Evidence Based Science Education in Developing Countries

Carlos Bosch Giral

Instituto Tecnólogico Autónomo de México

Academia Mexicana de Ciencia

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia May 27th, 2015

COLOMBIA

• Pequeños Científicos at Lycée Louis Pasteur ( a french school) following Lamap (2000)

• Invited Ianas meeting and to a workshop on startegic plan for IBSE projects in Chile (2004)

• 2005 Agreement of the academy of sciences with the french embassy, Maloka and University of Los Andes

Colombia

• Indagala 2008-2011

• Support: Academy of Sciences, Fundación Gas Natural, Fundación Siemens, Lamap Ianas– LCE.

• Module : Several translations and some modules produced. For Stem they use materials from Canada

• 381 schools 3420 teachers

• 40 hours Workshops to introduce Ibse

CUBA

• Same curriculum in all schools , teachers are in general well prepared.

• The academy of sciences promote some scientific activities on the side like : «Caffé Scientifique»

• They have a big pedagogical event every other year

CHILE

• 2000 creation of IAP in Tokyo . Jorge Allende was introduced to IBSE by Bruce Albert and Pierre Lena

• 2002 Chile adopted the american model and used their materials

• By 2004 , 24 schools were participating in the program supported by the ministry of education and the academy of sciences.

• 2004 meeting in Chile and after that several worshops to induce Venezuela , Perú , Bolivia and Panama to adopt the same type of program.

CHILE 2002-20015

• 2004 -24 schools

• 2006-94 schools

• 2008-Evaluation of the program was positive

• 2009-250 schools

• 2010 earthquake reduction of the support that was a little more than one million dollars

• 2015 National Diploma to prepare teachers

• 2013-2014 portable laboratories(4) on molecular biology

Argentina

• 2004 Ianas meeting and then sign an agreement with Lamap.

• Following IAP advise in 2006, creation of HaCE

(making Sciences at School) supported by the academy of sciences and the ministry of education

• 2007 the first 52 teachers of teachers were prepared using Lamap philosophy and their materials

• Only primary school

Argentina 2007 • 15 Modules :The colors of light, Water: a

resource we need to save, the universe and the solar system, Acids, bases, mixtures ...

• Want to be evaluated by international standards: Pisa , Unesco (PERCE,SERCE,TERCE)

• Supported by the Academy (relation academician-teacher)

Years 2009and 2012

• Average 2012, 494

Argentina 388 388

Chile 421 423

México 413 419

Peru

• 2004 IANAS meeting in Chile

• Workshops in Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Brasil, Bolivia …

• The academy of sciences organized fourtuples, teachers of teachers ( Math.,Bio.,Phy.,Chem.)

• 6 fourtuples at university level and 24 at secondary level

• The fourtuples work with teachers

• 895 teachers

VENEZUELA

• First Ianas meeting and a workshop on startegic plan for IBSE projects in Chile. (2004)

• Venezuela started in 2006 with 420 students of 5th. grade and 315 of 6th. grade. They used translations from materials of Lamap and the chilean spanish version of the materials of NSRC

VENEZUELA 2005-2013

• Support: Academy of Sciences, Empresas Polar ( beer) Total (oil) … Lamap – LCE.

• Module : Polvos (6th. grade) work with 10 more modules adapted from Lamap.

• 42 schools 45 251 students

• 128 one week workshops, 2416 teachers

MEXICO : Diagnosis (2001)

What is wrong with the Teaching

System?

• Emphasis on memorization rather than reasoning

• Inadequated teacher training

• Poor use of programs and textbooks

• Changes in the programs every four, five years (last one in 2014-2015)

Initially

• Program imagined, structured and coordinated by the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

• Some support from the Ministry of Education

We want:

• We wanted to work with teachers not students • We wanted to work on primary and secondary school

(9 grades) • We wanted to work with mathematics and language

not only sciences • We wanted to work with history of sciences • We wanted to have students from last year of their BA

going to help teachers at their school • The program must be free • Only volunteers teachers-student • One year long program

2 0 0 2 First year of “La Ciencia en tu Escuela”

The group

• Scientists (including mathematicians)

• Good university teachers

• People from popularization of sciences and mathematics

• Teachers

• Principals

• Students from the scientific areas in their last year of studies

Goals

• Change teachers’ and students’ attitude towards sciences and mathematics

• Bring together teachers and scientists to find new and attractive ways to teach mathematics and sciences (IBSE)

• Look for alternative teaching methods to awake the interest and curiosity of the children through more interaction with direct and simple experimentation, to incite a better and a more dynamical learning

Guidelines

• Follow the Mexican educative curriculum and program.

• It has to benefit teachers and students .

• We will work with teachers, the central piece of education.

• We have to evaluate all of our work to have solid basis to change or to continue with the same material, organization …

La ciencia en tu escuela

• The centerpiece of this AMC program is a course offered to teachers of primary and secondary education with content and pedagogy. 32 saturdays, for a total of 160 hours

• This course has now three modalities on-site started in 2002, rural parts started in 2009 and on-line (distance) started 2011.

2009 Conafe Consejo Nacional de fomento educativo

Places not reached by the ministry of education are where Conafe works.

All are rural parts of the country

The village provides two rooms one to be the school and another one as the teacher ‘s home.

The village is in charge of the food of the teacher.

About 20 students (multi-grade)

Preparation of instructors

• Students finishing secondary school (9years, about 15 years old) have 6 weeks of preparation during summer and are provided with a map and send to the rural village, where they will teach for two years in that village as the primary school instructor (6 grades).

• They get a salary for four years equivalent to about 140 US dollars a month.

• They go to the Conafe centre in the state once a month.

• We work with them at that time two day per month. Plus during Christmas vacations.

Same situation for students finishing the high school(12 years, about 18 years old) , They become secondary school instructors

• In general this students are very interested to participate with us and to learn from us since usually they want to go to a high school or a college.

• So they use also the time with us to preprare themselves for admission exams.

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2009 • Turning point

• Money to make an external evaluation

• Valora ( very prestigious firm)

• Good results in general • http://www.lacienciaentuescuela.amc.edu.mx/

Evaluaciones

2009

• Support by the ministry of educaction (subsecretaria de educación superior) .

• The AMC signed agreements with the academies of some latin american countries. (Colombia, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Panama, Peru, Bolivia , Nicaragua and Venezuela)

• Supported by Conacyt

• Supported by Fundación Televisa.

LA CIENCIA EN TU ESCUELA

400 teachers each year studying at the university , all volonteers, about 85% , 340 receive the diploma.

• Conafe (150 per year)

• Camp ( one week 200)

• Robotic course ( one week 50)

• Descartes computer course (26 teachers)

¿How to scale the program?

Excellent quality and results.

But impact almost null !!!!!!

From 2002 to 2009 we worked with about 4 100 teachers and there are in Mexico about ¡¡ one million three hundred thousands teachers !! ( primary + secondary )

Scaling the program

• In order to scale up the program throughout Mexico and other Latin American countries, we considered using technology and designing an on-line (distance) modality for "Science at your School".

• The pilot phase of this modality began in October 2009.

THE DISTANCE LEARNING MODALITY

• The on-line or distance modality is formed by a sequence of modules with structured curricular characteristics designed with the necessary quality to ensure their equivalence with the on-site modality.

• Different methods, techniques, strategies, media and as much multimedia were used, but with the guidance of an expert (mathematician, biologist..) consultant in the discipline.

Work

• There is an advisor/teacher for a small group of students (25), who will become a creator of innovative teaching situations that allow individualized instruction.

• The participant and the advisor will be in touch through the website, using internal messaging tools, discussion forums and Skype or telephone.

• With that we have a record of the communication and request of assistance, with the date it was made.

Work

• The advisor is responsible for clarifying doubts about the content, correcting activities, answering forums, integrating work teams, providing information to the group on the dates of video-conferences, chats and exams.

• The on-line modality does not require a fixed and determined schedule to perform the assigned activities, but the instructional design of this course requires compliance with the timelines set for the delivery to the advisor, in a timely manner, of all work assigned.

TECHNICAL DESIGN

• AMC has a physical space that has all the

necessary security measures to provide optimum performance. The site hosts a cluster consisting of eight high-performance servers. (4000 participants simultaneously)

• Platform: open source Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) , in some case Moodle’s source code was modify.

• The system is programmed in PHP which allows a rich functionality.

Implementation of the pilot-phase

• The pilot phase of the on-line course "Science at your School" started in October 2009 with the participation of 350 primary school teachers from all the states, that were summoned by the Mexican Ministry of Education.

• To know the opinions and experiences of the teacher-students about content, implementation, advice, and materials, the Ministry of Education (SEP) conducted an assessment on the quality of the course.

(question 1) content ,(question 2) platform (Question 3), performance of advisors, (question 4), instructional design,

(question 5) materials, (question 6) didactic sequences.

Home of the current version

Participation of latin-american teachers 2010-2012

• Dominican Republic 21 out of 98

• Guatemala 9 out of 15

• Peru 36 out of 45

• Panama 2

• El Salvador 1

• Argentina 3 out of 4

• Venezuela 10 out of 12

Latin america (82 finished on line) +44 in 2013

2002-2014

• 7,486 teachers have finished the 32 week diploma La Ciencia en tu Escuela

• 2,870 public schools

• more than 595 students from last university year have done their social service with us.

• 955 teachers on the distance program 2010-2014

CONTACTS Página Web

www.lacienciaentuescuela.amc.edu.mx

Facebook www.facebook.com/lacienciaentuescuelaamc

Twitter @infolaciencia

Correo del programa laciencia_p@amc.edu.mx

Correo para

materiales laciencia_materiales@amc.edu.mx

What is new ?

• We started a pilot for preschool teachers (children from 3 to 6 years old)

• We will start as a distance program the pilot of a latin american Ibse master for primary school teacher (january)

• We will launch in june the new format of the web page Indagala for latin america with an Ibse orientation

Conclusion

• A lot of enthousiastic people

• In general programs similar, now a days all are working with teachers

• All programs are of good quality

• All programs depend on the support of the ministries of education

• All programs need to be scale

• Very little impact for the amount of work involved

Last note

• Latin America and the Carribeans are getting behind.

• Something need to be done.