This project (2018-1-SE01-KA201-039098) has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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School directors and Policy Makers

Strategies to implement innovative ICT based approaches to teach Sciences at Secondary school level.

The guidelines aim at providing science secondary school teachers with the competences to make an effective use of ICT based science teaching learning objects.

School Directors’ and Policy Makers’ Guidelines

1 Desirable Digital Competencies for Teaching Science
Introduction
While teachers have a responsibility for their professional development, it is incumbent on school leaders to give their staff the necessary resources in time and technical equipment for them to become proficient. Likewise it is necessary that political representatives at both local and national levels recognise that digitalisation of the educational system does not happen for free, nor immediately. Indeed, there are studies indicating that digitalisation of education may have no discernible effect at all on learning outcomes [1].

It is also important to understand that the use of digital tools or the learning of programming does not automatically lead to the development of computational thinking [2], the ability to think in an organised and critical manner. We note anecdotally that similar results have been claimed for studying Latin, or calculus, and there is no reason to assume that a few hours of trying out a programming language will have any particular effects on pupils’ thought patterns.

An important point to recognise is that digital tools may improve educational outcomes, as well as simplify the teachers’ administration, but that neither of these goals means education becomes cheaper. A digital classroom requires that the pupils have access to computers (tablets, smartphones). These have to be purchased, but also maintained, and this typically cannot be done by the regular teachers, requiring skills beyond those outlined above, as well as additional time. The level of attrition should also be considered. While a computer may have a technical lifetime of at least 5–7 years, a school is a harsh environment and Some schools have a BYOD (bring your own device) policy, expecting the pupils to use their personal digital devices during lessons, but this is problematic for several reasons:

Not all pupils will have devices sufficiently powerful for the tools they are expected to use.

Heterogeneity of equipment makes it less likely that the intended learning tool actually is available for all required platforms.

There are security issues involved with allowing external devices to access the internal network of the school [3].

Being able to buy hardware (as well as necessary commercial software) in bulk lowers prices. It is therefore recommended that individual schools not be responsible for the purchase of student hardware, but that this be handled at the regional or even national level in order to get the best prices. (We do not suggest making purchases on the EU level, as each country typically will require computers with different keyboards and user interface languages, which may preclude buying in.) At the same time, pupils still need books, pencils, etc, so these items have to remain in the budget

Another important point is not to increase the administrative burden of teachers. While computers enable the gathering of more statistics, even semi-automatically, this should not be taken as an excuse to collect more data of dubious utility. Rather the opportunity should be taken to make an overview and limit the amount of data collected.

As noted earlier, professional development does not begin and end with courses; skills learned have to be practiced and this takes time.
Other Resources
  • [1] Hall, C., Lundin, M. and Sibbmark, K. 2019. A laptop for every child?. Technical Report #2019:26. IFAU.
  • [2] Wing, J.M. 2006. Computational Thinking. Communications of the ACM. 49, 3 (Mar. 2006), 33–35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215
  • [3] Sugliano, A.M. 2018. BYOD semplice e sicuro: un modello e una soluzione tecnologica. Atti Didamatica 2018 (Cesena, Apr. 2018).

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