Interviewee: Ying-Syuan (Elaine) Huang, Ph.D student, Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE), McGill University
Date: May 20th, 2016

Q; WHAT IS YOUR ROLE IN THE PROJECT?

A: I've been involved in this project for two years. The first year I was a research assistant, so I helped doing some technical work, like organizing the files, helping with some administrative stuff. The second year I was involved, I was helping the project team to organize workshops, and coordinating emails and contacting people. So now it's the end of the project, we are finalize everything, and presenting our materials and workshops, our local workshops at an international conference.

Q: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM BEING INVOLVED IN THE PROJECT? 

A: This is a whole area of research, conceptual change. I think that's the most valuable thing that I learned. Also, working with teachers, intensively sitting down with them, intensively thinking of the activities, the interventions, and how to build a lesson plan. I learned a lot from working with teachers. Also, through this project I had a lot of opportunities to talk with content experts or specialists, like the STIC team, and that's a fabulous experience.

Q: IN YOUR VIEW, WHAT IS THE NEXT STEP FOR UNIVERSITY PARTNERS TO SUPPORT TEACHERS IN THEIR PRACTICE?

A: I was actually just talking with Francois about that. So from my point of view, the role of educators at universities is to help pair up specialists, content experts, with practitioners, like teachers, and school consultants. At the university itself, like on campus, we should be facilitating this process. We also have more educational theory, and the whole philosophy behind science education, which would help facilitate building a holistic framework, holistic models for teaching science. So I don't see educators as at the front line to do the work, but I think educators or university partners play an important role in terms of facilitating a process, and gathering information from both sides is crucial.

Q: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ISSUES THAT TEACHERS FACE WHILE TEACHING SCIENCE?

A: It depends on the levels that you are talking about, right? So at an elementary school level, we don’t get not enough training, not enough content knowledge.

On the other hand, high school teachers are overwhelmed by exams, by admin stuff. So I think the challenges for them would be, they don't have enough time to make their teachings more meaningful.

Q: THANK YOU.