The ERASMUS+ project Remote Inquiries in Science Education (RISE) directly supports science teachers carrying out experimental investigations under remote conditions. Results of the project will also be applicable in other remote learning conditions e.g. supporting pupils’ with long-term illness. Online professional learning opportunities will be offered to support teachers in enhancing their knowledge and confidence in carrying out experimental investigations in science remotely.
A review of the use of experimental activities in science teaching indicated that ‘real’ experiments, where pupils carry out investigations using equipment and not only observations of animations/simulations/videos, was practically negligible during COVID-19 restrictions. The RISE projects focuses mainly on Inquiry based Learning (IBL), the approach, where pupils form their inquiry question reflecting their interest, design and carry out experiments, and draw conclusions from observations or collected measurements. In this way pupils become owners of own learning. The teachers experienced in IBL can easily adapt the method to other situations, such as problem learning, but also carrying out experiments as demonstrations and similar. The teachers involved in the RISE project will achieve this level of experience in two ways, through remote workshops during Professional Learning Communities of Teachers (PLCTs) or through participation in remote courses designed and implemented during this project.
Number and profile of participants
In the RISE project four PLCTs will be formed, one in each country and teachers in those PLCTs will receive a direct training from partners. We anticipate that 24 – 40 teachers will be directly involved in PLCTs. We estimate that the teachers’ involvement in PLCTs will influcene their practice and consequently several hundred of their pupils will be influenced indirectly. We anticiapte that 16-20 teachers will participate in each of the two RISE courses, influencing a further cohort of ~40 science teachers and indirectly their pupils. All four RISE partners will collaborate to improve and develop coaching professional learning workshops using inquiry appraches under remote conditions.
Invitation to join the Irish Professional Learning Community of Teachers
You are invited to participate in eight hours of sharing and exploring inquiry based classroom activities suitable for Irish second-level science specifications durign April 2022
- What: 8 hours of inquiry workshops (online)
- When: During April 2022 (Dates to be agreed based on participants preferred availability)
- Reserve your place by completing the form available at: https://forms.gle/X2hPFhFYKbEcHtHL6
- These workshops will be facilitated by Dr. James Lovatt, Dr. Paul Grimes & Dr. Eilish McLoughlin from CASTeL at Dublin City University.
Erasmus + Project Remote Inquiries in Science Education has been funded under Grant Agreement 2020-1-SI01-KA226-SCH-093576.