The Centre for the Advance­ment of science and math­e­matics teaching and learning (CASTeL)

Twin centre

The Centre for the Advance­ment of science and math­e­matics teaching and learning (CASTeL)
St. Patrick's College
Drum­condra
Dublin 9

Ireland

Contact person

Dr. Cliona Murphy
Educa­tion Depart­ment
St. Patrick's College
Drum­condra
Dublin 9, Ireland

Phone: +353 1 8842153

E-mail: Cliona.​murphy@​spd.​dcu.​ie

National website containing infor­ma­tion about Fibonacci

www.​fibonacci-project.​ie

CASTeL / FORFAS - short descrip­tion

The Irish contin­gent of the Fibonacci project will be co-ordi­nated by the Centre of the Advance­ment of Science and Math­e­matics Teaching and Learning (CASTeL) in St. Patrick’s Teacher Educa­tion College (SPD) in part­ner­ship with Discover Science & Engi­neering / FORFAS (FORFAS) in the capital city of Dublin.

St.​Patrick's College, Drum­condra, the largest primary teacher educa­tion insti­tu­tion in Dublin and one of the two largest in Ireland. Each year approx­i­mately 40% of Irish Primary teachers qualify through courses in the college, making St. Patrick's College a nation­ally signif­i­cant insti­tu­tion in initial primary teacher educa­tion. You can visit the college website at www.​spd.​dcu.​ie.

CASTeL – the Centre for the Advance­ment of Science Teaching & Learning – is a multi­dis­ci­plinary research team involving scien­tists, math­e­mati­cians and educa­tion­al­ists from St Patrick's College, Drum­condra (SPD) and Dublin City Univer­sity (DCU). The exper­tise of the members encom­passes the science disci­plines and math­e­matics, in addi­tion to educa­tion. CASTeL’s research has the aim of improving the learning of science and math­e­matics at all levels of the educa­tional system.

In addi­tion to this research focus, CASTeL supports science and math­e­matics promo­tion activ­i­ties in part­ner­ship with many local and national organ­i­sa­tions, and specialised training and consul­tancy services for science and math­e­matics educa­tion are also available.​For further infor­ma­tion on CASTeL please visit our website at http://​www.​castel.​ie/​.

The Discover Primary Science programme of FORFAS is an Irish govern­ment initia­tive (Depart­ment of Enter­prise Trade & Employ­ment) estab­lished to support prac­tising primary teachers in deliv­ering the new science part of the primary curriculum imple­mented in Irish schools from 2003. Now in its fifth year, the Discover Primary Science programme has provided ‘hands-on’, inves­tiga­tive profes­sional devel­op­ment to in excess of 3,400 Irish teachers in over 2,985 schools (there are approx­i­mately 3,300 primary schools in Ireland). You can visit the website at www.​primaryscience.​ie.

The part­ner­ship between SPD and FORFAS within this appli­ca­tion brings together exper­tise in peda­gogy and dissem­i­na­tion of IBSE from two signif­i­cant organ­i­sa­tions within an Irish context.

Activ­i­ties within the Fibonacci project

  • The CASTeL part­ners are devel­oping and teaching a compre­hen­sive in-service programme, based at St. Patrick’s College, Dublin. These teachers will already have partic­i­pated in FÓRFAS initia­tives. The in-service will provide the teachers with oppor­tu­ni­ties to develop their concep­tual and peda­gog­ical knowl­edge of the Nature of Science (NoS) through an inno­va­tive and contem­po­rary three year long inter­ac­tive science programme.
  • The programme is aimed at providing the partic­i­pants with oppor­tu­ni­ties to develop their concep­tual and peda­gog­ical knowl­edge regarding Nature of Science (NoS) including the history of ideas in science and the impact these ideas have had on, and continue to have on society today.
  • The in-service programme will be deliv­ered util­ising a range of method­olo­gies, including ICT, providing partic­i­pants with oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn about what science is, how it works, how scien­tists work as a social group and how society influ­ences and is influ­enced by science.
  • It is envis­aged that this inten­sive in-service programme will provide the teachers with knowl­edge and skills that will enable them to develop their own inde­pen­dent Nature of Science (NoS) / IBSE ideas and initia­tives. This in turn would provide them with the confi­dence and exper­tise to support science teaching within a whole school context.
  • During the project the partic­i­pating teachers will be supported in their own classes and in becoming subject leaders in their schools. They will be provided with time and support to dissem­i­nate and share their newfound ideas amongst the whole staff. On a small scale, this model would mirror the overall pattern of dissem­i­na­tion proposed in the Fibonacci project as a whole.

Other related projects

Dr Clíona Murphy, scien­tific coor­di­nator, supported by Dr Janet Varley, both members of CASTeL, are employed as science educa­tion lecturers in St. Patrick's College, Dublin. A central compo­nent of their work is the promo­tion of IBSE within an Irish primary context. Dr Murphy and Dr Varley have devel­oped and published a range of mate­rials to support the teaching, learning and assess­ment of IBSE at primary level within Ireland.

Recently, Dr Varley and Dr Murphy were involved in eval­u­ating the imple­men­ta­tion of the Primary Science Curriculum in Ireland, work commis­sioned by the National Council for Curriculum and Assess­ment (NCCA), the national organ­i­sa­tion respon­sible for curriculum devel­op­ment and reform. They were also part of an all-Ireland research project that explored pre-service teachers' expe­ri­ences of teaching and learning science, history and geog­raphy. They are currently working on a science research (BEST) project that is funded by the National Academy for the Advance­ment of Research and Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) and St. Patrick's College, Dublin (SPD).

Building Exper­tise in Science Teaching (BEST ) Project( 2009 - 2010)

This research project is jointly funded by NAIRTL and SPD. The aim of the BEST project is to provide student and prac­tising primary teachers with oppor­tu­ni­ties to develop their concep­tual and peda­gog­ical knowl­edge of the Nature of Science through an inno­va­tive and contem­po­rary inter­ac­tive science programme. During the programme student and prac­tising teachers are also being provided with oppor­tu­ni­ties to teach collab­o­ra­tively ('coteach'). While coteaching, it is envis­aged that peda­gog­ical ideas expe­ri­enced throughout the course would be employed as well as new ideas that the student and prac­tising teachers would have devel­oped together during the programme.

The use of coteaching approaches will benefit both prac­tising and student teachers who will be able to share their different expe­ri­ences and knowl­edge. In this programme, student teachers can offer greater exper­tise in peda­gog­ical approaches to teaching about NoS, whilst prac­tising teachers will have more expe­ri­ence of class­room teaching.

NAIRTL website: http://​www.​nairtl.​ie/​

Review of the Irish Primary Science Curriculum (2008)

This research project was funded by the NCCA and carried out by Dr Varley, Dr Murphy and Ms Veale at SPD. Its aim was to eval­uate the impact and level of imple­men­ta­tion of the Primary Science Curriculum in Ireland, which had been formally intro­duced from 2003. This new curriculum provides for a balanced approach to learning scien­tific content whilst also placing partic­ular emphasis on IBSE. The focus of this eval­u­a­tion was the pupils them­selves, and feed­back was sought from pupils at all levels at primary school (age 5-12 years) and from first years at post-primary school. The latter group were chosen to repre­sent their views on the impact of primary science expe­ri­ences after tran­si­tion to post-primary school science. Data were gath­ered using a national survey, class­room obser­va­tions and group inter­views of pupils.

Two detailed reports of the find­ings can be down­loaded from:

www.​ncca.​ie/​uploadedfiles/​primary/​Binder1.​pdf and

www.​ncca.​ie/​uploadedfiles/​Primary/​Science_​Phase2_​Final_​report.​pdf

The Primary Science Curriculum in Ireland can be down­loaded from:

www.​ncca.​ie/​uploadedfiles/​Curriculum/​Science_​Curr.​pdf

Dr Murphy and Dr Varley are also members of the Irish Asso­ci­a­tion for Social Scien­tific and Envi­ron­mental Educa­tion (IASSEE). They were both involved in a recent large-scale all-Ireland longi­tu­dinal research project that explored Irish pre-service primary teachers' expe­ri­ences as learners and teachers of history, geog­raphy and science. This report was funded by the Standing Confer­ence on Teacher Educa­tion North and South (ScoTeNS), St Patrick's College, Dublin, Queen's Unver­sity, Belfast, Mary Immac­u­late College, Limerick.

The full report, enti­tled Becoming A Teacher (Waldron et al., 2000) can be down­loaded from: scotens.​org