CHAIN REACTION APPROACH TO IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING IN INQUIRY-BASED INSTRUCTIONS IN SCIENCE SUBJECTS

Chain Reaction was a three-year project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program. The project was coordinated by Sheffield Hallam University (UK) and involved twelve partner countries including Slovakia. The aim of the project was a development of investigative activities and their implementation into classrooms at project partner secondary schools and into science education curricula in general. The developed activities have aimed to actively engage students in learning science and to allow students to experience the excitement and challenges of experimental science and research.

A key element of the project was a training of science teachers to enable delivery of inquiry-based activities in the classrooms. Each of the partners has developed and implemented its own model of in-service teacher training in the field of inquiry- based science education (IBSE).

In Slovakia the training of physics, chemistry, biology and geography teachers consisted of three face-to-face sessions complemented with ongoing support and consultancy provided by teacher educators of the Physics Department, Matej Bel University Banska Bystrica.
Over the three-year project each partner directly briefed 30 science teachers from fifteen schools. In addition, by involving the teacher education providers, Chain Reaction has supported the development of IBSE literate teachers in future cohorts of newly qualified teachers as well.

Participated teachers evaluated outcomes that they gained from being involved in the Chain Reaction projects using questionnaires. Besides the questionnaires we used two additional methods of gaining teachers’ feedback: evaluation meetings at the end of each project year and structured interviews of selected teachers in the end of the project final year.

The results have proved the benefits that the implementation of Chain Reaction approaches has for both teachers and students. The teacher involvement in Chain Reaction has resulted in their increased enthusiasm in science teaching, improvements in classroom practice and changed attitude to the professional development. As the most important outcomes we can consider an increased motivation of students to science and the development of the team work and inquiry skills.

The study has identified also difficulties and barriers connected with implementation of IBSE in Slovakia. Some suggestions for improvements that would enable sustainability of the use of the project approaches in the future are discussed in the paper.