Presentations:

1. Giuseppina Rinuando
A weblog on physics of everyday objects for primary school teachers
2. Jure Bajc
Teachers’ training program for teaching physics within science in lower secondary school
3. Vera Bojovic
Physical phenomena in preschool and elementary education – teaching and learning activities
4. Federico Corni
Strategies in Formative Intervention Modules (MIF) for physics education of primary school teachers: a coordinated research in Reggio Emillia and Udine
5. Dušan Kernel, Seta Oblak
Resources and didactic materials for science in primary school
6. Svetlana Markova
Education of teachers for the course of physics in kindergarden and primary school
7. Goeran Nordstroem
Pre-school physics
8. Barbara Rovšek
Revelation of misconceptions in homeworks
9. Ana Gostincar Blagotinšek
Textbooks to support learning and teaching
10. Marta Žuvic-Butrovac
Constructuvistic workshops for children in physics teacher's education
11. Dean Zollman
Large enrollement physics class for future elementary school teachers
12. Dorothee Trowbridge (WS session presentation)
Teaching science using inquiry
13. Galileo Violini (WS session presentation)
Teaching Afgan refugees in Iran
14. Marisa Michelini (written PT presentation)
Physics in conetxt for elementary teacher training

The spotlights of the presentations:

• ad1
  The use of a weblog (a “public virtual diary book”) on everyday objects to implement the collaboration between primary school teachers was presented. The main aspects are: Why everyday objects? Why the weblog? Toys inspire creativity, are at the same time familiar and available. A weblog solves the logistics by using internet and is at the same time better than e-mail list or forum. Present experience with weblog is good, it is well accepted, it seems useful.
  Comment: Is there a possibility of an international weblog?
  Answer: Why not.
  Answer: There is a national one set up in Croatia already.
• ad2
  The post-graduate training program for Science teachers in lower secondary school was presented. The physics training program of 105 hours deals with seven modulus; material, heat, and charge flow, waves, sound, light with respect to colors and imaging phenomena. Each modulus is devided into theoretical and didactical part, each consisting of 4 hours of lectures, 2.5 hours of experiments, and 1 seminar.
  The main aspects are to give the teachers sufficient physics background and to prepare them for real classroom situations. The stress is on constructivistic methods and experiments, related to everyday experience of the children.
• ad3
  Based on the fact that the children prefer activities rather than passive listening, a basic question is how to foster the intellectual activity of the children. Besides the selection of adequate problems, i.e., experiments in which the children could actively take part, which are dynamic in a sense of modifications, it is important that the children will be able to understand the phenomena.
  The teacher's role should be more as a partner and a guide, rather than an “authority of knowledge”.
  Question: What about the teacher's role of evaluation of children's work?
  Answer: Not in pre-school, but later. (a possible WS discussion starting point)
• ad4
  A research in Formative Intervention Modules (MIF) for physics education of primary school teachers was presented. The model of training was based on personal involvement, reflection, and game experiments (GEI exhibit). One of the important conclusions was again the favour of the students in personal involvement, i.e., their “putting themselves to the test” or “learning through experience”.
• ad5
  The presented approach to the developement of textbooks is based on several aspects: the curriculum, the stage of cognitive development, the social interaction. At early stages of education, pictures are crucial, everyday objects and situations as a framework of the physical phenomenon. Another aspect is a teacher's guide, either helping in understanding of the phenomena or in the preparation of the presentation to the pupils.
  Examples of didactic material were given, for example external and internal drive of a vehicle (bycicle or home made model of a cart with a motor based on an elastic rope)
• ad6
  The presentation of the physical content through stories was suggested. For example to present a sort of a magic trick a fairy does and give a physical explanation later at the end of the story.
• ad7
  Main conclusions were that experimental learning in early stages of children's education is far more important than any kind of formal lectures. The importance of adequate explanations. An example of the water that does not “want” to go into a bottle, if the air can not go out.
  Comment: The importance of the surface tension has to be added at least in higher classes not to mislead the children.
• ad8
  Three typical examples of misconceptions of the students of a two subject study (physics and something else, mathematics or chemistry or technology) in the third year of the study were given. After succesfully passing physics courses in the first two years, the students (future physics teachers) still seek for simplest possible solutions to given problems, ignoring some obvious results or facts of a given problem or experiment.
  This clearly indicates that many problems in the teaching process are still related to the unsufficient understanding of the teachers themselves.
• ad9
  Some important aspects in the existing and future textbooks were proposed and discussed
  a. Guides through the lectures rather than content transmitors
  b. Practical work stimulations through the connection between textbooks and workbooks
  c. Support to the constructivistic approach
  d. Different level of difficulty of questions and problems in order to stimulate quick and slow pupils
• ad10
  A constructivistic workshop for primary school children in collaboration between university teachers as moderators and preservice teachers as observers and participants was presented, using simple demonstrative experiments with everyday material and objects. The key point was the cooperation children-students-teachers.
• ad11
  A particular USA experience in teaching a large class of pre-service teachers was presented. The most important innovation in the well established Karplus teaching cycle is a change in the exploration and the application part. These are done at a “self paced” rate.
• ad12
  Interesting funny low cost home made experiments were presented. It was once more shown that children and adults are motivated by the “magic” of the everyday life objects used in an uncommon way.
• ad13
  The environment in which the children are learning and attending school may vary significantly from country to country or even between the provinces in a single country. An example of Iranian system for Iranians and for Afgan refugees was presented.
• ad14
  Formative intervetion modules (MIF) in physics for pre-school and elementary teachers are presented. The modules are organized in the form of a critical reflection for the construction of disciplinary basis (measuring, reference frame, position and motion, thermal states and processes).

Workshop discussion:

The structure of the group:

The participants have different background. In particular, some of them do mostly research in different physics themes and are involved in pre-service teacher preparation only with the courses they give (we name this group A). Other participants (group B) have the experience directly in the educational fields and have been at some time involved in the work with children. The resulting diversity was clearly reflected in the discussion.

Preliminary discussion of the most important issues:

1. The problem of formal-informal physics presentations at all levels of education
2. Learning problems of physics phenomena and didactic models or approaches to teaching
3. The relationship between the everyday life experience, spontaneous knowledge, and school teaching
4. Creating the networks between teachers for communication and exchanges of ideas, textbooks, mutual help, etc…
5. Addressing the problem of formation and updating of a large numbers of teachers
6. Higher and lower secondary teacher’s fear that interesting experiments are already being “used” in pre-school and primary school
7. Evaluation in the pre-school, yes or no?
8. Contribution to RT2

Outcomes of the extended discussion:

Problems 1-3 were discussed together. The outcomes of the discussion:

Always start from everyday experience of the children, use concrete and familiar objects.

• Discussion on real life situations showed a wide diversity of opinions. At one end very simplified situations were suggested (A), at the other end it was suggested to start from situations with all their complexity (B).
• When educating teachers, the use of similar methodologies as when teaching children was promoted, in particular, interactive approach, hands-on experiments, encouragement of students to intervene, discuss, suggest, and ask questions. The implementation with the children and with the adults should nevertheless be different.
• “Moderate constructivistic approach”; not giving the explanation in advance, but let the pupils discover, suggest, propose, under the careful and intelligent mediation of the teacher.
• The evolution of the approaches used by teachers should develope in the direction of managing open-end situations. The preparation of teachers for this task is one of the main goals of the teacher’s preparation.
• Do not try to cover systematically all themes with children, but rather select some topics and develop them from different points of view in a pace suitable to the pupils. This is necessary due to small amount of time available.
• The question of how much of the content should be covered in the pre-service teacher’s preparation was argued with different solutions. Some contributions (mainly from group B) are more concerned with the methodology than with the content coverage, so they prefer a few topics, as for the children. Others (mainly group A) tend to a broader selection of topics.
• In general there was a better agreement on the methodology of children’s education than on how to prepare future teacher to cope with this accepted methodology.

Problems 4-5 were discussed together. The outcomes of the discussion:

• Interesting solution to the problem of the large number of pre-service primary school teachers was presented by Zollman’s “extended Karplus cycle”. Similar “poor-woman” version was presented by Enrica Giordano (Italy) with students doing the exploration and application part of Karplus cycle directly in the class, thus showing that practical solutions can be found even if space and technical resources are limited.
• The problem of communication and exchanges among the teachers was addressed by creating national weblogs with the possible extension to the international ones in the future.

Other problems and solutions

As far as the problem of repeating an experiment (problem 6) or a theme already introduced in an earlier stage of education, the group agreed that there is no problem as the context is different.
The problem of evaluation (7) was not really addressed, because it is too broad, but a general remark was that one should distinguish between formative evaluation (obtaining information of the teaching/learning process and monitoring it) and “giving marks”. The former should be done continuously starting in pre-school.

Contribution to RT2 “The role of the cooperation between schools and universities in order to improve teacher education” at the primary level

Almost all contributions presented projects/programs in which the university played a role in the primary school teacher education, so it seems that the university is now generally involved in different countries in the preparation of teachers also for the Kindergarten and the elementary school level.
In same cases experience of collaboration of universities with schools and with school teachers were also presented. In particular:

• in Slovenia this is done by regular one-day-workshops organized by the university, during which either didactical proposals are presented or some physics themes, which are not commonly treated are explained and discussed;
• in Italy there is a full involvement of primary school teachers and of the schools in the conduction of the practical training of university students of the degree in Scienze della Formazione Primaria (SFP);
• In the presentation by Marta Žuvic-Butorac and Rajka Jurdana (Croatia) constructivistic workshops were discussed held for primary school children in collaboration between university teachers as moderators and preservice teachers as observers and participants; the aim is to establish a “three body interaction” between university teachers, preservice teachers and pupils to understand how children accept physics in the “pre-physics age” and develop physics concepts