Issues on school e-laboratories in science teaching: Virtuality, Reality and gender

Gender issues and severe related problems have been discussed in the context of using modem technologies over a long period of time. Similar discussions have concerned science teaching, especially the problems of physics education and female students. Finland has been one of the most advanced countries in the implementation of modem technologies, but even here there are several open problems. We have collected data on the use of different pedagogical approaches in modem learning environments in the context of science teaching. We have national survey data from Finland (3,626 lower secondary school students and 184 teachers, and 2,661 upper secondary school students and 81 teachers). These data show that both teachers and students have rather similar ideas about the need to develop versatile pedagogical approaches including the more active use of e-learning tools and tools available for modern science classrooms like Microcomputer Based Laboratory. This means also that a balance is needed in the roles of virtual and real components of learning environments. Male students were dissatisfied with the present situation of e-learning in science. Both genders wished for more frequent e-learning with more variety. We even performed a case study actively engaging in developing science teaching in a modem learning environment yielding more detailed and qualitative data in the context of a virtual school project. We discuss the benefits of such a research-and-development project even for in-service training of teachers.