Eilish McLoughlin

Analysing student written solutions to investigate if problem-solving processes are evident throughout

ABSTRACT An interdisciplinary science course has been implemented at a university with the intention of providing students the opportunity to develop a range of key skills in relation to: real-world connections of science, problem-solving, information and communications technology use and team while linking subject knowledge in each of the science disciplines. One of the problems used in this interdisciplinary course has been selected to evaluate if it affords students the opportunity to explicitly display problem-solving processes. While the benefits of implementing problem-based learning have been well reported, far less research has been devoted to methods of assessing student problem-solving solutions. A problem-solving theoretical framework was used as a tool to assess student written solutions to indicate if problem-solving processes were present. In two academic years, student problem-solving processes were satisfactory for exploring and understanding, representing and formulating, and planning and executing, indicating that student collaboration on problems is a good initiator of developing these processes. In both academic years, students displayed poor monitoring and reflecting (MR) processes at the intermediate level. A key impact of evaluating student work in this way is that it facilitated meaningful feedback about the students’ problem-solving process rather than solely assessing the correctness of problem solutions.

The Current Situation of Women in Physics in Ireland

We present statistics on the current representation of female physics students, teachers, and researchers at secondand third-level education in the Republic of Ireland. Our findings show that girls who take physics in secondary (high) school represent less than 4% of all students who complete their secondary school studies. At third-level the situation is also grim, with some institutes reporting less than 7% female participation in physicsbased courses. We also present Institute of Physics findings on the female percentages at the different academic career levels for some of the major third-level institutes in Ireland. These show that women are underrepresented at all levels. We report on initiatives that have been launched by Science Foundation Ireland under its Women in Science and Engineering Programme. These aim to address the lack of women in the science and engineering sectors and encourage qualified women back into the academic arena.

Building Teacher Confidence in Inquiry and Assessment: Experiences from a Pan-European Collaboration

This chapter discusses the outcomes of a pan-European collaboration to support teachers in adopting inquiry based science education (IBSE) and in assessing their student’s inquiry skills and competences in classroom practice. The project, Strategies for Assessment of Inquiry Learning in Science (SAILS), involved a team of science teacher educators and second level science teachers from across twelve European countries—Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom. Through sustained collaboration between science teachers and educators and across borders, both classrooms and countries, a variety of teaching and assessment strategies that facilitate inquiry learning in the classroom have been highlighted.

Teaching, learning, and assessing inquiry-based science education

During the period 2008–2014, the European Commission funded several large-scale projects in science education that promoted the use of inquiry-based learning for engaging young people in science. All these projects were aimed at the introduction and broader use of inquiry-based science education (IBSE) through enriching the skills of teachers by delivering appropriate teacher education programs at both pre-service and in-service levels. This paper will present on the approach adopted by the SAILS project to support science teachers in the use and dissemination of Inquiry based approaches in their own classrooms with students aged 12–18 years.

A Structural Study of the Sn/Cu(100) Surface Alloy System

The coverage‐dependent structural phase transitions of Sn on Cu100 have been by low‐energy electron diffraction (LEED), scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), and x‐ray standing wave spectroscopy (XSW). Dynamical LEED calculations have been applied both to a range of possible models and to previously suggested structures with the aim of identifying the most likely surface geometries throughout the sub‐monolayer coverage regime. A model consistent with both the Sn surface coverage and the complex split‐beam LEED pattern observed has been suggested for the low coverage (qSn = 0.21ML) ordered phase based on a p(2′2) structure with “light” antiphase domain walls. We also demonstrate that higher coverage p(2×6) (qSn = 0.37ML) and p(3O2′O2)R450 (qSn = 0.50ML) structures based on c(2′2) local periodicity yield a consistent explanation of the higher‐coverage LEED data. The 0.5‐ML coverage has been studied using symmetrized automated tensor LEED, which shows that this phase is formed by bringing pairs of Sn atoms to...