The Rationale for a Teaching Innovation About the Interrelationship Between Science and Technology     

R. Hadjilouca  C. P. Constantinou  N. Papadouris 《Science & Education》2011,20(10):981-1005

This paper refers to the development of a teaching innovation for the nature of science (NOS), for students aged 11–15, which specifically focuses on the interrelationship between science and technology. The development of the teaching and learning materials relied on inputs from three sources: the history and philosophy of science and technology, existing knowledge concerning the teaching and learning about the NOS, empirical data on students’ initial ideas and difficulties about this topic. The first served to provide an account for the various forms of interaction between science and technology, which, in turn, guided the formulation of epistemologically coherent learning objectives. The second provided the pedagogical grounds on which to base the design of the activities. The third facilitated the design of activities that build on students’ productive initial ideas, while providing them with guidance to resolve the difficulties they tend to encounter. In this paper, we describe the rationale underlying the teaching and learning materials and we describe the activity sequence they embody.  相似文献   

Teaching aspects of the interrelationship between science and technology: a research report on the design,enactment and evaluation of a teaching proposal     

Rodothea Hadjilouca 《Research in Science & Technological Education》2013,31(4):446-470

Background: Helping upper elementary and lower secondary school students develop an awareness of various aspects of the nature of science (NOS) and nature of technology (NOT) is a widely recognized goal of science teaching. In this study, we focus on the connections between science and technology (S&T).

Purpose: We report on the design, development, enactment and evaluation of a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) that combines hands-on activities in geometrical optics with explicit epistemological discourse for reflection purposes. The design of the TLS draws on perspectives from the inquiry-oriented and design-based teaching and learning frameworks.

Sample: The enactment of the TLS involved a class of 17 sixth-grade students, aged 10–11 years old, of a public elementary school in Cyprus.

Design and methods: We present findings from written responses to both closed and open-ended tasks as well as follow-up semi-structured interviews that probed students’ understanding of the difference between the main goals of S&T.

Results: The results illustrate elementary students’ readiness to engage with epistemic issues and demonstrate the potential of prompting young learners’ ability to develop informed awareness of the NOS and NOT. The results also provided feedback for the revision of the TLS so as to further enhance its effectiveness in achieving the stated learning objectives.

Conclusion: We discuss the implications of our findings for the teaching of the NOS and NOT and for the design and validation of TLSs. It is possible for students of this age group to develop an awareness of issues related to the NOS and NOT. TLSs can be improved through design-based research approaches to serve as productive tools to this end.  相似文献