Report on the activity of the project “Scientific and technological education towards the 2000s” Prof. Gad Elam, Faculty of Physics, Technion I would briefly define the purpose of the research as the formulation of science education policy. Research was conducted by a team of the Technion in collaboration with people from other institutions, where members of the staff today are involved in the mathematics and education industry in Israel. That is, a team includes people from the scientific disciplines, chemistry, physics, mathematics and the department of the parent of the sciences.
The Ministry of Education cannot always devote time and resources to an overall view of science education in Israel, and if you compare the investment in R&D of science education in Israel compared to the rest of the world, you can see that we still have a lot to learn from other countries, where investments are usually on the order of 2%. The purpose of our report is to be reliable, grounded and practical. In the second phase of the program we also plan to write curricula that will be relevant to the conclusions and we may even adopt several schools.
The methodology is based on workshops like the one held here, or like a very successful workshop that was on science education, and another on mathematics education. Another workshop will be held soon, on education for excellence. The methodology is partly based on collaboration with people in the field, such as teachers, teachers, etc. Among other things, we learn what is happening in other countries, such as an excellent report published in the USA under the title “Science for All” Americans, which I recommend to everyone read.
In 1982, the Dvoratsky Committee’s report was published, whose goal was similar to ours. The report made strong waves in the media, and as a result, there were many improvements in the system. For example, an important improvement that took place in the system as a result of the Dvoratsky report (but not only as a result of it), was the large increase in the number of students studying science majors or science tracks, or taking a high number of science units.
At the same time, it is not always possible to look at the statistics and say, let’s pat ourselves on the back with pride, because there are 8,600 students who study 2 units of physics or more, of which over 7,000 are in 3 and 5 units. This is because if you read the report of the inspector who is here with us regarding the matriculation exams of the last year, then you see that precisely with regard to those questions
that required understanding beyond being placed in formulas there is still much to learn and to do. That is, the statistics by themselves are far from teaching us what really happening in the field.
