Challenges in Primary and Secondary Science Teachers Education and Training

The Girep Seminar of 2003 made an important contribution to the problem of Quality Development of Teacher Education and Training, following the Barcellona Girep Conference of 2000 on Physics Teacher Education Beyond 2000. A number of important problems are still unresolved and a broad research study has been carried out and documented (Abell, 2007). Group 3 of the EU-Project STEPS2 is now dealing with this topic and discussing the main open problems. The Symposium will contribute by analyzing and discussing some of the main problems of teacher education and training in physics both with an institutional perspective, and in relation to curriculum through updating and school reform. The study, based on professional development and training, is one of the main aspects to be considered with regard to primary and secondary teacher training. The Ministries of Education discussed this question (Buchberger, 2000) and the need for common research and experience emerged. These are necessary for the comparisons required to produce agreements, mainly with regard to school reforms promoted in different countries. The central problem is how to organize training which will supply educational tools for different situations and contexts, and improve teaching competence. On an operative level, one of the main problems in teacher training is related to strategies and methods for producing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Shulman 1987), both in pre-service and in-service teacher training (Park 2008). Some of the related problems are: the lack of competence in content knowledge (CK); the difficulties for the novice in putting pedagogical knowledge into practice (PK) in relation to CK, the general difficulty in integrating PK and CK with regard to PCK, the planning skills and coherence in Teaching/Learning paths. The Green Paper on Teacher Education in Europe (Buchberger, 2000) highlights the crucial importance of designing learning situations in which teachers can find opportunities to develop structures of meaning, knowledge and activities for a didactical reconstruction of the disciplinary content, integrated with pedagogical competences, methodologies and teaching practices. Open research questions are: how to test (instruments and methods) PCK, how to promote methodological competences related to the subject, how to produce competences in planning activities 12 and action research, in implementing strategies for innovation, and taking into account the pupils’ role in learning. After an introduction by the coordinators, the symposium will focus on the problems of innovation in scientific teaching styles with regard to curricular reforms, and the personal involvement of students in learning processes, which will commence with the contexts of the Romanian educational system and a group of teachers from Poland. Teacher training problems and PCK will be discussed within a framework for prospective primary teachers, and for the proposal of a new approach to electrostatics. Physics Learning Tasks for Students with Special Educational Needs will be another aspect under discussion through a specific contribution.