The project seeks to widen the training opportunities of science teachers by using important cases from the History of Science and investing on ICT technologies.
The main objective is to design and develop an interactive distance-learning website where science teacher advisors and in-service science teachers can locate guidelines and exemplary materials/ strategies conducive to effectively teaching and learning science (electricity and electromagnetism). The project will focus on developing exemplary/pilot training modules (a course), in the form of a Resource Kit for science teaching based on case studies from the History of Science. The Resource Kit or training modules/materials will be made available to groups of prospective stakeholders via a web-site that can help teachers to design and develop materials for their own students. Intended users of this website will have access to tele-mentoring and will be invited to upload on the website their own materials, so that these can be used and evaluated by other users.
We aim our training modules/materials to be characterized from the following:
• to make explicit through the exploitation of authentic historical science events the contemporary views about the NOS [explicit instruction about NOS]
• to include a variety of teaching and learning strategies (e.g. laboratory work, debates – argumentation, drama, museum, group work, role-playing, telling stories, dialogue, inquiry, simulations) that exploit authentic historical science events in the topic of the fall of bodies.
• to facilitate learning/training and development through collaborative inquiry activities among teacher and students or among trainer and in-service science teachers (learning is an inherently social-dialogical activity). An oriented in collaborative inquiry training program should involve students or teachers in conversations about common experiences and in development of collaborative projects.
• to involve -via telementoring- science teachers in collaborative activities in order to develop their own educational instructional material (e.g. worksheets). We believe that when teachers are given the opportunity to research their own practice on site, collaboratively and with support, they establish what works for them and their students. This could become a creative process that is participant-driven.
• to contextualize training, learning, and joint productive activity in the experiences and competencies of in-service science teachers (knowledge is embedded in practice) and to anchor training/professional development in realworld or authentic problems of science teaching that make science teacher development meaningful and purposeful [learning is embedded in the activities and practices in which it occurs]. This means that the activities of the program should actively engage teachers to take responsibility for solving “real science classroom problems” [knowledge is context dependent].
A variety of activities will be employed for the attainment of the objectives of the project and the diffusion of its outcomes, including online resources, an interactive distance learning, a dissemination workshop, a CD-ROM documenting the project, and a network of prospective users at the European level.

Participating institutions
• University of Pavia, Department of Physics “Alessandro Volta”, History and Education of Science Section - professor Fabio Bevilacqua

• University of Cyprus, Department of Educational Sciences - associate professor Nicos Valanides

• Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Education - lecturer Fanny Seroglou

• University of Oldenburg (Carl von Ossietzky University), research group on Physics Education, History and Philosophy of Science - senior lecturer Peter Heering