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Kiira Kärkkäinen reports from the conference:
New Milestones for Inquiry-based Science Education in Primary Schools in Europe held in Berlin, Germany on Friday 29 May 2009
This conference was co-organized by Berlin-Bradenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin and the Pollen Project that covers 12 cities across Europe and aims to promote inquiry-based science education (IBSE) in primary schools. The conference was a follow-up event for several European conferences (2004-2008) on science education and aimed at setting a milestone for generalisation of IBSE approach in Europe.
The event was very well attended by academics and practitioners from the fields of science and education, while some private sector and European Commission representatives also participated in the event.
This conference demonstrated that IBSE programs have extended greatly in quantitative and geographic terms over the past decade, even if their reach remains, in most cases, quite marginal. There are initiatives exploring the potential of IBSE with regard to cross-disciplinary teaching, in particular literacy and language. There is some evidence that IBSE works in terms of student’s attitude, interest and knowledge as well as of teacher motivation, confidence and self-efficacy. Some recent experiences have shown improvement in student performance regarding set standards.
Evaluating adequate implementation of IBSE in classrooms is a major challenge. Distributing a new IBSE kit does not mean that it will be used or that it will be used correctly. The cases presented at the conference underlined that a successful implementation of IBSE is a complex and long-term undertaking. Its multiple ingredients, preferably to be addressed in parallel, range from more traditional instruments (teacher training as a key issue, curriculum and materials, formative evaluation) to involving multiple-stakeholders (educational authorities, scientific community, local community) for support. Other important challenges for IBSE programs concern continuity across education levels and possibly also over time, sustainability from a resource standpoint as well as further scaling-up.
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