New In-service Education Program on Science Experiments to Develop Professionality of Science Teachers

Abstract

The most important factor in students' growth and development is the teacher. Therefore in-service science teacher education to develop the professionality is important as well as the selection of new excellence teachers. Our research is on the development and application of new education program on science experiments where in-service teachers become the lecturers in the program and provide information that is bound to the context of real lessons. This program is consisted of following 10 steps of work, which was implemented in 5 months: sharing the philosophy of the program, selecting science experiments, first application of the experiments, discussion on the first application, learning how to edit the movie clips of the lesson, second application of the experiments, in depth discussion on the second application, developing the experiment package, giving lecture to other science teachers, and evaluating the program. We describe the process of the program developed and implemented in detail to suggest a model of science teacher education program on science experiments and discuss educational implications. This program is characterized by the emphasis of the context closely linked to the real lessons, the problem solving in a real situation, and the collaboration of teachers, professors and science education researcher in a teacher education.