Science education for sustainability: Can a Power Point-based workshop induce a related conceptual change in science teachers?

Targeting at advancing science education for sustainability (SES) via a purposed paradigm shift—from teaching to “know” – to learning to “think”- a Power Point (PP)-based interactive workshop was presented in an international conference on education research. The study, here presented, investigates the value and effectiveness of a 3 hours’ workshop for making a perceptual change in science teachers. The SES-related Higher-order Cognitive Skills (HOCS) epistemology was presented in a workshop; illustrating its conceptual framework, educational potential for science teaching and contribution to science education. This paper reports the results of a formative evaluation case-study concerning the extent to which the goals of the ‘SES workshop’ were attained. Accordingly, we have examined the workshop participants’ pre-post perceptions of the workshop, their educational objectives and ongoing teaching/ assessment strategies. The participants showed no change related to collaboration issues, or their feelings about the topics discussed during the short-term workshop. However, (a) an interesting induced shift was found concerning their perception of the integration of science-technology-environment-society (STES) issues, while focusing on the implementation of HOCS in science teaching and learning; and (b) the workshop participants became more open to SES-related paradigms shift from Lower-order Cognitive Skills (LOCS) teaching to HOCS learning.