Rationale and theoretical background
The studies described in this set of papers were carried out as part of a three year
cycle of collaborative research and development activities conducted by King's
College, London UK and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. The project
presented in this special issue is based on the premise that in order to advance the
educational system and improve the practice of teachers, it is essential to promote the
professionalism of teachers beyond initial training through Continuing Professional
Development (CPD). More specifically, our interest centered on what processes and
inputs are required to help secondary school science teachers develop expertise in
specific aspects of science teaching and how engaging with these processes helped
teachers reflect on, develop and learn about their pedagogy.
The overarching goal has been to design evidence-based CPD programmes for
developing accomplished teaching in science. By this we mean CPD programmes
which require the teacher participants to take part in a professional development
programme that requires them to seek and identify evidence of practice in their own
classrooms. The focus for this evidence-based CPD approach is the process of
collection, analysis and reflection on evidence arising from classrooms and how this
provides the impetus and motivation for teachers to transform their practice.
The following six domains of science education were chosen for developing these
programmes:
1. Scientific enquiry with investigations,
2. Scientific discourse and argumentation,
3. Classroom assessment
4. Knowledge integration in physics,
5. Learning skills in science,
6. Inquiry in the chemistry laboratory.
These domains are not intended to provide a comprehensive description of expertise
in science teaching but rather they are illustrative of some of the important qualities
needed by an accomplished teacher of science. These six domains of science
education were each used as a vehicle to enhance teacher learning through engaging
in CPD programmes and producing an evidence-based portfolio. The CPD
programmes were designed to both increase teachers’ knowledge of specific domains
and help them reflect on how such ideas can be developed and interpreted into
pedagogy. This included helping teachers experiment and reflect on how the new
ideas could be developed and integrated into classroom practice. It also provided
opportunities for them to understand the utility of using evidence as part of their
regular cycle of reflection and development on practice.
The first three domains were developed in the UK and the others in Israel. It was
assumed that the collaborative effort between two nations that possess different
educational structure and philosophy, as well as different cultural beliefs and practices