Courses
Fanny Seroglou has been teaching at the School of Primary Education of the Faculty of Education of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 2001:
2001 - 2004 Lecturer in Science Education with annual contracts (407/80)
2004 - 2010 Lecturer in Science Education at the position titled “Teaching science concepts”
2010 - today Assistant Professor in Science Education at the position titled “Teaching science concepts”
Fanny Seroglou has designed and taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level the following courses:
2001-today Science for citizenship
2001 Hands-on science teaching
2001-2003 Teaching science to the visually impaired
2003-2010 Gender in science education
2004-2006 Teaching science concepts in primary education
2006-today Science education
2006-2009 Cross-disciplinary teaching approaches and science education
2007-today Science and culture in education
2010-today Teaching science in the classroom
Fanny Seroglou has been invited invited professor at the following universities:
1. Alessandro Volta Physics Department, University of Pavia, Italy (1997, 2001, 2006)
2. School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2003)
3. School of Science Education (CEFIEC), University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2007)
Historia y Didactica de las Ciencias Naturales)
4. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, University of Catamarca, Catamarca, Argentina (2007)
(Fanny Seroglou was given the title of Professor of the University of Catamarca in Argentina by the University Council of the University of Catamarca in June 2006 for her innovative and inspiring research work).
Brief summaries of the current courses follow:
Science for citizenship
The course aims to introduce pre-service teachers to teaching science in the context of scientific literacy. Science for citizenship attempts to discuss scientific knowledge in the classroom and highlight nature of science, values and attitudes fostered by science as well as scientific knowledge management in the society.
During the course the following aspects of science education are presented:
a) Scientific literacy.
b) Aims and objectives of science for citizenship.
c) Definitions of the scientifically literate citizen.
d) A three-dimensional cognitive, meta-cognitive and emotional approach for teaching science.
e) A cross-disciplinary teaching approach for science.
f) The contribution of the history of science in science teaching.
g) Concept-maps as an alternative evaluation tool.
h) A variety of teaching strategies and applied case studies for science for citizenship (such as theatre in the science classroom, science debate, science role-play, science poster design, teaching science through narratives etc.)
Science education
This course is a preparation of future teachers for science teaching. Lectures, workshops and lab sessions offer to pre-service teachers a variety of opportunities to discuss and reflect on the following key-questions:
a) Why teach science in the primary school today?
b) What instructional material is the most suitable to support current teaching scenarios?
c) What teaching strategies should we use to teach science in the primary school?
δ) What evaluation methods should we apply to science courses today;
During the lectures of the course, the design and the use of teaching materials and strategies is presented, while future teachers are actively introduced to selection, design and application of instructional material and teaching strategies in the workshops and the lab sessions of the course.
Also during the lectures, many examples of instructional material and case studies for a variety of teaching strategies concerning the content of applied science curricula are presented.
Science and culture in education
The course aims to bring forward the interaction between science and culture, encouraging a unified context for science and culture learning and teaching. This is an attempt to overcome the established divided context of science and humanities in education. This course is a proposal for presenting the "overall image" of science and culture in education. The course consists of three thematic units:
a) Scientific events that influenced culture such as the atomic bomb and the World War II, space race and the cold war, DNA research and bio-ethics etc.
b) A comparative presentation of western science and interpretations about the world and natural phenomena coming from a variety of cultures all over the world.
c) A variety of examples of science and art interaction, the way that science has influenced art as well as the way that science has been expressed through works of art in theatre, cinema, painting, literature and music.
In each thematic unit, examples of classroom activities for teaching the "overall image" of science and culture in the primary school are presented. During the course pre-service teachers watch a selection of films concerning the science and culture interactions mentioned above. The course is also supported by an educational wiki where pre-service teachers discuss on the topic of the film and lecture presented is week and create their own projects in the form of web pages in this web-based learning environment (http://atlaswikiwork.wetpaint.com & http://atlaswiki.wetpaint.com)
Teaching science in the classroom
The course is actually a series of workshops that aim to help pre-service teachers to get familiar to the rhythms and demands of the science classroom, to train them in developing didactic transformations through a variety of teaching strategies and prepare for teaching science in the classroom. The course consists of three parts. In the first part, pre-service teachers watch videotaped science teaching sessions, discuss and analyse the characteristics and dynamics of each videotaped teaching session. In the second part, pre-service teachers prepare and realise their own teaching sessions (design and develop instructional material and teaching strategies). Finally, in the third part of the course, pre-service teachers watch, study and analyse their own videotaped teaching sessions.