”Ingen kan bygge romferge alene” - Læreres utbytte av faglig etterutdanning innen romteknologi. "“You can’t build the space shuttle all alone!” - How teachers benefit from partici pating in an in-service course in space technology"

Abstract

This article reports a case study of how science teachers benefit from participation in an in-service course on space technology at Andøya Rocket Range in Northern Norway. The course deviates from current policy for teachers’ professional development by being short-term, targeting individual teachers and by having a somewhat narrow subject focus. In this course, teachers work closely with space scientists and engineers, forming a community of practice in highly technological settings. The transfer of this experience to classroom teaching is clearly challenging. By means of in-depth interviews, we have investigated teachers’ outcome from the course and how they see it benefiting their teaching. Results indicate three main categories of outcome: Affective outcome; content knowledge and practical skills; and technological process knowledge. This outcome is found to have an indirect, yet important, influence on the teaching of science that should be taken into account in policy for science teachers’ professional development.