CAT European Project

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The effective use of computer aided teaching and learning materials in science teaching - a teacher training course with a European perspective.

A huge amount of excellent computer aided teaching and learning (CAT) material already exists in Europe, but there is far less experience (and also competence) at using these materials effectively within regular classroom activities, and outside. This is especially true with respect to getting girls and boys interested to study science, and motivated to get acceptable learning results.

Recent research results from science education show that there are good chances for improving the classroom practice if material is used suitably and if adapted to the specific needs of schools of different countries (as well as offered with easy-to-follow teacher instructions). A transfer of those research results into actual teaching practice in European schools will be organised by CAT project. Since teaching practice differs amongst different European countries, this educational intervention will be developed as a concept of culture-oriented support activities. International scientists and teachers, experienced within this field, will work together and adapt their nationally oriented ideas and research results to other needs.

The intention of our project is to design and test modules for a teacher-training course, which enables teachers to judge the quality of computer aided learning environments in science teaching, to adapt best-practice examples of those environments to their own teaching, and to evaluate their own teaching afterwards. For this purpose, we will use already existing environments of the different project-countries. The course itself will be established as ICT-based content, and will be published as a handbook linked with “best-practice”- examples.

Our project wants to establish a new and flexible teacher-training course that is useful in all participating but also in other countries. All materials will be carried out in English and in all partner languages.

The project will show that discussing and judging the quality of CAT for science teaching is an actual question in all European countries.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The project is realised by groups of the following institutions: 
  

Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg	Universität Wien
University of Plovdiv	Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd
University of Helsinki	Institut national de recherche pédagogique
University of Patras