Science Teacher Education Project

From 1970, the Science Teacher Education Project (STEP) was supported by the Nuffield Foundation to enable groups of tutors to cooperate in devising and trying out materials that would contribute to the improvement of professional training. In three years the project produced the publications listed below. STEP was a response to the science courses that had been developed in schools during the previous decade which featured learning activities designed to achieve a wider range of educational purposes than before. A consequence of this evolution of ways of teaching science was that changes in the ways of training and re-training science teachers were necessary so that the new ideas would spread within schools. The central publication, Activities and Experiences, describes approximately one hundred ideas for inclusion in teachers' professional courses. They are mostly college-based, though in many cases closely related to school-based work. In Theory into Practice, the school-based activities are grouped together, and supplemented by others in the same style. Consequently, many individuals contributed indirectly to these assignments. About fifty science tutors from universities and colleges participated in the writing and some two hundred in the trials of the units.

Publications

• Activities and Experiences
• Theory into Practice
• The Art of the Science Teacher
• Through the Eyes of the Pupil
• Innovations in Teacher Education
• Meadowbank School
• Film Review