Purpose

QUEST is a user-driven innovation project. Researchers, development consultants, and the local collaborators must concretise problems and solutions within the project framework.

The overall objective is to promote learning among pupils in science subjects at primary and lower secondary school level. To achieve this objective, the project focuses on the development, implementation, assessment, and dissemination of a model for in-service education that enables the schools to maintain an on-going, professional improvement of their science teaching.

This will happen by supporting and qualifying the participating teachers’ professional development. In the beginning of the project, the construction of a professional science culture on each school is pivotal. The science teachers develop their own teaching through collaboration with colleagues, and the work takes place in dialog with teachers and researchers from Aarhus University and VIA University College.

The project will be:

• Integrated in the school culture and the school's development, with a focus on both teachers' professional skills as well as institutional changes
• Based on the teachers' participation, cooperation between the teachers, and collaboration within school network
• Adapted to teachers’, schools’ and municipalities’ capacity to change
• Research-based and designed to transform results from national and international research in science education into useful methods, put to use in everyday teaching
• Accompanied by research and systematic dissemination of results and experiences from the project