Experiences and results from the European project "Integrated Subject Science Understanding in Europe"

The increasing impact of science and mathematics in society does not seem to mediate an increased interest or understanding of scientific ideas among young people. Furthermore, the decreased recruitment of young people to scientific courses and the small amount that choose to pursue a scientific career, reflect the general attitude towards science. The disciplinary tradition characterizes the national educational curricula/synopses in many European countries and is commonly used in schools. This makes the understanding of cross-curricular issues particularly difficult. It has previously been found that curriculum integration increases pupils’ engagement in school and stimulates the teachers. Teachers and teaching methodologies are among the major factors affecting young peoples’ attitudes towards learning. However, although a lot of results from research focused on teaching and learning processes have been published, teachers seldom make use of the research outcomes. The obvious approach to overcome these problems would be the use of integrated curricula and implementation of interdisciplinary teaching/learning materials in schools in close collaboration with in-service teachers. To increase pupils’ understanding and interest in science and to overcome the gap between the theory and practice a three-year European project Integrating Subject Science Understanding in Europe, ISSUE-project, was performed. The project involved institutions from six European countries and was supported by the European COMENIUS programme. This project had two main objectives: one was to create a close collaboration between the researchers and in-service teachers, and the second to produce the integrated teaching-learning sequences and to implement and evaluate these materials in more than one European country.