Transforming a doctoral summer school to an online experience: A response to the COVID‐19 pandemic

For the last 28 years, one of the leading international science education organisations has regularly provided a week-long summer school experience for doctoral students. In summer 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented international travel and close-contact interactions between scholars. This required the transformation and relocation of learning interactions between mentors and doctoral students online through a virtual week-long summer school. All doctoral participants, from across the five continents, were invited to reflectively comment on their educative experience after the online event. This paper consequently presents the perspectives of these science education PhD students who engaged with the transformed virtual summer school to consider how the range of varied online interactions maintained the learning opportunities for them and enabled their introduction to an established research community. The study indicates how the digital activities facilitated and maintained high-quality learning exchanges through a varied array of intellectual activities involving both experienced and novice scholars. The findings demonstrate how successful academic outcomes can be achieved remotely while minimising international travel and significantly reducing financial outlay. This was achieved through creatively structuring a week-long virtual experience and combining a series of synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities for different groupings of participants within the international summer school community

Participatory inquiries that promote consideration of socio-scientific issues related to sustainability within three different contexts: agriculture, botany and palaeontology

The involvement of students in dramatised inquiries, through participatory activity, offers opportunities to act in-role as scientists. The inquiries can ‘set-the-scene’, provide context and challenges for students to consider possibilities within and beyond everyday life. This approach can engage students in thinking about sustainability and developing citizenship competencies, such as thinking scientifically and critiquing ideas, interrogating evidence and assessing the validity of information, as well as decision making and problem solving. In this paper, adopting stories from the history of science is shown to provide rich, authentic contexts that engage students imaginatively and collaboratively in addressing past, present and future socio-scientific issues. To demonstrate how the approach can be adapted we drew on the work of three scientists: an agriculturalist; a botanist and a palaeontologist. Their scientific work informed the learning activities of several primary science lessons (with students aged 9–10). The agricultural activities were informed by the work of George Washington Carver and were related to improving soil quality through crop rotation as well as thinking about the diversity of food and other products that can be produced from plants. The botanically informed activities promoted understanding about processes linked to maintaining species diversity. These drew on the work of Marianne North, a Victorian botanical artist, noted for her detailed plant observations. The final socio-scientific context was related to the work of Mary Anning, a pioneering 19th century palaeontologist, who made significant fossil discoveries that contributed to the understanding of geology and evolution. Interactive and participatory activities, informed by the lives and work of these scientists, were designed to engage students in socio-scientific inquiry-based learning through a drama-based pedagogy. These dramatised inquiries promoted the development of scientific citizenship competencies. Scrutiny of data collected through multiple methods suggested that, by extending opportunities for learners to participate in these dramatised lessons, understanding sustainability became more salient for the students. Outcomes suggest several distinctive affordances offered by dramatisation when supporting understanding about sustainability and the development of scientific citizenship

Persistence and perseverance: working with university research ethics committee processes to elicit children's views, voices and volitions

The chapter reports on scrutiny of a lesson that involved a range of different small group and whole class participatory activities. As outlined earlier, questionnaires, group interviews, video of the lesson and individual audio recording of pupils' talk were designed to provide juxtaposed insights regarding the processes of pupils' learning about evolution. Administering questionnaires is a common and readily accepted approach that often purports to elicit students' thoughts, views and ideas about teaching and learning and is highlighted by well-cited reports. In the case discussed in the chapter, pupils were invited to answer questions about their understandings of adaptation and evolution at the beginning and end of a particular lesson. Eliciting how pupils participated in the classroom activities and observing who did what enabled elicitation of a range of moments when social constructivism was enacted. There is a clear need to protect young people who are generally perceived as ‘vulnerable’ in school-based research

The nature of epistemological opportunities for doing, thinking and talking about science : Reflections on an effective intervention that promotes creativity

Background: Randomised Control Trials (RCT) involving large numbers of schools, teachers and pupils, can provide statistically significant evidence that an intervention ‘works’, or makes a difference to learning. However, often the quantitative data collected to illustrate the extent of impact is insufficient to illustrate exactly ‘how’ the intervention was enacted, what was done and ‘why’ it was successful. This paper collates a range of forms of data from an innovative professional training programme to indicate the nature of the promoted strategies that comprise the ‘intervention’ and consider how they worked in practice. Purpose: To illustrate how a mixed methods approach is required to substantiate the nature, as well as the extent of impact, of an educational intervention. Namely, Thinking Doing and Talking Science (TDTS). Sample: The project reported on here involved 42 schools in a south east county in England, UK. 21 were the ‘experimental’ schools and 21 were ‘control’ schools. Design and Methods: The project was an Educational Endowment (EEF) Funded RCT, designed to assess the impact of the TDTS intervention. Results: Quantitative data showed TDTS had a statistically significant impact on the academic attainment of nine and ten-year olds, by an average of 3 months. The addition of the different forms of qualitative data provided here offer evidential insights illustrating how and why the intervention had the impact it did on thinking and attainment. Conclusions: Designing research projects that examine both the nature and extent of impact on pupils’ learning requires a mixed methods approach. This necessarily involves the statistical comparison of quantitative evidence from both the experimental and control school groupings. However, in addition to the quantitative data, qualitative evidence is required to elicit the precise nature of the intervention. This included observations during the professional development sessions, lesson transcripts, evaluative questionnaire data and interviews (with teacher and pupils) after in-service training each contributing to capturing a more comprehensive ‘picture’ of the key characteristics of a successful science learning intervention

Developing creativity within primary science teaching: What does it look like and how can classroom interactions augment the process?

This study contributes to the understanding of what it is that primary school teachers do (or could do) when engaging with their pupils to nurture creativity in science lessons. The research consists of a series of observations (i.e. three related cases), post-observational interviews with teachers concerning their practice and a survey of over 100 practising primary teachers. Lesson observations were examined through various analytical tools, which informed the generation of graphical representations to illustrate the teacher’s practices. The interview and survey data were analysed using frameworks developed from Ann Oliver’s ten ways to make science teaching creative and Dylan Wiliam’s five key formative assessment strategies. Interview data was also examined inductively to explore how far self-reports of creativity reflected observed practices. The deductive findings from the survey and interview data suggested teachers believed that they taught science through the child’s everyday experiences. This reportedly provided children with opportunities to independently observe scientific phenomena from alternate perspectives. However, the findings from the observations, and the inductive examination of the interviews illuminated how the teacher’s encouragement of agency-in-learning supported development of creativity. A wide range of pedagogic approaches adopted by teachers were shown to elicit emergent creativity-in-learning. To reify the nature of creative and critical explorations through the teacher-child verbal exchanges, dialogue was analysed by adopting a more comprehensive analytical framework, developed from Mercer’s three types of talk and Alexander’s lesser-known five patterns of teacher talk. The results of these analyses were reflectively scrutinised to explore how formative assessment strategies could support the development of creativity. Ultimately, it is anticipated that the findings from this study could inform the ways that researchers and practitioners consider and reflect upon the nature of creative teaching, the ways that it differs from creativity-in-learning and the influence(s) that formative assessment might bring to bear

Capturing the Nature of Teacher and Learner Agency Demonstrating Creativity: Ethical Issues and Resolutions

This article will focus on the ethical dilemmas and concerns related to eliciting the nature of agency in classrooms that emerges in learning contexts. Agency is a somewhat elusive phenomena to evidence because it involves capturing signs and indications of thinking involved in negotiating meanings, the capacity for initiating, and constructional decision-making. These processes are often made explicit through dialogic and actional exchanges between teachers and/or learners. This includes taking account of activities engaged in, either independently or collaboratively. It also requires evidence of earlier happenings or interactions between classroom participants that might influence and shape later events. There is also concern about the ways that teachers’ and learners’ demonstrable originality or creativity are recognised and communicated for scrutiny by others. Additionally, ethical approval procedures (BERA 2018) require that research protects participants’ anonymity, confidentiality, and dignity; therefore, research has to be carried out with integrity. Ensuring benefits from research are maximised and that no-one is harmed or made to feel uncomfortable requires the utmost care and balance between eliciting insightful data while maintaining the appropriate duty of care for participants. To achieve these objectives, multiple research methods were used. Audio and video recordings were transcribed and analysed to make sense of teacher and learner agency. The findings include an events map, photographic images, and dialogic episodes illustrating the nature of contrasting teacher and learner agency. The conclusion considers tensions that emerge as researchers seeking to characterize agency without compromising privacy

Capturing the Nature of Teacher and Learner Agency Demonstrating Creativity: Ethical Issues and Resolutions

This article will focus on the ethical dilemmas and concerns related to eliciting the nature of agency in classrooms that emerges in learning contexts. Agency is a somewhat elusive phenomena to evidence because it involves capturing signs and indications of thinking involved in negotiating meanings, the capacity for initiating, and constructional decision-making. These processes are often made explicit through dialogic and actional exchanges between teachers and/or learners. This includes taking account of activities engaged in, either independently or collaboratively. It also requires evidence of earlier happenings or interactions between classroom participants that might influence and shape later events. There is also concern about the ways that teachers’ and learners’ demonstrable originality or creativity are recognised and communicated for scrutiny by others. Additionally, ethical approval procedures (BERA 2018) require that research protects participants’ anonymity, confidentiality, and dignity; therefore, research has to be carried out with integrity. Ensuring benefits from research are maximised and that no-one is harmed or made to feel uncomfortable requires the utmost care and balance between eliciting insightful data while maintaining the appropriate duty of care for participants. To achieve these objectives, multiple research methods were used. Audio and video recordings were transcribed and analysed to make sense of teacher and learner agency. The findings include an events map, photographic images, and dialogic episodes illustrating the nature of contrasting teacher and learner agency. The conclusion considers tensions that emerge as researchers seeking to characterize agency without compromising privacy

From slavery to scientist: dramatising a historical story to creatively engage learners in resolving STEM problems

The involvement of children in dramatic inquiry, through activities introducing how scientists and technologists have worked in the past, can ‘set-the-scene’ to STEM inquiry and problem-solving. Historical stories provide rich, authentic contexts that engage children in imaginative and creative STEM-based challenges. In this chapter we describe how a sequence of dramatised activities enabled children to think about scientific and technological issues that were pertinent in the life and work of George Washington Carver (GWC), an American born into slavery. The children worked in-role, as GWC in dramatised inquiry activities, designing their own methods to investigate soil quality and plant growth and to explore how different plant parts might be mashed, ground, dissolved, sieved, mixed and heated to make different products. We describe how an action research approach was adopted, using mixed methods to collect the impact data. Data collected included field notes, informal discussions, interviews and questionnaires. Scrutiny of the data suggested that by participating in dramatised activities, learning became more meaningful for the children as they empathised with Carver’s situation as a scientist and technologist. The interventional project not only increased pupils’ engagement, learning about science and generation of original ideas but also demonstrated how teachers could be creative in STEM teaching

Messing with maltesers and magnets : Toward a theorisation about affordances using tablet technology in inquiry teaching and learning

This chapter is focused on discussion about the ways that tablet technology can support teaching and learning in inquiry contexts within STEM. The discussion about the nature of inquiry teaching and learning with digital technology is drawn from a series of case lessons in elementary science within the topic of ‘Properties of Materials’ in the UK. The research project informing this chapter examined teacher, young learners and non-participant observer’s perspectives of the same events, namely two sequential science lessons one with and the other with-out the use of tablet technology. A socio-cultural perspective of learning was adopted. Reflections on these three contrasting viewpoints of the processes of teaching and learning informs a theorisation about practice that utilises digital technology. As Clarke and Svanaes (Tech knowledge for schools. An updated literature review on the use of tablets in education, 2014), Geer et al. (Br J Educ Technol 48:490–498, 2017) and more recently the OECD (Digital strategies in education across OECD countries, 2020) report, there is still no ‘clear line’ about which devices best support education, or indeed, how digital devices can be most effectively used. This chapter, therefore, offers suggestions about the ways that affordances or opportunities for young learners should be noted and pedagogically promoted more effectively in science inquiry situations