Online Education Practices and Teaching Team Compositions in Australian Preservice Primary Science Education

Australian Initial Teacher Education (ITE) has long been marred by instability, scrutiny and high academic workloads. University wide workforce changes and the proliferation of online education require ongoing consideration as these factors have the potential to both enrich ITE and exacerbate existing issues. As subsect of ITE, preservice primary science education faces unique hurdles as establish student-centred, authentic practices have historically been delivered by tenured staff in traditional face-to-face settings. This paper aims to explore online teaching practices and teaching team composition in Australian preservice primary science education via interview and survey data collected from 17 academics in a Type II case study. Results showed varied, often asynchronous approaches to online education; punctuated by elements of academic resistance. Teaching teams were increasingly dependent on sessional staff, which has resulted in complex benefits and detriments. Researchers and administrators need to work proactively to determine how both online practices should be utilised and teaching teams should be structured to deliver high quality ITE.

An exploration of how teachers’ attitudes to global learning can be used to inform primary science education

This article contends that in England, where the status of science as a core subject has been weakened due to a focus on high-stakes accountability testing, a global learning approach reignites science as a subject that can nurture active global citizens. It argues that teacher knowledge and teachers’ personal and professional commitment to global issues can inform a more relevant and purposeful primary science education, empowering both them and those they teach to become agents of change. It suggests that by exploring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their relation to the primary science curriculum in England, as well as developing a series of pedagogical strategies in line with global learning, teaching and learning in primary science can become more engaging and purposeful beyond fulfilling an assessment framework. A mixed-methods research design was used to explore and inform the Global Learning in Primary Science (GLPS) project. The findings suggest that while practitioners shared a positive attitude to a global learning approach, without being explicitly indicated in curriculum policy, its integration will continue to be left to chance. This global learning approach provides an opportunity for primary science education to become valued as dynamic process which supports sustainable development rather than remaining a static body of knowledge.

THE WAYS THE THEORY OF PHYSICS EDUCATION CAN EVOLVE

Theory of physics education, as well as our Journal of Baltic Science Education, made a significant step over the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, formal physics education had a one-and-a-half century of development; JBSE was just an idea to be turned into the 1st issue in 2002. In this article, I would like to mention some of the great steps physics education made in the last decades and some open questions for the nearest future. I would like to apologize to the readers from the field of biology, chemistry or primary science education - unlike in my previous articles in this Journal (Demkanin, 2013; Demkanin, 2018), here I focus on physics education.