimento-insegnamento della matematica e della scienza nella scuola di oggi.
Vi si illustra il progetto IL RACCONTO DELLA SCIENZA – Digital Storytelling in classe, ideato e realizzato dal Centro Interdipartimentale Seminario di Storia della Scienza dell’Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro in collaborazione con un coeso numero di istituti scolastici di Scuola Secondaria di I e II grado della Puglia.
Partendo dalla diffusione presso le scuole pugliesi di un bando di concorso finalizzato alla realizzazione di Digital Storytelling a contenuto storico-scientifico, il progetto ha realizzato nell’a.s. 2010-2011 una vera e propria ricerca che ha indagato: le immagini della scienza diffuse presso gli insegnanti, l’efficacia dell’approccio storico, narrativo e costruttivista e l’efficacia della costruzione di ambienti di apprendimento audiovisivi e multimediali nella promozione delle competenze scientifiche degli studenti.
Idea forte alla base della ricerca è che la conoscenza della storia densa della scienza, della complessa dimensione culturale, politica, economica ed epistemologica della produzione di conoscenza scientifica sia un elemento irrinunciabile, oggi, per essere davvero cittadini “competenti”.
Vincitore del finanziamento del MIUR nell’ambito della Legge 6/2000 per la Diffusione della cultura scientifica, al progetto hanno collaborato importanti istituzioni del territorio pugliese: l’Ufficio Scolastico Regionale della Puglia, la Cittadella Mediterranea della Scienza di Bari, il CISMUS (Centro Interdipartimentale di Servizi per la Museologia Scientifica), la Fondazione Apulia Film Commission e l’Associazione SCIENZ@PPEAL – Diffusione e comunicazione della cultura scientifica di Bari
La narrazione e le storie nella didattica della scienza: il contributo della storia e della filosofia della scienza
No full textFor quite some time, many EU and Italian Ministry of Education official documents have warmly suggested the introduction of the history and the philosophy of science in the teaching of science disciplines at school. Accordingly, there is a shared agreement between pedagogists and science historians about the efficacy of this approach towards an understanding of the current curriculum content and the Nature of Science. There is also a lively debate about the different practical modalities that could be used for its introduction in class. What is missing, at least in Italy, is a concrete didactic research to show the validity of these declarations. This essay is a report of the real experience of introducing history and philosophy of science into junior and senior high school classrooms in Apulia (Italy). We relied on many schools for carrying out the historical-scientific teaching modules. The modules were carried out through the case study approach. In the first phase, the participating teachers were trained by University tutors on the modalities of this particular teaching approach. In the second phase, the teachers carried out the modules in their classes and finally these modules were presented in a conclusive conference. Moreover, we evaluated the efficacy of the intervention through specifically created questionnaires. These are the positive results of the research: the efficacy in the conveyance of the scientific contents, the openness of the learners (and the teachers) towards issues on the Nature of Science, the attainment of a more complex view of science and the student’s great enthusiasm in showing publicly the work done. Some criticalities: the extra time and work that the teachers were asked to devote to this research on the one hand for preparing the modules and on the other for the lack of ad hoc teaching aids. On this latter criticality we will devote our future efforts
L'intelligenza emozionale tra scienza e fantascienza. Hawthorne, Dick, Asimov, Turing, Tomkins
No full text
Innovazione nella didattica delle scienze. L'approccio storico e la metodologia dello studio di caso
No full textIl progetto Performascienza. Laboratori teatrali di storia della scienza a scuola (Morgese, Vinci, 2010) ha realizzato laboratori teatrali a contenuto storico-scientifico nelle scuole con lo scopo di promuovere un approccio inedito ed accattivante allo studio della scienza, quello storico e per problemi, che ha permesso agli studenti di entrare nel vivo della costruzione della scienza, di accedere ad una visione problematica e critica del suo divenire, di assaporare il piacere di uno studio della scienza contestualizzato ed umanizzato: si inserisce, dunque, nell’attuale dibattito internazionale sulla promozione di strategie didattiche attive che incentivino l’appeal delle discipline scientifiche. Nella sperimentazione è stata condotta un’ampia indagine didattica sull’efficacia nella costruzione della scientific literacy delle strategie utilizzate, sull’imma¬ginario scientifico di studenti e insegnanti, sulle pratiche didattiche dell’insegnamento scientifico e sul ruolo della scuola nell’orientare a studi e carriere scientifiche
Case Studies from the History of Science in Science Education: a Field Research in Italy
No full textTitle: Case Studies from the History of Science in Science Education: a Field Research in Italy
Authors: Liborio Dibattista, Francesca Morgese
Affiliation: Interdipartment Centre of History of Science, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy
Topic: Case Studies in STEM Education
Abstract
According to definition of Arthur Stinner about case studies in science education: “case studies are historical contexts with one unifying idea designed according to the guidelines for writing a large context problem”.
The main idea of the case-study must be an important idea for science, but also a significant idea for the world in which the students live in order to capture their attention and imagination, so it is necessary to propose a story, a scientific narrative, that can shed some light on this fundamental idea, through the dramatization of biographical episodes, either of famous debates or retracing the theme through the centuries and showing the various interpretations within the scientific conceptions of subsequent epochs or different geographical regions.
Current views on the nature of learning have made in-depth reflections on storytelling as a learning tool in educational contexts and on the ways in which storytelling can be used to facilitate student learning and critical thinking skills. Many authors have suggested storytelling as a means of making sense of experience and have pointed out some strong links between reflection, learning and storytelling in education. Storytelling is gaining popularity in education as a result of the fact that it seems to be capable of making learning meaningful and achieving important learning outcomes, such as the ability to reflect, to generalise, and to evaluate.
We agree that the true winning move, from a didactic point of view, is that the history of science enables us to tell stories. The infinite stories of scientists and of their controversies are an inexhaustible mine of narrative ideas that have an undeniable advantage: they help to keep the students’ attention.
Starting from these assumptions, we designed a field study to test the feasibility of the case studies in the classroom to foster learning of science and NoS (Nature of Science).
So, the goals of our study was the following:
· to test a research model that would involve high school teachers and university professors in the planning and creation of teaching units which use case studies from the history of science and the epistemology of science to teach scientific disciplines;
· to stress the importance of an inquiry based approach oriented towards issues regarding NoS (Nature of Science), thanks to the history of science;
· to produce evidence that this approach is effective in achieving a higher level of interest in scientific subjects on the part of learners.
The project, which we called “The History of Science goes to School”, ran into junior and senior high school classrooms in Puglia (Italy), at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. The project was the final stage of an awareness campaign that has been conducted by our research institute for several years with the secondary school science teachers in our region.
The first step we undertook was to plan and implement a series of meetings in the schools in which we wanted to propose the study. Twenty-four teachers participated in the project (11 from junior high schools, 13 from senior high schools). At these meetings, we illustrated the particular modalities, case studies methodology, with which we would present the history of science in the classroom and the benefits that we hoped the learners and the teachers would enjoy.
The next step was the preparation, by the teachers of the schools participating in the project, of the case studies that they intended to present to their classes, adopting the historical-philosophical method that we proposed. In this phase, the university researchers acted as tutors to the school teachers insofar as the teaching units were proposed by the teachers, but were developed with the help of the university researchers. The fifteen case studies built in the previous phase were carried out in the classroom in the first two months of the 2009-2010 school year.
Each teacher evaluated the impact of this approach on the cognitive gains made by the students, as well as any change in their feelings about studying scientific disciplines.
Finally, a satisfaction questionnaire was administered to the classes which then participated in a final workshop during which there was a presentation of student work and of the opinions of both students and teachers on the perceived significance of the project.
The project ended in November 2011. The sample consisted in 418 students, 225 (54%) from junior high schools and 193 (46%) from senior high schools. The division by gender was: 198 male (47%) and 220 female (53%).
The degree of participation and involvement recorded through this kind of presentation turned out to be very high. In general, the historical-philosophical approach has proven itself to be more appealing than a “dogmatic” lesson. This aspect needs to be highlighted since one of the critical points about students' perception of science concerns the way in which scientific disciplines are presented at school.
The students have acquired a sense of awareness about the “life” of scientific theories: they come to light, they are modified, they mature and they die, over the course of history.
The teachers and learners verified the acquisition of curricular notions and contents presented through this didactic proposal.
Finally, it is important to underline the effectiveness of the collaboration between university and high schools: the high school teachers were extremely positive about the proposal by the university. The university researchers were able to have firsthand experience with the difficulty of translating into real teaching practice the proposals that scientific and pedagogical research produce. In this way, a collaborative space was created in which the innovative contents proposed by science historians were inserted into the good teaching practices of the teachers, with their pedagogical skills
Realizzare un digital storytelling. Nozioni informatiche di base
No full textCome insegnare la scienza ai nativi digitali della società della conoscenza? Come costruire a scuola le competenze scientifiche nell’ottica del lifelong learning? Partendo dalla diffusione presso le scuole pugliesi di un bando di concorso finalizzato alla realizzazione di Digital Storytelling a contenuto storico-scientifico, il progetto ha realizzato nell’a.s. 2010-2011 una vera e propria ricerca che ha indagato: le immagini della scienza diffuse presso gli insegnanti, l’efficacia dell’approccio storico, narrativo e costruttivista e l’efficacia della costruzione di ambienti di apprendimento audiovisivi e multimediali nella promozione delle competenze scientifiche degli studenti
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