Encyclopædia Britannica, today announced its participation at BETT Middle East 2011, where it will showcase its new online teaching resource – Britannica Pathways: Science.

Deeply-held scientific misunderstandings among students are slowing down lessons, as teachers are forced to re-teach topics and untangle erroneous ideas, research reveals.

In May 2011, Encyclopædia Britannica carried out research via the Schoolzone network, among secondary school Science teachers in the UK. The report released based on this research examined secondary school science teachers’ attitudes to barriers to learning in Physics, Chemistry and Biology and what can be done to address them.

Nearly a third of science teachers (29 per cent) say that student misconceptions are the biggest barrier to learning currently faced in the classroom, as they take time to disprove via traditional learning methods, are difficult to correct and prevent students from grasping more complex ideas.

But despite these concerns, the majority of science teachers (75 per cent) believe that most students learn best by researching scientific theories for themselves, while more than a quarter (27 per cent) believe this is the only way that misconceptions can be overcome.

However, more than two thirds (68 per cent) of science teachers believe that they have insufficient tools to support their students to work independently, while just over half are concerned that there is not enough lesson time to address misconceptions.

To help teachers overcome their pupils’ misconceptions, Encyclopædia Britannica has developed Britannica Pathways: Science, an online teaching resource designed to help teachers clarify difficult scientific concepts for their pupils andsupport independent learning, while providing immediate access to reliable and accurate information and saving teachers’ time.

Professor Sir Harold Kroto who won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry and is supporting Pathways said: “In this day and age when massive technical and sustainability issues appear to threaten the survival of the human race all attempts to help improve the general level of SET education are vitally important and this Britannica Pathways initiative is a most innovative effort to help teachers to achieve this end. After all, although knowledge cannot guarantee good decisions, common sense suggests that wisdom is an unlikely consequence of ignorance.”

Developed for teaching at Key Stage 3, Britannica Pathways: Science helps teachers improve their students’ knowledge of core areas of science. The resource encourages the development of many key skills, including critical thinking, discussion, research and evaluation, through interactive classroom activities and teacher-led discussions. Students are also encouraged to examine evidence and test hypotheses through curriculum-relevant ideas and activities.

Caroline Kennard, Director of Education at Encyclopædia Britannica, said: “With new Science GCSEs likely tobe introduced into the curriculum in the near future whichplace a greater emphasis on knowledge acquisition, it is more important than ever that students are taught about the nature of critical inquiry, how to think independently and the importance of accurate information when conducting research.

“Britannica Pathways: Science offers a new approach to help students understand core areas of science which they have traditionally found to be the most difficult and helps teachers to clarify and overcome some of the common misconceptions held by their students.”

Britannica Pathways: Science will be available to schools in September 2011. For more information, or for an interactive demonstration of the resource, please visit www.britannica.co.uk/>

The top 10 areas with which students have most difficulty, as revealed by science teachers, are: forces and relative motion, electrical currents and how electricity moves, the differences between respiration and breathing, atomic theory, plant food consumption, gravity in space, the effect of heat on particles, the difference between weight and mass, classification of living organisms and human reproduction.

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