Abstract:

The integration of traditional school subjects like Biology, Chemistry, and Physics into a unified subject called Science has been discussed in Czechia, but its implementation is scarce. The advantages of the integrated approach are clear – nature does not follow human categories, so its complexity and interconnections may be better understood and acknowledged when viewed holistically. At the same time, we do not believe that Science as a subject is the only way of presenting natural phenomena to students, but we consider it an interesting and complementary approach to the traditional one.

We present here two branches of promoting Science education: a new Science subject at a secondary school and a new related textbook.

The subject Science will be taught as an optional course at one of the grammar schools in Ceske Budejovice in the southern part of Czechia (Episcopal Grammar School of J. N. Neumann in Ceske Budejovice). To do this, one must manage the enormous breadth and depth of the study material. To tackle such a problem, we will offer the Science course in the second half of secondary school (for typically 17+ years old students). These students will already have completed basic courses in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in the previous two years. This approach alleviates the problem of the breadth (students already know the basic concepts) and allows us to focus on the depth. The course will include about 25 topics, which were intentionally chosen for their highly interdisciplinary nature.

To support the course, we decided to create a textbook because we were not able to find any relevant publication. Our textbook comes with a specific didactic method called Study and Discuss IT (Study and Discuss with support of Information Technology).

This method consists mainly of two stages:
I) internet research, and
II) teacher-moderated discussion.

These two stages can be repeated throughout the blocks. Each block contains the following parts:
A) Informative Paragraph to capture student’s attention;
B) Prerequisite Knowledge part (questions-based structure, followed by the student’s online research and concluded by a teacher-led discussion);
C) Study It part (the same structure as part B, but with deeper questions typically at the boundary between secondary school and university);
D) Problem Solving part (typically three quantitative problems);
E) Conclusions (take-home bullets);
F) Misconceptions; and
G) Worksheet.

In conclusion, we hope to increase the popularity of the integrative subject of Science and, consequently, students' interest in natural phenomena.

Keywords:

Science, education, didactics, textbook.