Developing Bridging Courses for Mathematics and Science Teacher Students Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing Bridging Courses for Mathematics and Science Teacher Students

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Natural sciences

Project Summary

Almost all teacher training institutions, and particularly universities involved in initial teacher training, have introduced so-called bridging courses at or near the beginning of their study programmes for prospective mathematics and science teachers (a bridging course thereby means a course that is designed to bridge the gap between what was learned in school and what is needed at university. However, the vast majority of such courses have been developed by mathematicians, scientists and other tertiary-level research/teaching staff, having mainly mathematics and science undergraduate students in mind, and not so much teacher students in these subjects. Mathematics and science educators were often not involved in the design and are rarely involved in the teaching of these courses. At some universities, there is the same bridging course both for mathematics/science undergraduate students and for mathematics/science teacher students. At other universities, there are separate bridging courses for teacher students, but they are just simplified versions of the courses for undergraduate students. These facts take away most of the advantages that bridging courses are supposed to have for the teacher students. The partner universities are all well-established teacher training institutions and have found that, while their current bridging courses helped reducing the drop-out rate for their mathematics and science undergraduate students, they barely affected the drop-out rates of the mathematics and science teacher students.

It is therefore the objective of this project to develop, test, revise, finalise and disseminate materials for a bridging course for mathematics teacher students and a bridging course for science teacher students, and provide workshops for teacher trainers and for university staff who deliver bridging courses to mathematics and science students, demonstrating and working on how they can use these materials in their own mathematics and science teacher training bridging courses.

This will be done by:
* analyzing existing bridging courses (curricula, frameworks, materials) of partners and other teacher training institutions
* interviewing staff teaching and teacher students attending these bridging courses
* developing guidelines for the development of suitable bridging courses for teacher training programmes, and an evaluation form for bridging courses.
* developing, testing, refining, finalizing, implementing and publishing curricula (framework, timeline, topics) and teaching materials for bridging courses for mathematics and science teacher students.
* teaming up with teacher training institutions in other countries to present the materials there
* organizing an international teaching and training event with a workshop to introduce teacher trainers and bridging course lecturers to the curricula and teaching materials
* organizing an international conference as multiplier event to present the project results and to work with teacher trainers, mathematicians/scientists and math/science educators
* disseminating outputs using a wide variety of regional, national, and international dissemination channels

The main results will be:
* reports (one per partner) about status quo of local/regional math/science teacher training bridging courses.
* guidelines for developing bridging courses for mathematics and science teacher students
* an evaluation form for bridging courses
* curricula and teaching materials for bridging courses for mathematics teacher students and for science teacher students
* a report about process and results of bridging course evaluation
* a final conference to present the project results to national and international mathematics/science educators, curriculum directors of teacher training institutions, and designers of bridging courses, and a bridging course leaders’ teaching and training event to introduce lecturers and leaders of bridging courses to the curricula of the developed bridging courses, allow them to try out the teaching materials, and give test lectures using the materials
* a website containing project results, project and partner information, and contact data

The expected impacts, both during the project and as longer term benefits, are for teacher trainers and bridging course providers to benefit from having curricula and teaching materials available that were specifically designed for mathematics and science teacher students which have been proven to work in several countries and several educational frameworks, and to benefit from having the guidelines and evaluation form available should they desire to develop their own bridging course materials; for mathematics and science teacher students, to benefit from bridging courses that have been designed with their specific needs and with their future profession in mind; and for mathematics and science educators to have bridging course curricula and materials available for further study and evaluation.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 156553 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT WIEN & Country: AT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PALERMO
• UNIVERZITA PALACKEHO V OLOMOUCI
• UNIVERZITA KONSTANTINA FILOZOFA VNITRE
• VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS