Ángel Blanco-López

A Competence-based Approach to the Design of a Teaching Sequence about Oral and Dental Health and Hygiene: A Case Study

We present a case study to illustrate the design and implementation of a teaching sequence about oral and dental health and hygiene. This teaching sequence was aimed at year 10 students (age 15–16) and sought to develop their scientific competences. In line with the PISA assessment framework for science and the tenets of a context-based approach to science education, the design of the teaching sequence was based on real-life situations. After setting out these premises the paper describes and illustrates the stages and tasks involved in the teaching sequence, and discusses certain aspects of its implementation. We conclude by considering a number of issues related to the teaching sequence, including its transfer to teachers.

What do science teachers think about developing scientific competences through context-based teaching? A case study

ABSTRACT In this paper we explore the views and opinions of four secondary education science teachers regarding the teaching of scientific competences. Their views were gathered in the context of a training programme in which they had to design, implement, and assess their own teaching unit for developing students’ scientific competences by means of context-based learning. Analysis of the data yielded a set of 14 categories distributed across 5 areas: scientific competence and context-based teaching; the teacher and his/her professional environment; implementation in the classroom; development of the teaching unit; and assessment. This process also identified the aspects which teachers believed either facilitated or acted as an obstacle to the development of scientific competences through context-based teaching. We discuss the implications of our findings and suggest ways in which a shift towards a context-based approach to teaching scientific competences can best be achieved, and consider a series of factors related to teachers’ professional identity that may influence this process.

Knowledge as an aspect of scientific competence for citizenship: results of a Delphi study in Spain

ABSTRACT This article focuses on scientific knowledge as one aspect of the scientific competencies that citizens should ideally possess. The analysis is based on a Delphi study we conducted with Spanish experts from different science-related fields. The results showed that although the experts proposed several examples of scientific knowledge, the degree of consensus reached fell short of the minimum criterion we established. This article seeks to identify the reasons for this lack of consensus by examining the ways in which scientific knowledge was regarded in this Delphi study, the results of which are also compared with other relevant studies on science education for citizens. The analysis reveals that the different professional groups consulted did not, at the start of the Delphi process, place the same degree of emphasis on scientific knowledge. They also differed both in the importance ratings they awarded to the areas of scientific knowledge that had been proposed by the panel as a whole, and in the degree of variance shown by the ratings of each group. Comparison of the present results with the content of previous studies support the importance of selecting a small, common core of scientific knowledge that has both intrinsic and educational value.