WG2 Formal education
Xana Sá Pinto
WG Leader
CIDTFF.UA
xanasapinto@gmail.com
Evangelia Mavrikaki
WG Vice-Leader
National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of Primary Education
emavrikaki@primedu.uoa.gr
This Working Group will identify the needs and opportunities to improve the contribution of formal education to european public scientific literacy on evolution. This includes analysing the curricula and textbooks and developing, evaluating and disseminating effective educational practices and teacher training actions
Working Group 2 Main Tasks:
- Examining the schools’ curricula from the participating countries to identify the needs and opportunities to teach evolution since the first school years in distinct countries;
- Gather data regarding teachers’ CK,PC, attitudes and beliefs about teaching evolution
- Study how evolution is presented in school textbooks.
- Identify, evaluate and disseminate effective methodologies and strategies used to empower teachers to teach about evolution.
For more information and how to join this Working Group please WG leaders.
Formal Education has several dimensions and WG2 is working around these in distinct projects that are led by distinct project leaders. Know more about our project and WG2 project leaders below.
Publications of WG2
Deliverable 1
Sá-Pinto, Xana; Realdon, G.; Torkar G.; Sousa B.; Georgiou M.; Jeffries A.; Korfiatis K.; Paolucci, S., Pessoa, P., Rocha, J., Stasinakis, P.K., Cavadas, B., Crottini, A., Gnidovec, T., Nogueira, T., Papadopoulou, P., Piccoli, C., Barstad, J., Dufour, H.D., Pejchinovska, M., Pobric, A., Cvetković, D., Mavrikaki, E. “Development and validation of a Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts (FACE).”. Evolution: Education and Outreach 14 3 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-021-00142-2.
Do you want to join one of these projects? Join EuroScitizen following the instructions here and contact the project leaders with “ EuroScitizen – the name of the project” on the subject of the e-mail.
Project one: Curricula analysis
People from WG2 have published a paper in Evolution: Education and Outreach describing the development and validation of FACE (Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts). FACE is currently being used to analyze European countries’ curricula of compulsory education.
People leading this deliverable:
Evangelia Mavrikaki
National & Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Faculty of Primary Education,
Greece
emavrikaki@primedu.uoa.gr
Giulia Realdon
UNICAMearth Group,
Geology Section, University of Camerino,
Italy
giulia.realdon@unicam.it
Project 2: Elementary school students’ evolution understanding evaluation
Let’s study what elementary school students can learn about evolution, what are their main challenges and how we can best support their learning about this topic. At the moment we are developing evaluation instruments and we would like to translate these into distinct languages and apply and validate these in distinct countries.
People leading this deliverable:
Xana Sá Pinto
CIDTFF.UA
xanasapinto@gmail.com
Lucía Vázquez Ben
IECM Group, University of A Coruña
Spain
lucia.vben@udc.es
Project 3: Teachers’ PCK
Description: Developing methodologies to evaluate (or learn about) teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on evolution. There will be a call in January to start this group in February.
People leading this deliverable:
Rianne Pinxten
Antwerp School of Education, Behavioural Ecology & Ecophysiology group,
University of Antwerp,
Belgium
annie.pinxten@uantwerpen.be
Martin Scheuch
University College for Agricultural and Environmental Education,
Vienna, Austria
martin.scheuch@haup.ac.at
Project 4: Book analysis
Description: Analysis of European textbooks regarding the presence of learning goals targeting evolutionary concepts.
People leading this deliverable:
Duur Aanen
Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Wageningen University,
The Netherlands
duur.aanen@wur.nl
Constantinos Korfiatis
Associate professor of Environmental Education,
Dept. of Educuation, University of Cyprus,
Cyprus
korfiati@ucy.ac.cy
Project 5: Teacher training actions
Description: Evaluate and disseminate effective methodologies and strategies to empower pre service or inservice teachers to teach about evolution.
People leading this deliverable:
Bento Cavadas
Polytechnic Institute of Santarém/School of Education
bento.cavadas@ese.ipsantarem.pt
Kristin Jenkins
BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium
kristin.jenkins@bioquest.org