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Azabu High School
GIREP Seminar
2003
There are many research groups organized by science teachers of secondary schools in Japan. Many of them are regional and voluntary. Some of them include elementary school teachers and other ones include university professors. They hold small meetings almost every month. In these meetings teachers exchange their ideas of demonstrations and experiments and discuss how to choose teaching materials, how to give a relevant question in their class, how to make a timetable of their classes and so on. It is the most effective in-service training system for teachers. This system is getting important in Japan. Because each junior high school has only one science teacher and new science teachers do not graduate science major. In a senior high school also has only one physics teacher. These are brought by the reduction of population of one grade and the reduction of number of students who choose physics in a senior high school. But there are some difficulties to run these meetings. The teachers of junior high schools are very busy. They have a little time to attend such meetings. And many of the ardent teachers of these groups are getting old. It is hard to inherit the resources of their groups.
We also organize nationwide association (The Association for Physics Education of Japan). The members of it are elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers and university professors. It links with many regional research groups and nationwide groups. We are working on in cooperation with these teachers and professors. We annually hold a big meeting in summer. Some of our colleagues are now making teaching materials from the fruits of our research on science education. The materials consist of modules. The one module consists of explanations, experiments, pictures, and movies. They are packed into CD. This activity is a little bit supported by ministry of education and science. I will introduce some of the samples and other activities of APEJ and other active teachers’ groups.