OVERVIEW

The project is funded under the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship 2023 (GOIPD/2023/1481) at EPI•STEM – the National Centre for STEM Education, School of Education, Faculty of Education and Health Sciences.
The project is titled “Development of Online CPD Resources for Secondary School Science Teachers in Ireland: Introduction of Dynamic and Interactive Pedagogies and Suitable Formative Tasks for Assessing and Teaching Science Inquiry Skills in Physical world (Junior Cycle) and Physics (Senior Cycle) curriculum in Ireland.”
The study aims to develop and validate dynamic tasks to assess science inquiry skills of secondary school students. The study attempts to develop inquiry skills assessment tasks using advanced technology (i.e., interactive simulations). Classroom teachers can use the tasks to assess and monitor their students’ developing science inquiry skills. There are probably several core inquiry skills involved, i.e., identify questions or hypotheses for scientific investigations, design scientific investigations, recognize control of variables strategy, collect data, analyse and interpret data, and explain results and draw conclusions.
The construction and developmental trend of the inquiry tasks will be probed through a systematic review of the literature. The findings from the systematic review are evidence-based rationales to form a framework for development of the inquiry tasks. The content knowledge will be referred to Physical world (Junior Cycle) and Physics (Senior Cycle) curriculum in Ireland.
The study also targets upcoming professional development conferences with science teachers in Ireland to discuss possible implications of the dynamic tasks in relation to supporting productive pedagogies, formative assessment and innovative teaching.