Abstract:

BioScientix is an innovative teacher education course for ongoing biology teachers of the secondary level. The goal is to offer an innovative learning environment for freshman students (Barendziak & Elster, 2016). In a „Community of Practice (CoP)“ (Wenger, 1998) they develop - supported by scientists, science educators and media educators explain-it videos about topics in biology and biology education. The CoP has a blended learning (Reinmann, 2005) structure, where face-to-face meetings and exchange via an e-learning platform are offered (Elster, 2010). Teacher students explain the scientific content in the field of ecology and cell biology didactical and medial using “explain-it” videos. On the system level the affordances (Gibson, 1977) and the arrangement of the learning environment is the main research question of BioScientix. On the personal level the participants’ professional development, their development of subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is of interest. We investigate these questions using qualitative and quantitative methods: questionnaires (pre-post-design) and participants’ portfolios and videos.

Within the last two years 41 ongoing biology teacher students participated in the BioScientix study program. They developed 17 “explain-it” videos. They evaluated their self-produced videos with peers. The evaluation findings demonstrate an increase of subject and didactical knowledge of the participating teacher students. Most of them highlight the relevance of the BioScientix for the future career as teachers. In addition, the learning environment encourages students' interest and motivation.

References:
[1] Barendziak, T., Elster, D. (2016). BioScientix - Erklären mit Videos - Forschendes Lernen in der Lehrerausbildung Biologie. In: Resonanz (1), in press
[2] Elster, D. (2010). Learning Communities in Teacher Education. The Impact of e-Competence. In: International Journal of Science Education 32 (16), Routledge: Taylor & Francis, 2185 - 2216
[3] Gibson, J. J. (1977). The Theory of Affordances. In: R. Shaw & J. Bransford (eds.), Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing, Hillsdale: N. J. Erlbaum
[4] Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, Identity, Cambridge: University Press.

Keywords:

Biology education, preservice education, videobased learning.