An Exploration of Exemplary Teachers in Their Interaction With Students During the Process of Science Fairs

• Main Authors: Ke-Tung Chang, 張可彤
• Other Authors: 陳佩正
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/66162605147603989714

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 自然科學教育學系碩士班 === 97 === Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the interaction between students and their exemplary science teachers during a science fair, with the hope that some concrete recommendations might be available from the study. Teachers not familiar with science fair might take good lessons from this study. This study took an approach to go deep on sites to observe two exemplary science teachers interaction with their students, other research tools included interview, reflection logs, on site recording, science fair-related documents, along with the recommendation from the reviewers. All these data were double checked with the triangulation approach to raise the correctness of this study. Findings from this study were: Teachers of the case study were aware of that only when they are teaching students do they understand that learning can not be sufficient to apply, they both took the attitude to become life long learners to move into the teaching of science fairs. The scientific knowledge they had learned from the science fair could have been applied further in their own science teaching. In fact, their competency in teaching science grew along with their experience in helping students doing science fair. They also took the scientific attitude of being honesty, credibility, and cautious. Since the experimental instruments were originally designed by their students, the accuracy could not be too high, however, they tried their best to lower the external impact to the lowest possible to ensure the confidence of the experiments. Such a scientific attitude finally received approval from the reviewers of the science fair. When they faced difficulty, they accepted it as challenge, and face the challenge together. The interaction focused upon students hands-on learning, or the student-centered approach to help students, teachers needed to individualize their help to individual students, according to their uniqueness. These teachers also trusted students ability in handling the experiments, giving students opportunities to work independently to emphasize the importance of quantifying the experimental data. During the process of the science fair, teachers, students, parents and the researcher all grew professionally dramatically. Finally, the recommendations from the reviewers of the science fair were: be innovative, be original, to link with the science curriculum, problem-based. Meanwhile, they also asked the experiments to match students cognitive developmental stages, to apply the science process skills, and possible rational deduction.