by Sanne Dekker &  Inge van der Aa (Radbout University, The Netherlands)

The Science Education Hub in Nijmegen has undergone large changes in the team coordinating the PARRISE project as the former project leader Roald Verhoeff moved to the PARRISE team at Utrecht University. We thank Roald for all the work he did for the project and we are happy that he will still be part of the PARRISE family.

The new team of the SKUN (Radboud University) consists of Sanne Dekker (project leader), Inge van der Aa and Jan van Baren-Nawrocka. We are all new to PARRISE and started our activities in this team in November 2015. Together we developed a Teacher Professional Development (TPD) program for primary school teachers that will be implemented in the spring of 2016 (February-April). To recruit additional teachers for this program, we have made a video clip about PARRISE and have posted it on our website. Via an e-mail to more than two hundred primary schools, several posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and via our local newsletter, we have spread information about the project and possibilities to sign up for our TPD program. We have also updated our local website, www.wkru.nl, to ensure that primary school teachers can easily apply for the course in Spring 2016 or Fall 2016. Besides approaching primary school teachers, we are in contact with pre-service training programs to explore possibilities to implement parts of the TPD program in the  curriculum.

Furthermore, we are busy collecting information and developing course materials for the TPD program. The Science Education Hub at the Radboud University in Nijmegen has a lot of expertise in inquiry-based learning. We can use some of the materials and develop new activities as well to enhance teachers’ skills to promote citizenship of their students. Our TPD course consists of five 2,5 hour meetings. All TPD activities will be centered around the theme “Thinking about DNA”.

The first meeting of PARRISE Nijmegen Teacher Professional Development will be on February 3rd, 2016. We will present the results of the first round in May 2016.