Anat Yarden Group

In the realm of science education, particularly biology education, keeping abreast of new discoveries and insights is of paramount importance. During the 20222023 school year, we sent 21 scientific newsletters (SNs) via WhatsApp dealing with contemporary biological topics to 901 biology teachers in junior high schools and high schools. The aim of this survey study was to investigate how teachers perceive the possible impact of these SNs on both their own professional development and their students. We sent a questionnaire to the teachers, 110 of which were filled out. The key finding from the teachers responses was that the primary and most crucial contribution of the SNs lies in enhancing teachers biological disciplinary knowledge, contributing to their own professional development, and enhancing their students biological disciplinary knowledge. The SNs were notably less significant for teachers in terms of elevating their own or their students scientific literacy. Future examination of teachers experiences and insights may lead to a deeper understanding of how SNs influence teaching methodologies and content knowledge, and impact instructional effectiveness.

Background: Influential philosophers have suggested that interdisciplinarity is crucial for ecosystem management and scientific practice, and for education to democracy. However, a historical review of the rise of disciplines points at their compartmentalization in schools. An analysis of core construct categories of three disciplines, shows that this compartmentalization may decrease when dialogic argumentation is enacted. This background led us to launch an interdisciplinary program in schools. In previous publications, we identified multiple constraints in its implementation and listed design principles for affording interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. Method: We adopt a narrative approach to analyze classroom talk, and ask whether and how interdisciplinary processes emerge in this talk. Findings: Students maintain dialogic argumentation around Interdisciplinary Social Dilemmas, but guidance is necessary for integrating knowledge from different disciplines. When the teacher is attentive to students unarticulated references to disciplinary ideas, she may subtly guide the emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. Often, the teacher misses those opportunities and declaims the integration of knowledge in a non-dialogic talk. Contribution: Dialogic Education is crucial for the success of interdisciplinary programs in schools, but the actual emergence of interdisciplinary processes depends on the handling of organizational and institutional constraints, on huge design efforts, and on subtle guidance.

Evolution is a fundamental part of biology and thus it is essential that biology preservice teachers understand and accept it. The relationship between knowledge and acceptance of evolution, and specifically human evolution, has not been fully investigated in Israel. We sought to learn about that relationship amongst Israeli Jewish religious preservice science teachers. Twenty-three religious preservice teachers answered knowledge questions before and after participating in a human evolution activity and completed an acceptance questionnaire (I-SEA). In addition, eleven of them were interviewed regarding their knowledge of evolution and four were interviewed regarding their acceptance of evolution a few months after participating in the activity. Our main findings were that the relationship between knowledge and acceptance of evolution was not always one-to-one. The preservice teachers whose evolution knowledge is high and have firm religious faith accept the theory of evolution and are willing and eager to teach it. In addition, preservice teachers might have made a shift in their understanding of human evolution and thus accepted human evolution more due to the activity. More teacher training and exposure to evolution content and pedagogy are needed so that when preservice teachers will become in-service teachers they will teach evolution without hesitance.