GoScience – creativity and enhanced comprehension in science teaching and learning

The main idea upon which the project was built was the low level of comprehension in science education in secondary education. Lack of comprehension is the main problem of underachievement in schools, especially when it comes to science subjects. For students it hinders their ability to use the knowledge in everyday life, decreases their functional literacy and as a result it limits their abilities to work. For teachers lack of comprehension lowers their motivation to work and introduce new pedagogical tools and instruments. The specific needs of the target groups were identified by the partners in the partner countries by needs analysis done prior to the project submission. 376 teachers and 840 students took part in the needs analysis. The main difficulties pointed were :• According to teachers: incomprehension of the texts in the books; lack of basic and consecutive knowledge; lack of attention from students; not enough visual (nonverbal) materials used/old materials used.• According to students: to remember the theory; education is usually based on note taking. Students work without comprehension, just writing down what the teacher says; difficulties to imagine the discussed processes in real life.As it can be seen both teachers and students comment the lack of comprehension as probably the most significant problem. With the GoScience project we worked on these issues by developing pedagogical method and tools, focused on comprehension in science education – aiming to developed and improve comprehension as any other ability. The project target groups were science teachers and students in secondary schools. We envisaged that in each partner country at least 5 high schools/professional schools, with 2 science teachers per school and 40 students per school would be involved directly in the project activities, which means as minimum 35 schools, 70 science teachers and 1400 students. The results we achieved in terms of direct involvement of representatives of the target groups are as follows: •42 schools ( 22 professional schools and 20 general secondary schools)•103 science teachers (chemistry, biology, physics and mathematics)•1801 students aged 12-20 yearsIn terms of achieved results under the project we managed also to over achieve the promised results. In the promised results of the project there were the following results envisaged: •Methodology for enhancing comprehension in science education – done and translated in all partner languages, developing further an additional research on creative pedagogical methods focused on comprehension to be used in science education in secondary school;•Toolkits on physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry containing between 30 and 50 scientific concepts covering the essential and necessary knowledge on a specific science subject – cut from the project at approval stage;•Creative pedagogical tools, enhancing comprehension - the pedagogical tools will link natural phenomena and everyday life situations and experience of students with scientific concepts by making these concepts “alive” with an image, performance, music or a story - cut from the project at approval stage;•Online platform for teaching and learning science following the approach of enhancing comprehension – done and available in all partner languages. •1 multiplier events in each partner country – done.•Teaching/Learning/Training activity with 30 teachers from the partner countries - the training activity aims at training science teachers in the developed methodology for enhancing comprehension in science teaching and learning through the use of creative pedagogical instruments – 36 teachers involved in C1. Despite the cut of the pedagogical tools the partnership decided to develop them since they were crucial to have the methodology put in practice in the real educational process. The tools that were developed are 187 in total (35 in biology, 42 in chemistry, 50 in mathematics and 60 in physics). These tools are supported by 185 scientific definitions further explained and connected with the main scientific concepts. There is also a graphic tool developed which shows the connections between all the main scientific concepts and supporting definitions (https://goscience.eu/connections/) - in total 372 tools in the database. About project impact reached – people who participated in the project improved their existing knowledge, skills and abilities to work in the field of science education from the point of view of enhancing comprehension. We tested all developed materials with teachers and students from all partner countries (112 teachers and 560 students), who were asked to evaluate these products in terms of applicability, usability and added value to the teaching and learning process and the summarized results show that the target group representatives highly appreciate what was done by the partnership and use the materials in their educational process.