Abstract
We report on an effort to exchange educational materials developed by working groups of science education researchers and teachers in two different educational systems. The two teaching-learning sequences, one on Acoustic and the other on Electromagnetic Properties of Materials were designed, developed and refined through classroom implementation at the local level. After the modules were exchanged, each working group undertook an effort to adapt and implement the received materials in the new setting and to monitor the changes made. The analysis of the collected data reveals the types of adaptations that were deemed necessary for acceptable transfer of the materials by each group. Our analysis also reveals those features of this collaborative effort that facilitate the process of transfer of teaching-learning sequences in new settings. Our main finding is that adaptation is unavoidable in any process of transfer of innovative instructional materials. A good way to attain a workable balance between specification and flexibility of knowledge to be transferred is to develop specified teaching-learning sequences accompanied by a set of core aspects that must be agreed by the members of the host context with the explicit intent to avoid drastic mutations. This process has been facilitated by researcher-teacher collaboration to manage the degree and nature of the adaptations. We discuss the educational implications of our findings with respect to requirements for promoting usability of educational innovations in different contexts.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Professors Matilde Vicentini and Hans Niedderer who participated as external experts in the peer-review study visits and were able to provide valuable feedback for improving the modules. We also acknowledge Lilian C. McDermott and the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington for continued support and collaboration in the curriculum design efforts of the Learning in Science Group. Work presented in this chapter has been supported by the European Union through the European Communities Research Directorate General in the project Materials Science: University-school partnerships for the design and implementation of research-based ICT-enhanced modules on Material Properties, Science and Society Programme, FP6, SAS6-CT-2006-042942).
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Pintó, R., Hernández, M., Constantinou, C.P. (2014). On the Transfer of Teaching-Learning Materials from One Educational Setting to Another. In: Bruguière, C., Tiberghien, A., Clément, P. (eds) Topics and Trends in Current Science Education. Contributions from Science Education Research, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7281-6_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7281-6_33
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