The SciTalk project –which stands for ‘Natural Science Talk in Teacher Education’- will promote the preservice teachers’ (PST’s) use of explorative everyday conversation on scientific issues, with children in pre primary and primary schools, aged 3 to 9. The main objective for the SciTalk project is to develop how this can be done through the PST’s educational programs. By developing and trying out guidelines for how to conduct an explorative conversation with children of the given age, and to promote science talk, the participants in the project will design a methodological model that can be transferred to any teacher education program. Reports from educational programs from all over Europe state that the interest for sciences has decreased in the last decades. The focus on science in the child’s everyday surroundings thus aims at stimulating the interest for natural sciences from early childhood on. Reports from the Nordic countries point out how PSTs underutilize opportunities to carry outexplorativeconversations. They also state that the PSTs do not get much practice in leading everyday conversations in pre primary and primary schools through their educational programs. In this project we bring together teacher educators and pre primary and primary school teachers from four set of institutions in three countries, to investigate how teacher education can facilitate PSTs’ practice in conducting explorative conversations with preschool children on scientific issues. The SciTalk-project is at the meeting point of sciences, mother tongues and pedagogy. The participants are thus forming a maximum targeted team, which together with the pre primary band primary school teachers’ experience with preschool children constitutes the necessary expertise for the task. The three different national origins of the participating institutions also ensure the projects broader objectives; to promote general applicable guidelines for the explorative conversation on scientific issues. The project aims to meet the following objectives in preschool and primary school education: 1 Through reviews, interventions and joint reflections develop guidelines for how to conduct explorative conversations 2 Increase the PST’s awareness on scientific objects and phenomena in the everyday surroundings of the preschool that can be the topic of a conversation. Additional benefits from the project are: 1 To conduct a broad review on the use of everyday conversation on science issues in different European languages; Dutch, German, English and Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian), and thus giving a broader overview of the practice and the research field for teacher educators all over Europe. 2 To enable three to four-day-long meetings in various countries for teacher educators and PSTs to allow acquaintance with how a methodology functions in various European contexts. 3 To systematic and rigorous evaluate how the methodology functions in higher education context across boarders 4 To disseminate the results through articles in educational journals, papers on conferences and reports on educational science websites. Based on these activities the project focuses on an innovative and joint methodology for a common European educational field; the need to develop strategies for how to utilize everyday conversations to promote science issues from early years on.
The background for the SciTalk project is the fact, documented through research, that there has been little focus on conversations in general in kindergartens and primary schools, and that there has been correspondingly little focus on how to conduct conversations in teacher education. This is also the situation in the field of natural science in teacher education. The SciTalk project has developed a methodology for how to teach teacher students in natural sciences to be better at conducting conversations about natural science issues in kindergarten and in primary school. The participants in the project are teacher educators and researchers in natural science and language in Norway, Germany and the Netherlands. The participating institutions have been Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University, Philips-Universität in Marburg, Germany and HZ University of Applied Sciences in Vliessingen, the Netherlands. Two kindergarten pedagogues from two Norwegian kindergartens, Bråtveit naturbarnehage in Sveio and Espira Pi-parken in Oslo has also participated in the project. Western Norway University of Applied Sciences has been the beneficiary partner. The main activities in the project have been to develop a methodology for how to teach teacher students to conduct natural science conversations with children between three and nine years. The methodology was developed by doing a review of literature suggesting ways to conduct such conversations, by developing a structure for the teaching of the skills, by doing two interventions with teacher students in all the four participating teacher educations, by evaluating the results from the interventions and decide for a methodology and derive some principles from the methodology that always should be present when teaching teacher students to conduct SciTalk. The principles are to introduce the students to natural science skills and topic and to different types of talk and ways to conduct conversations, to let them practice at campus and in practicum, and to have them reflect upon their own efforts. These principles are the basis for a digital learning resource that we have developed as a product from the SciTalk project. The learning resource is presented at an open access website: https://www.hvl.no/en/collaboration/project/sci-talk/ The digital learning resource contains written informative texts about natural science skills and topics and about types of talk and ways to talk. It also contains multitudes of pictures from everyday situations involving the opportunities to talk about natural science issues. In addition, the learning resource have lots of vodcasts, mini lectures on video, hot-spot-tasks and interactive videos with tasks for the teacher students. The learning resource can support teacher educators teaching teacher students, we call it a toolbox for teacher educators. The learning resource can also be used in self-studies for teacher students, teachers, teacher colleges, parents or anyone who wants to learn about this issue. As the website is innovative and fills a knowledge gap, and it can have a great impact on the lack of focus on conversation in natural science in kindergarten and primary school.