The SAILS conference, hosted by the Centre for the Advancement of Science and Mathematics Teaching and Learning, CASTeL, of Dublin City University & St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, brought together second level teachers and practitioners with teacher educators and researchers to discuss and share their experiences with implementing an inquiry approach to teaching, learning and assessment. The conference took place on 24-25th June 2014 in Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland in parallel with the 6th biennial Science and Mathematics Education Conference (SMEC 2014) and was attended by 174 participants. In this newsletter you will find some highlights (short abstracts of the keynote speakers’ presentations, links to the speakers’ slides & video interviews with teachers) from the Conference.
The conference was opened by the Dean of Research, Prof. John Costello, followed by a welcome address by the Minister Sean Sherlock, Minister of State at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation and Education & Skills with special responsibility for Research & Innovation. A key element of the conference was to provide a platform for teachers to share their experience with implementing inquiry and SAILS assessment strategies within their teaching practice. Teachers were invited to give a short presentation on their work with inquiry and assessment within classroom practice sessions. Topics ranged from living conditions of woodlice, improving images from a camera obscura to designing experiments for the International Space Station. In this newsletter you can find links to some video interviews and posters from teachers who presented at the conference.
As well as teachers sharing their experience, 23 researchers gave presentations on the teaching, learning and assessment of mathematics, science and technology. Extended workshop sessions were also selected so that teachers could focus on particular areas that would help them implement an inquiry approach in their teaching. Workshops covered Assessing Inquiry in a Formative Fashion, Introduction to Video in the Science Classroom, Teacher-Student Dialogue in the Inquiry Classroom, and using ICT tools in the Inquiry Classroom. A workshop was also led by SAILS teachers which demonstrated how group skills could be developed through inquiry and Scientix provided a workshop on the how the resources collected from this project could be used by teachers.
This conference offered teachers the unique opportunity to learn about assessment in the classroom with plenary presentations from renowned educators. The plenary speakers were Wynne Harlen (University of Bristol, UK), Paul Black with Christine Harrison (King’s College London), Benő Csapó, (University of Szeged), Cecília Galvão (Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa), Malcolm Swan (University of Nottingham) and Michael O’Leary with Zita Lysaght (St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra). We highlighted some of these sessions in this newsletter, enjoy reading!
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