University of Tartu

The Centre for Science Education

The Centre for Science Education within the Faculty of Science and Technology is the only research Centre for science education in Estonia, The Centre has two professors, 14 PhD students and a number of international scholars. Besides research activities, the Centre is involved in teaching pre-service teachers and in conducting in-service teacher courses at interdisciplinary levels and in the separate science subjects. The science
teacher training programs include courses conducted in partnership with industry and science centers.
The Centre has chaired a number of research projects between the three major universities in Estonia for example on sustainability of science education at all levels and, most recently, on gymnasium student’s scientific literacy. The Centre has a long traditions of collaborating with Finnish universities such as the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland.
The Centre staff has been heavily involved in developing teaching-learning materials in Estonia (including on-line materials and MOOC-s), has published 5 books and produced resources for UNESCO, based on IBSE related material-writing workshops in a range of countries. The Centre has been the national coordinating center for more than 7 European projects and. chairs the ongoing network for collaboration in science education and is leading developments in assessment within science education for the
Ministry of Education.

Estonian organisations participating in joint research capacity building & training provided by SciCar

Organisations benefitting from training provided by SciCar

Other participants from UT

  • Natural History Museum & Botanical Garden 

Research in STEM Education consortium

  • Institute of Ecology and Life Sciences: Centre for Science Education (responsible also for Biology and Geography Education)

  • Institute of Chemistry: Chair of School Chemistry 

  • Institute of Physics: Centre for School Physics 
  • Institute of Mathematics and Statistics: Centre for Mathematics Education 
  • Institute of Computer Science: Informatics Didactics Work Group 

The objectives of the UT consortium were seen as increasing the capacity of scientific research in the field of subject didactics based on the existing best practices in the Science & Technology Faculty (S&T) and involving external expertise. As a result, the specialty of teachers in the field of S&T were seen as becoming more attractive, teaching became more research-based and the number of doctoral students in the field of didactics increased.