New trends in physics teaching, v.4; The ... - unesdoc - Unesco

New Trends in Physics Teaching IV
A curriculum development/teacher training scheme based
on the study of solar energy
P.E. RICHMOND.
THE EDUCATION OF TEACHERS
The education or training of teachers takes place before they have taken up a teaching post (initial
training) and also, increasingly, during their time as practising teachers (in-service). In-service
education is most effective when teachers feel a well-defined need for advice and assistance. When
change is in the air, when new projects or substantially new examination syllabuses are being
introduced, in-service work is easy to arrange. Unfamiliar content and unfamiliar teaching
methods can be introduced to teachers by ‘experts’, preferably those who have been closely
associated with the developments, alternatively by teacher trainers in sympathy with a project’s
aims and methods. Teachers who have helped to prepare trial materials and who have tried out
teachers’ guides, pupils’ guides and experiments with their classes carry conviction and are always
popular. College lecturers who have kept up with developments and kept in touch with schools
are usually in sympathy with innovations and use published material to good effect. But things
are not as easy as they were.
In the United Kingdom and many other countries, the day of the ‘Big Project’ is over. Teacher
educators no longer have an easy source of novel materials to present to practitioners. Nevertheless,
in-service education is still needed. Changes in the future are likely to come about in less
spectacular fashion than in the sixties and seventies. The science curriculum will surely change
in response to new scientific knowledge, new social demands and improved understanding of
effective educational practices; teacher training courses must change from merely presenting
project materials to a more creative style. The challenge is a substantial one. In the absence of
well-defined innovations launched nationally through well orchestrated press releases and television
and radio interviews, interest must be generated locally and personal decisions about
courses wil need to be made. For these decisions to lead to popular courses and effective change
in classroom and laboratory practice, course organizers wil have to be well informed. They wil
need to know about changes in science itself and about the climate of opinion in school and the
community, and they must also be ready to create rather than to present teaching materials.
When lecturers are preparing physics teachers to enter school laboratories for the first time,
they have for a decade been able to capture interest by extensive use of project materials. But
this is becoming less easy since many students wil have followed modem ‘0’ level and ‘A’ level
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