Improving Quality of Science Teacher Training in European Cooperation
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E-learning

The Main Tendencies of Integrated Science Education Development

• To analyze the reasons determining the need for integrated science education;
• To identify the basic terms describing the integration of sciences;
• To perceive integrating the content of subjects as the most efficient way of integration offering possibilities, advantages and links with the principles of constructivistic teaching / learning?

Complex knowledge, its application for a certain activity becomes a crucially important object for the various fields of the man’s life. Integrated education should decrease the objections between the knowledge gained from the teaching subjects and the necessity and inevitability of their synthesis. The presentation of content only (knowledge, information, etc.) is not a core of teaching.

• the integration of natural sciences (there are more and more fields of research combining traditional subjects (physics, chemistry, biology) and the modern branches of science such as biochemistry, biophysics, biogeochemistry, astrophysics etc.);
• the undividedness of the world and the knowledge of it (individual traditional subjects of biology, physics and chemistry reflect the theoretic structure and evolution of science, have no close links with the learner’s daily life, his/her interests outside school);
• the implementation of new technologies (a broad background is requisite for working people of a number of the areas of production and service);
• ecology issues (integrated education will help to perceive the correlation between animate and inanimate nature and to adopt the approach to the environment based on ecology culture);
• the need of the correlation between education content and a socio-cultural life (natural science knowledge related to a social and cultural life and science history of Lithuania and the world is very important to the process of fostering personal and value-based attitudes).

• the enlargement of the radius of knowledge the basis of which is automatic communicative technologies;
• the growth of the world’s interdependence (globalization);
• global problems and the obligation to find decisions;
• need to anticipate education to the most advanced (front) cognition (science), i.e. to get schoolchildren acquainted with various subjects, to seek to develop interdisciplinary skills and abilities in order to identify and clarify the problem and to effectively apply gained knowledge and skills to solve it, etc.);
• a direct correlation between teaching and global questions (the application and development of problematic integrated teaching, etc.).

• knowledge acquired at school is perceived using a pattern that is digressed from the methods applied to use information to solve the problem;
• the correlation between obtained knowledge and life is weak (efficiency, scholasticism etc., is insufficient).

Scientific literature suggests such concepts as integration variants (Paulauskaitė, 1994), integration types (Case, 1991), integration forms (Beitas, 1995), integration varieties (Bagdonas, 1994; Pečiuliauskienė, 1992), integration method (Salite, 2000); integration approach (Chepelev, 2003). The above information confirms that we use different concepts in the discussions on the same subjects, and therefore there is plenty of confusion and lack of a uniform concept. Finally, a thick accent should be put on the efficiency of integrated teaching. If it is not effective under specific circumstances or do not correspond to the requirements of training, the approaches to natural sciences teaching can be definitely diverse.

• the experience of integrated teaching is diverse and rich;
• experience is personal in every country - history, practice and experimentation etc. S. Sjøberg notices that many countries have introduced more or less radical reforms, and there has been support for curriculum development and experiment (Sjøberg, 2002);
• there is no country, the experience of integrated teaching of which should be extremely advanced and the most efficient;
• the major task is to find out the essential factors that crucially influence the efficiency of natural science education and the circumstances preventing from successful integrated teaching. One of the most frequently named aspects – a professional competence of natural science teachers (Lamanauskas, 2003b; Pak, Solomin, 2003);
• two competing paradigms are obvious:
  
  Integrated curriculum paradigm <--> Disciplinary curriculum paradigm
• the interception of the experience of other countries needs a thorough analysis;
• the teachers of natural sciences should constantly be engaged in the innovations of natural science education and conditions for that should be established. Finally, the concept of integrated teaching of every teacher is unique. Thus, the best way out is the cooperation of natural science teachers when planning and introducing integrated curricula. Research reveals that the main differences exist in the city site school and that of the rural area. According to K.Tobin, W.M. Roth and A.Zimmermann (2001) teaching in urban schools, with their problems of violence, lack of resources, and inadequate funding, is difficult /it is even more difficult to learn to teach in urban schools/.

All over the world, educators and scientists have joined forces to produce different integrated programs such as the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), the Chemical Bond Approach (CBA) and CHEM Study program in chemistry, Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) and Harvard Project Physics (HPP) and the Earth Science Curriculum Project (ESCP) etc. It is clear that not all these programs made identical success. Despite of this realization in a school practice of the different integrated programs there was a bright promotion in didactics of science teaching.

It is clear that the most important and relevant goal of science education is to prepare young people for a full and satisfying life. According to A.Toldsepp (2003) we need to implement future oriented paradigm of science education (figure 1).

There were three main waves of science education reforms (De Jong, 2007).

After 1990 special interest to integration of science subjects has arisen in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It has been closely connected with the begun reforms of education systems. It is obvious that science education is currently going through a process of change worldwide.

1. Use the presented material to identify separate areas under the indicated topics grouping the reasons determining the necessity of integrated science education:
   
   

   Reasons determined by changes in teaching content	Reasons determined by the process of teaching / learning	Social / socio-cultural reasons

   
   
2. Use the offered literature to define the following terms:
   
   

   Term	Definition
   Integration types
   Integration forms
   Integration method
   Integration approach

   
   
3. Try to express a personal opinion to define the core of integrated science education, for instance, Why is it required? What are the ways of implementation? etc.
4. Briefly discuss the development of integrated science teaching in Europe from the 1990 until now.

Every part has unique experience in this field: an intended different level of integration at different education stages, varying intensity of educational content, different forms and methods of integration etc. However, some common points exist. Recently, ecological education is frequently integrated in different subjects, for example, the above mentioned integration of content. Use the documents regulating the content of education in comprehensive schools (curricula, education standards etc.) as well as other major tools for science education (course books, work books etc.) to analyze the situation of integrating the content of ecological education into general education in your country.

• What is the stage and which are the subjects containing the major part of indications of ecological educations? What is the stage and which are the subjects having the highest intensity? Point out the reasons.
• How does the examined integration of subject content influence the quality of the educational process and the results of self / education?
• Find the links between the integration of the content of ecological education and the principles of constructivistic teaching / learning?

Natural sciences closely correlate; their content reflects a united reality. These points cannot be isolated from one another in the educational process. On the contrary, their interaction should be encouraged and only then the efficiency of the educational process will equally increase. Physics and chemistry as well as biology research describe the phenomena taking place in nature. From this viewpoint, their interpretation is supposed to be similar in order pupils should get a solid concept of natural phenomena.

Along with the integration of teaching content, the conveyance of the holistic view of the world, the application of training aids and methods to the level of pupils’ development (without respect of age), teaching pupils to systematize and implement interdisciplinary relations, etc. are very important to education. Different patterns of integrated teaching/learning exist. A promising method (particularly in primary school) is when the content of natural science education is integrated into each educational subject in all forms. At last, the life of an exact school community may have a natural science context (various projects, community environment protection education, practic environment protection work, etc.).

From the viewpoint of history it is obvious that science education should combine natural history achievements and prognostic future victories. Children need conditions to be imposed and possibilities to be perceived how the ideas of natural sciences have been changing throughout the time, how they have been realized and used and what their social, inward, cultural context has remained.

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