A Model for STS Professional Development Through Scaffolded Strategies

Author: Cheng-Hsia Wang, Hsiao-Hsin Tsai(Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan Normal University)

Abstract：

Teachers are a key to success in current educational reform efforts. Teachers must internalize the goals of the STS learning, master the basic concepts and skills, and be willing not to rely only on the standard text books but to develop their own teaching materials. Only when the science teachers' beliefs and capability become compatible with the notion of the STS education, they could cultivate citizens to have global perspectives, who are able to integrate science, technology, environment, and society.
This paper reports how we use a unit development approach as the opportunities for prospective chemistry teachers to (a) examine their beliefs and values about respon-sible citizen action on STS issues, (b) find a place of STS in school science education, (c) confront inconsistencies in their beliefs and values about STS action through participating in STS module development, and (d) construct more appropriate beliefs, values, and corresponding science teaching practices. The effectiveness of the professional development model for chemistry teachers was determined by analyzing and comparing: 1) the C-STES unit developed at the entry level with the improved unit at the exit level; 2) the unit task analysis and interpretations made by the subject at entry with exit levels; 3) the peer reports of microteaching performances; and 4)the re-searcher's observation and analysis of the interview documents. The results of this study showed that the unit development with the scaffolded strategies improved the partici-pant's professional performance.

Keywords：STS, professional development, scafforded strategies

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