Alexina Thorén Williams

UniversityUniversity of Gothenburg
DepartmentPedagogical, curricular and professional studies
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Website University of Gothenburg, in Swedish www.gu.se/om-universitetet/hitta-person/alexinathorenwilliams
Website University of Gothenburg, in English www.gu.se/en/about/find-staff/alexinathorenwilliams
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Reasearch / work
Teacher Education has an important role and focus in preparing students to become skilled and dedicated teachers in Science and Technology. The difficulty of attracting young people to Science and Technology Education is discussed more and more frequently in higher educational communities. Education research shows that what happens in the classroom as to the teachers’ performance is the most important factor towards achieving the expected learning outcomes (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012). This means that teachers ' content-oriented knowledge, that is, the tools they have been given to steer students to understand and create meaning, has a major impact on what students are learning. The main purpose of my research is study how Student Teachers and Practicing Teachers can develop their Didactic Content-orientated Knowledge (PCK) in Science, Technology and Education for Sustainable Development, in teaching and learning outside the classroom. The research aims to gain insight on how teachers create “meaning” together with pupils in an alternative learning environment such as Universeum Science Center. With the help of video observations of what is being said and done in the planning and implementation of a teaching sequence in science and technology, I want to identify what teachers direct their attention on and what they take as a starting point. Is it the environment? The pupils ' questions, discussions and/or experiences? The national curricula? Their teaching objectives? Own experiences? Or is it something else? Furthermore, it is interesting to examine to what significance their focus and starting points have for enable meaning-making in teaching?