Development of Social and Culture Aspects Pre-service Science Teachers on Learning for Nature of Science

Understanding aspects of the Nature of Science (NOS) for preservice science teachers is one of the essential components to be able to understand Science and its processes. There are seven aspects of NOS: empirical, inference, creative, latent theory, tentative, scientific procedural myths, theories and laws of science, social and cultural dimensions, and their embedding in science. There are 48 preservice science teachers involved in this study. Researchers explored their views about NOS and Indigenous Knowledge (IK) through a validated questionnaire. Results showed that the students' opinions on NOS consisted of empirical, tentative, inference, law, scientific theory, and creativity. Meanwhile, aspects of laden theory, myths of scientific procedures, and social and cultural dimensions embedded with science have not been described by students. Fortunately, the students presented IK as an authentic context based on the culture in science learning. Students express IK ideas: 1) biomedicine (40 students), Biopesticide (2 students), beauty ingredients (2 students), additives (1 student), and supernatural medicine (1 student). Integrating Science and IK as an authentic context in science learning leads IK toward high technology and strengthens NOS aspects. In addition, the assumption that IK has no future is declining.

English modal constructions ‘must HAVE DONE’ and intermediate modals in authentic context of use ‒ a case study

The aim of the present paper is to examine the degree to which the first year students of English philology at ATH in Bielsko-Biala are able to recognize the particular modal constructions occurring in authentic linguistic materials, after having been introduced to their forms and meanings theoretically. The paper focuses on contextualization by means of linguistic corpora of selected English modal constructions, such as the perfective use of central modals on the example of ‘must HAVE done’, and particular ‘intermediate’ modals (1. must have; 2. dare + bare infinitive; 3. WE/I shall; 4. BE about to; 5. BE to; 6. HAVE got to; 7. BE bound to; 8. BE willing to; 9. HAPPEN to), following a remote lecture on descriptive grammar of the English language via the MS Teams application during the coronavirus lockdown in January, 2021. The case study concerns the results obtained from an assignment administered to 64 first year students, presented in four tables. The assignment, attached in the form of an MS Word file to edit, required the students to select and cite from either of the two corpora of the English language – BNC or COCA – examples of authentic use of each of the modal constructions studied during one of the lectures. The paper consists of six sections, two on the main theses in cognitive linguistics, whose achievements pertain to usage-based acquisition of new linguistic material, three parts related to the research conducted, including the methodological part, an analysis of the results obtained, followed by a discussion and general conclusions. The last section signals how selected theses of cognitive linguistics apply to the results of the said research.

Creative methods of noospheric learning through art assets: Case study of authentic education

In this article authors discuss the methodology of evaluating noospheric insights in higher education students through art assets. A very important goal of students’ inclusion into the authentic context of ecological education is being achieved. As a result of this study, evaluation criteria were determined, such as imagination, emotionality, originality, abstraction. For the more in-depth development of the evaluation procedure the following methods were used: educational experiment, observation, questionnaires, semantic differential (SD), method of setting the attitude on associative transformation of the object being perceived, creative methods. Authors determined the levels of student’s noospheric insights formation (high, above average, average, low) for the following evaluation of correlation between the categories of singular, special and common in students’ aesthetical insights. The results, including content and structural, functional components, are described in this article, allowing to connect the process of noosperic insights mastering by students with the authentic context of education.

Preservice Music Teacher Identity Construction Through Metaphor

I investigated how preservice instrumental music teachers understand and describe their teacher identity through the use of metaphor in a one-semester instrumental methods course emphasizing authentic context learning. Twenty-five third-year instrumental methods course music education students created a personal metaphor to explore their professional identity construction. Preservice teacher metaphors were revisited throughout the semester, while students participated in an authentic context learning experience in an urban instrumental music classroom. Data sources included student artifacts, informal interviews, and observation/field notes. The impact of teaching within an authentic learning context appears to enrich the ways in which preservice teachers are able to articulate details of their metaphor descriptions. Through their reflections across the semester, preservice teachers demonstrated how personal metaphors were used to restructure their understandings of teacher identity and capture some of the complexities of becoming teachers.

Geneticus Investigatio: a technology-enhanced learning environment for scaffolding complex learning in genetics

Bioscientists such as geneticists and molecular biologists regularly demonstrate the integration of domain concepts and science inquiry practices/skills while explaining a natural phenomenon. The complexity of these concepts and skills becomes manifold at the tertiary undergraduate level and are known to be challenging for learners. They learn these in silos as part of theory classes, practical labs, and tutorial sessions while in an industry, they will be required to integrate and apply in a given authentic context. To support learners in this process, we have designed and developed Geneticus Investigatio (GI), a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment for scaffolding complex learning in the context of Mendelian genetics. GI facilitates this complex learning by the integration of domain concepts and science inquiry practices through inquiry-driven reflective learning experiences, which are interspersed with inquiry-based learning steps in an authentic context along with metacognitive reflection. In this paper, we present two cycles of iterative design, development, and evaluation of GI, based on the design-based research (DBR) approach. In the first DBR cycle, we identified the pedagogical design features and learning activities of GI based on an exploratory study with bio-science instructors for facilitating complex learning. We then report a pre-post classroom study (N = 37) in which we investigated the learning and perceptions of usability and usefulness of GI. The results indicate high learning gains after interacting with GI and learner perceptions that activities in GI help learn concepts and inquiry practices along with its integration. It is followed by the identification of interaction and other difficulties by the learner, which were triangulated with different data sources. It provided insights into the pedagogical and design changes required in GI. The revised version of GI was evaluated with a quasi-experimental classroom study (N = 121). The results indicate that the drawbacks of the previous version of GI were addressed. The main contributions of this research are a pedagogical design for facilitating complex learning and its implementation in the form of GI TEL environment.