Addressing Attractiveness of Science Career Awareness

ended

SciCar - a science education project - addresses the need to systematically raise the level of expertise among researchers and educators who are involved in science & technology (S&T) education within UT and associated institutions, currently seen as ineffective in making science teaching careers attractive and enabling teaching to adopt more relevant, context-based approaches. The project especially addresses, via a Twinning partnership, bringing in expertise from top level science education countries - Israel and Finland, particularly focusing on enhancing career awareness, enabling a capable workforce, and on promoting science-related careers. The major outcome is envisaged as a centre of excellence at UT in science education, interacting with all STEM teacher education bodies and the science education community e.g. science centres, science teacher associations. This is seen as enabling appropriate models for enacting a change of paradigm related to teacher education and science career awareness. A major focus is put on (1) reducing the gap between scientist and science educator beliefs in the training emphasis of future STEM-related teachers, (2) the involvement of the science education community in making the teaching profession more attractive, (3) thus determining key ways & appropriate models for instituting a paradigm change with a view to increasing the number of STEM-related teachers, (4) and giving emphasis to competence development in promoting science-related career awareness. The created centre is to become a platform ensuring that science researchers are guided to embrace science education expertise, making the preparation for science-related teaching careers more attractive while applying excellent knowledge in research (and approaches to undertake research) in coaching the next generations of science education researchers. The project seeks to identify best practice on knowledge transfer between science development and science education.