Luciano Moreira

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION FOR CHEMISTRY TEACHER: ASSESSMENT ABOUT THE INTENT TO EDUCATIONAL CHANGE AFTER A CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAM IN PORTO, PORTUGAL. This article assesses the intention of chemistry teachers to integrate digital media in their classes. The evaluation was performed using a structured questionnaire after participation in two professional development actions. The formative sessions were designed with the aim of training the chemistry teachers for pedagogical integration of digital media in teaching chemistry in high school. The participants were 25 chemistry teachers from different regions of Brazil, who were participating in an international cooperation program for the professional development of teachers in Portugal. Data collection was conducted through questionnaires containing questions about the motivations for innovation in education, attitudes and beliefs in relation to the training actions and face the pedagogical integration of digital media in the chemistry discipline. The data analysis shows a remarkable behavioral intention of adopting the media which is positively correlated with the attitudes and perceptions of control and negatively with subjective norm. These results suggest that interventions focused on technical and pedagogical training centered on subject content are suitable for the professional development of teachers.

A literature review on social learning systems such as communities of practice and affinity spaces was conducted. A syncretic notion will be used to develop a platform through an action-research process, in order to create an online community of teachers and researchers based on the Multimedia project in science teaching. The platform is expected to foster the sharing and ownership of multimedia integration practices in teaching, peer validation and review, thereby reducing the distance
between researchers and teachers.

The development of students' digital literacy plays an important role in their future success, as we currently live in a technologically oriented society. So it is essential that educators value and find ways of developing their students' digital literacy. Animated infographics are an emerging multimodal tool for communicating science in the digital world. This study investigates biology student's opinions regarding these resources as a learning tool. Eight online available infographics were selected and reposted on a blog, where participants were encouraged to comment on the infographics. After the analysis of comments, we concluded that the usefulness of infographics for teaching and learning biology was generally acknowledged, particularly their facilitating effect on the understanding of topics and on the visualization of abstract concepts and processes related to biology.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the students' attitudes towards science and religion in the Portuguese Secondary Education. The sample consists of 308 students (110 males and 198 females), including 200 Catholics and 49 atheists, from two Portuguese schools (one private and one public). A questionnaire, based on previous instruments and on new items, was used. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted. For the first part of the questionnaire eight factors were retained, including items associated with (i) faith; (ii) scientists; (iii) perspectives of science on religion; (iv) science and religion classes; (v) laws of nature; (vi) trust in science; (vii) interest in science and religion dialogue; (viii) scientific proof of the existence of God. Students expressed great confidence on science and reported to accept science theories on evolution and world beginning. Students do not perceive science classes/ teachers neither religion classes/teachers to ignore their religious faith. The answers to the second part of the questionnaire indicated that students acknowledge that science and religion teachings often enter in conflict and, accordingly, they are not completely, compatible. Students think that scientists should be free to investigate without any interference and statistical significant differences were found between Catholics and atheists. Although the new items need further work and revision, they indicated that the source of the tension between science and religion is not in the Bible nor in the evolution theory. The current findings suggest that creationism might not be as relevant for science and religion dialogue in the Portuguese context as it might be in America or England and that the scientific perspective is dominant in many regards. Ethics may be an important avenue to link science and religion, but it remains unclear what the nature of religion is and how it affects students in their relation with science. Future studies must include a larger sample of students from Secondary Education public schools in order to understand the significance of these preliminary results and to clarify where the source of tension between science and religion lays.

This work investigates the Portuguese scientific production published in conferences proceedings, journals, book series or books indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science under the topic of " online learning ". The main objective is to characterize the methodological approaches used to investigate online learning by either Portuguese authors or author affiliated to Portuguese institutions. The initial corpus of analysis comprehends 35 abstracts. The abstracts have been coded according to their main themes, operative verbs, and methodological approaches. Results reveal that methods are not always accurately described and that most work consists of non-experimental designs. Thus, more coherent and precise description of methods is required. Future work will enlarge the scope of the present research in order to offer a comparative analysis of the Portuguese patterns of production with foreign patterns of production. Simultaneously, research may explore if there is a relationship between these patterns and sociological factors such as authors' sex, institutional affiliation, and impact factor.

O objetivo deste artigo é contextualizar o Programa de Desenvolvimento Profissional para Professores em Portugal, desenvolvido por meio de um protocolo de cooperação entre a Capes e a Universidade do Porto, no âmbito das ações destinadas aos professores de Química, com a finalidade de acompanhar uma estratégia inovadora na formação de professores brasileiros, com vistas à capacitação essencialmente voltada à aplicação dos recursos tecnológicos digitais no cotidiano de sala de aula. A formação ocorreu entre os dias 13 e 31 de janeiro de 2014. Foram atendidos vinte e cinco professores oriundos de escolas públicas da educação básica de diversos estados do Brasil. Os documentos norteadores são: i) edital da Capes n.º 074/2013; e ii) breve memórias dos encontros formativos. Com vistas aos objetivos projetados pela Capes, pode-se afirmar que as condições estruturais, culturais e profissionais ofertadas foram fundamentais para que os mesmos fossem satisfatoriamente alcançados.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factorial structure of a questionnaire on attitudes towards Physics and Chemistry in academic artistic contexts and to study the relation of attitudes with gender and social context. The sample consists of 185 key-stage 3 students of two music schools (A and B), located in different social contexts. The sample of school A consists of 67 year 8 students (40 males and 27 females). The sample of school B consists of 117 key-stage 3 students, from which 41 were enrolled in year 8 (16 males and 25 females). A validated questionnaire was used. Factor analyses (generalized least squares method with varimax rotation) were conducted. The reliability scores were excellent (total sample, α=.95; year 8 sample, α=.93). The factor analysis retrieved four factors for the total sample, which were named after their content: (i) behaviours and achievement; (ii) cognitions and values; (iii) feelings about Physics and Chemistry; and (iv) feelings about studying Physics and Chemistry. The analysis of the year 8 sample retrieved six statistical factors, but the two new factors only included three items, reason why this solution was dropped. Music students seem to have negative attitudes towards Physics and Chemistry. Items associated with feelings about studying and behaviours showed lower means, while items associated with feelings about the subject and about values showed higher and positive means. Students seemed to acknowledge the social and pragmatic value of the knowledge and to enjoy the subject but also that they don't like and considered difficult to study it and obtain good grades. Almost none significant differences were found based on gender and social context. Implications include the discussion about the influence of variables other than gender or social context to understand the formation and change of students' attitudes. The current findings seem to encourage science teachers in contexts where students are strongly committed with other subjects to progressively move from an education paradigm that stresses the need to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics to a paradigm that includes approaches based on students' interests, such as arts, in order to teach science.

The decline in European students' interest in learning science, that has been reported, is concerning. It is necessary an implementation of teaching strategies that enable students to understand the usefulness of learning science and relevance of scientific knowledge. The social WEB is a strong collaborative environment in which users are encouraged to participate in the construction of knowledge as the new tools enable them to add, modify and comment contents. Given the importance of pedagogical integration of technology, in this workshop we present some examples of tools from web 2.0 that can allow the development of digital learning resources by teachers, adapting them for their students and their curriculum, in order to enhance the learning of science, making it more effective and meaningful for students. Thus, we challenge the participants to engage in the process of developing digital educational resources. It is necessary that each teacher contributes actively to promote students' motivation for learning science, always incrementing a solid scientific literacy. It is this line of thought that justifies our commitment with the development of more and better digital resources, potentially useful for the teaching of science at different levels of schooling.

Title Teachers' needs and self-efficacy perceptions in inquiry-based science education: a continuing professional development course in Portugal Abstract As scientific literacy, in contemporary society, becomes more and more relevant for the personal and occupational accomplishment of citizens, science teachers are expected to use adequate methods to promote positive attitudes towards science in students. Inquiry-based science education is believed to enable students' interest for science issues by asking them to use scientific concepts and methods to address context-based problems. This article describes a continuing professional development course on inquiry-based science education, developed in the scope of a European Project, where teachers were enrolled and trained to create and implement inquiry modules in their science classes, often using complementary resources, such as computer simulations, experimental activities. In the beginning of the course, the teachers were ...

The purpose of this study is to explore the factorial structure of a questionnaire on attitudes towards Physics and Chemistry in academic artistic contexts and to study the relation of attitudes with gender and social context. The sample consists of 185 key-stage 3 students of two music schools (A and B), located in different social contexts. The sample of school A consists of 67 year 8 students (40 males and 27 females). The sample of school B consists of 117 key-stage 3 students, from which 41 were enrolled in year 8 (16 males and 25 females). A validated questionnaire was used. Factor analyses (generalized least squares method with varimax rotation) were conducted. The reliability scores were excellent (total sample, α=.95; year 8 sample, α=.93). The factor analysis retrieved four factors for the total sample, which were named after their content: (i) behaviours and achievement; (ii) cognitions and values; (iii) feelings about Physics and Chemistry; and (iv) feelings about studying Physics and Chemistry. The analysis of the year 8 sample retrieved six statistical factors, but the two new factors only included three items, reason why this solution was dropped. Music students seem to have negative attitudes towards Physics and Chemistry. Items associated with feelings about studying and behaviours showed lower means, while items associated with feelings about the subject and about values showed higher and positive means. Students seemed to acknowledge the social and pragmatic value of the knowledge and to enjoy the subject but also that they don't like and considered difficult to study it and obtain good grades. Almost none significant differences were found based on gender and social context. Implications include the discussion about the influence of variables other than gender or social context to understand the formation and change of students' attitudes. The current findings seem to encourage science teachers in contexts where students are strongly committed with other subjects to progressively move from an education paradigm that stresses the need to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics to a paradigm that includes approaches based on students' interests, such as arts, in order to teach science.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the students' attitudes towards science and religion in the Portuguese Secondary Education. The sample consists of 308 students (110 males and 198 females), including 200 Catholics and 49 atheists, from two Portuguese schools (one private and one public). A questionnaire, based on previous instruments and on new items, was used. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted. For the first part of the questionnaire eight factors were retained, including items associated with (i) faith; (ii) scientists; (iii) perspectives of science on religion; (iv) science and religion classes; (v) laws of nature; (vi) trust in science; (vii) interest in science and religion dialogue; (viii) scientific proof of the existence of God. Students expressed great confidence on science and reported to accept science theories on evolution and world beginning. Students do not perceive science classes/teachers neither religion classes/teachers to ignore their religious faith. The answers to the second part of the questionnaire indicated that students acknowledge that science and religion teachings often enter in conflict and, accordingly, they are not completely, compatible. Students think that scientists should be free to investigate without any interference and statistical significant differences were found between Catholics and atheists. Although the new items need further work and revision, they indicated that the source of the tension between science and religion is not in the Bible nor in the evolution theory. The current findings suggest that creationism might not be as relevant for science and religion dialogue in the Portuguese context as it might be in America or England and that the scientific perspective is dominant in many regards. Ethics may be an important avenue to link science and religion, but it remains unclear what the nature of religion is and how it affects students in their relation with science. Future studies must include a larger sample of students from Secondary Education public schools in order to understand the significance of these preliminary results and to clarify where the source of tension between science and religion lays.

The main purposes of the research were to know how multimedia was used to teach science and also what methods were chosen to evaluate the pedagogical designs in the Portuguese Education between 2010-2014. A systematic review of literature was conducted. The corpus of analysis consisted of Master dissertations, PhD thesis and conference papers that were retrieved from the online repositories or proceedings. The criteria to include or exclude a given document were the following: (i) the document should report actual cases of pedagogical intervention(s) based on multimedia to teach science (i.e., Biology, Natural Sciences, Physics, Geology, Mathematics and Chemistry); (ii) the interventions should be aimed at the k5-k12 levels and should necessarily include students; (iii) the Master dissertations and PhD thesis should be available at the institutional online repositories and the articles should have been published in the proceedings of the two most important Conferences on Information and Communication Technologies in Portugal. The corpus consisted of 75 works (49%-Mathematics; 15%-Physics; 14%-Natural Sciences; 11%-Chemistry; 7%-Biology; 4%-Geology). A content analysis was run. Interventions were coded according to the TPACK framework and the methodological designs were coded as experimental, quasi-experimental or non-experimental. Results showed that a wide range of multimedia was used, including multimedia specifically designed to teach sciences (e.g., simulations) and non-specific multimedia (e.g., Excel). The level of interactivity and openness of the multimedia was also variable (e.g., low interactivity-videos and animations; high interactivity – games and simulations; closed environments – calculator; open environments – wikis) and the affordances of the multimedia were often not fully used. Most pedagogical designs were based on co-constructivist perspectives (43%) or dialogic perspectives (34%), while transmissive perspectives (16%) and constructivist perspectives (7%) were less used. Most research was non-experimental (case-studies), based on small samples, using non-validated questionnaires and field notes. Mixed methods or qualitative methods were most frequently selected to gather and analyse data. The study is very significant in that it allowed us to map the trends on multimedia research in the particular case of science teaching. These trends revealed an imbalance between non-experimental, exploratory research and alternatives that increase internal validity (such as quasi-experimental or experimental designs) or that allow to explore meaning and pedagogical appropriation of technology associated with the use of multimedia to teach sciences on the long run. It also showed that it is necessary to pay more attention to emergent practices (including mobile technologies and participatory designs). At the same time, this research provides important information also for science teachers that want to improve their performance using best-practices. Current research includes monitoring an online site that gives access to the raw data of the study and allows users to suggest and upload new documents according to an open and participatory science framework.

The purpose of the research is to identify the most common social representations of chemistry, green chemistry, robotics and sustainability among teenagers as they were engaging in a project that links robotics and green chemistry. Subjects were students from a school in the north of Portugal enrolled in year 9 (n = 163, 73 males and 86 females, 4 missing values, mean age around 15 years-old). Data was collected through a questionnaire that consisted of four open-ended, free association questions. Participants were asked to express their ideas and thoughts on each one of the four mentioned stimuli and asked to draw a robot. Written responses and drawings of robots were submitted to a content analysis. Preliminary results showed that the ten most frequent words associated with chemistry explain around 49% of the semantic field (average of 4.5 words per participant) and largely consist of conceptual elements, e.g., atoms (38), protons (22) and ions (22), experiments (114), laboratory (62) and explosions (19). The ten most frequent words associated with green chemistry explain around 42% of the semantic field of the representation. Participants-which never have learnt about green chemistry at school curriculum-filled their representations (2.8 words per participant) with elements derived from environment (e.g., nature, environment, trees, ...). Only 92 participants defined sustainability, many of them associating the concept with earth's natural resources and future. The ten most frequent words associated with robotics (4.1 words per participant) explain around 53% of the semantic field which consists of robots (129), technology (50), electricity (39), metal (33), energy (20), circuits (18) and computers (17): electronics rather than informatics contribute for the representation. Most of the drawings of robots were anthropomorphic resembling more C-3PO than R2-D2 from Star Wars movies. Human elements, such as eyes, mouth and hands are largely present while movement is assured by means of feet or wheels. The significance of the study is that there is a décalage between science and technology developments and teenager audience understanding. From the point of view of the theory of social representations, this gap is not only expected but also understandable. Popular culture although still inspire the representation of chemistry is not as relevant as it would be if participants have not attended physics and chemistry classes for three years. On the other hand, since green chemistry and robotics are not included in the ordinary curriculum until year 9, the concepts are at loose and their meaning must be grounded elsewhere. Despite the impressive and rapid changes that characterize the technology research, its market and advertising, old metaphors and symbols still contribute to build the representations of teenagers about robotics while green chemistry – a relatively new approach – has its poor semantic field rooted in chemistry and environment. School, thus, must act as a medium to help students to build a coherent worldview that is capable of copying with contemporary challenges, strongly affected by science and technology namely regarding sustainability. An ongoing project is designed to introduce green chemistry experiments that involve slow reactions via a programmable robotic arm in the school laboratory to conduct. The planned activities include monitoring experiences by students at home by means of a live webcam.

In this paper, we present and analyse the attitudes and insights of High School students towards the relationship between scientific culture and religion, in order to identify eventual sources and areas of tension that emerge in a society with a Catholic cultural background. The sample consists of 308 High School students (110 males and 198 females

Between 2008 and 2011, a significant effort to integrate a 1:1 technology solution in First Cycle (primary) Schools has been made by the Portuguese government. The “Magalhães project” has provided almost every student with a personal Intel Learning Series net book PC and has delivered broadband access to schools and homes. In this research, based on the common Intel framework to study education transformation through-out the world, a comprehensive balance and overview of the Information and Communication Technologies integration impact is given. Qualitative data was collected in six schools across the country representing various regions. ERTE-MoE Coordinator (1), DRE’S-MoE stakeholders (7), Municipalities stakeholders (8), Schools Cluster Principals (6), Principal Assistant (1), Primary teachers (29), parents (N = 37) and students (N = 76) were interviewed. A content analysis using Nvivo 9.2. was conducted. Results indicate different representations, attitudes and practices, suggesting different levels and patterns of ICT integration. Students and families valued the ownership and the readiness in accessing information, although conflicts emerge from the recreational use of the device and some features are regarded as threats. Teachers showed an ambivalent attitude toward the initiative, recognizing the importance of ICT literacy but diverging on the best way to promote it. If lack of specific structure is seen by the teachers as the major gap of the initiative, it seems that pedagogical conceptions, in-side-classroom challenges are related to the quality of integration practices. In the future, the initiative should empower the teachers to construct their role and build their teaching practices in a more productive manner.

The purpose of the research is to identify the most common social representations of chemistry, green chemistry, robotics and sustainability among teenagers as they were engaging in a project that links robotics and green chemistry. Subjects were students from a school in the north of Portugal enrolled in year 9 (n = 163, 73 males and 86 females, 4 missing values, mean age around 15 years-old). Data was collected through a questionnaire that consisted of four open-ended, free association questions. Participants were asked to express their ideas and thoughts on each one of the four mentioned stimuli and asked to draw a robot. Written responses and drawings of robots were submitted to a content analysis. Preliminary results showed that the ten most frequent words associated with chemistry explain around 49% of the semantic field (average of 4.5 words per participant) and largely consist of conceptual elements, e.g., atoms (38), protons (22) and ions (22), experiments (114), laboratory (62) and explosions (19). The ten most frequent words associated with green chemistry explain around 42% of the semantic field of the representation. Participants-which never have learnt about green chemistry at school curriculum-filled their representations (2.8 words per participant) with elements derived from environment (e.g., nature, environment, trees, ...). Only 92 participants defined sustainability, many of them associating the concept with earth's natural resources and future. The ten most frequent words associated with robotics (4.1 words per participant) explain around 53% of the semantic field which consists of robots (129), technology (50), electricity (39), metal (33), energy (20), circuits (18) and computers (17): electronics rather than informatics contribute for the representation. Most of the drawings of robots were anthropomorphic resembling more C-3PO than R2-D2 from Star Wars movies. Human elements, such as eyes, mouth and hands are largely present while movement is assured by means of feet or wheels. The significance of the study is that there is a décalage between science and technology developments and teenager audience understanding. From the point of view of the theory of social representations, this gap is not only expected but also understandable. Popular culture although still inspire the representation of chemistry is not as relevant as it would be if participants have not attended physics and chemistry classes for three years. On the other hand, since green chemistry and robotics are not included in the ordinary curriculum until year 9, the concepts are at loose and their meaning must be grounded elsewhere. Despite the impressive and rapid changes that characterize the technology research, its market and advertising, old metaphors and symbols still contribute to build the representations of teenagers about robotics while green chemistry – a relatively new approach – has its poor semantic field rooted in chemistry and environment. School, thus, must act as a medium to help students to build a coherent worldview that is capable of copying with contemporary challenges, strongly affected by science and technology namely regarding sustainability. An ongoing project is designed to introduce green chemistry experiments that involve slow reactions via a programmable robotic arm in the school laboratory to conduct. The planned activities include monitoring experiences by students at home by means of a live webcam.

As scientific literacy, in contemporary society, becomes more and more relevant for the personal and occupational accomplishment of citizens, science teachers are expected to use adequate methods to promote positive attitudes towards science in students. Inquiry-based science education is believed to enable students' interest for science issues by asking them to use scientific concepts and methods to address context-based problems. This article describes a continuing professional development course on inquiry-based science education, developed in the scope of a European Project, where teachers were enrolled and trained to create and implement inquiry modules in their science classes, often using complementary resources, such as computer simulations, experimental activities. In the beginning of the course, the teachers were...

The project ‘Multimedia in science teaching: five years of research and teaching in Portugal’ was  successful  in  featuring  the  national  research  on  multimedia  in  science  education  and  in providing the community with a simple reference tool – a repository of open access scientific texts. The  current  work  aims  to  describe  the  theoretical  background  that  may  allow  creating  and sustainably  developing  an  online  community  on  science  teaching.  The  community  should  be  capable  of  appropriating  and  generating  scientific  peer  review  and  validation  processes,  which would    allow    reflections    on    teaching    practices    in    science    areas    using    information    and communication  technologies  (ICT)  and  improvements  from  a  participatory  science  perspective. Through  an  action-research  process,  the  current  platform  is  being  adjusted  in  the  sense  of implementing strategies able to attract and engage an interested public and progressively to create a community of peers. The project is particularly relevant with respect to the gap between academic production  and  pedagogical  practice  and  the  avenues  that it opens for comparing affinity spaces across different locations and domains of interest.

This paper proposes an ecological framework "Activities with Parents on the Computer" (APC) to bridge home and school contexts by involving parents and students in digital media based assignments. An exploratory case-study was conducted based on ten parent-child dyads that engaged in an APC at home. Attitudes were assessed through a self-evaluation questionnaire. Four parent-child dyads, that showed different patterns of attitudes, were studied in depth through semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that parents and children have mixed attitudes towards APC. The performance in the activity varied according to the kind of parental involvement in homework and individuals' relationship with digital media. Relevant insights helped to reframe the model in order to evaluate the relations with other living elements (e.g., friends) brought by technology into the ecological microsystems (e.g., home, school). Future research should focus on the development of more accurate instruments of evaluation, the role of teachers and other community members.

An ecological framework, named activities with parents on the computer (APC), was proposed in order to promote the collaboration between school and home and, through this way, contribute to improving new literacies as well. In this study, we address science teachers' views on APC. Nine science teachers who have attended courses on multimedia in science education (pre-or in-service) were inquired via email. Their statements were submitted to content analysis. Results revealed a plethora of reasons why APC was not being used, including technological, socioeconomic , and educational policy reasons. Teachers attributed the cause of their behaviour to the external environment and not to their own internal dispositions. The findings urge us (i) to ask for environmental changes that may increase the legitimacy to interconnect home and school via APC; (ii) to design specific training on APC that can promote reform-minded identities so as to accept the amplification of teachers' field of action and to encourage them to interact and collaborate with other community partners; and (iii) to think of activities with partners on the Internet, in order to favour the usage of mobile devices, especially in disadvantaged milieus.

This paper analyses a project to enhance and develop Chemistry communication skills. A design-based research focused on 32 pre-university students, organized in three rounds, that developed resources using digital tools for different audience targets. Contrarily to initial assumptions, the subjects did not show signs of “chemophobia” or digital expertise. Random groups, cadavres exquis and group discussions helped to identify and to build more relevant, grounded and complex social contexts. When subjects have positive feelings about Chemistry and are not aware of the possible negative meanings of the Chemistry lexicon in society, it is necessary to stimulate a cognitive reframe and attitudinal awareness so that they can communicate Chemistry. Implications include the acknowledgment of the relevance of summer school projects that address socioscientific issues to bridge conceptual knowledge and contextual significance.

The combination of hands-on activities and storytelling has been considered a successful way to help young children to elaborate meaningful links between the theoretical knowledge and empirical evidence [1]. Based on a book we wrote, " Storytelling with chemistry " [2] we developed a set of activities aimed to introduce primary students to chemistry. The activities involved 38 primary students from a school in the North of Portugal. All their answers and notes were taken in a kind of lab notebook. We used a free association task to collect at least three words or ideas that they associated to water before and after the story has been told. Using props the story " Aitch-two-o: a drop of water " which revolves about the properties and the chemical composition of the water was told. Then, we carried out six hands-on activities in which water had a central role tied with the story: pH indicators, surface tension, supersaturated solution, flammable liquids, humidity, redox reaction. During the hands-on activities students were asked to take note about what they were observing, doing and thinking. They were challenged to make predictions, compare them with the results and explain the phenomena that they observed. Preliminary results revealed that representations evolved after listening to the story. Before the storytelling, words reported in the association task referred by three or more participants were linked to the liquid state of water in the nature (rivers, sea) and physiological needs (drinking and thirst), one exception being the reference to the chemical formula of water. After the storytelling, words reported to the three states of water in a reified way (ice, vapor, clouds and hail) but also to their scientific names (solid, gaseous and liquid). They also referred chemical elements: oxygen and hydrogen. Only a few words were evoked both before and after the storytelling (rivers, rain and liquid). Students were highly engaged in the hands-on activities(e.g., using the dropper and counting aloud the drops), showing surprise when they saw changes of colour and states. Nonetheless, some issues were observed. In the surface tension activity, students failed to predict what would happen to the aluminum rings dropped on the water, being questionable if they realized the differences between surface tension and buoyancy. In the supersaturated solution activity, 47% of students did not correctly integrate dissonant tactile and visual observations. In the flammable liquids activity, 16% of students thought that were actually observing " burning water " and after listening to the scientific explanation still 26% did not correctly understand the phenomenon. Students' oral participation suggested that they could not easily identify the causal relationship among the colour change, humidity and temperature. In the redox reaction activity, issues about the differentiation between water and aqueous solutions came up, as only 10% of students thought the mixture used in the experiment contained water. This ongoing research emphasizes the need to further improve the storytelling and the activities in order to better communicate chemistry to a young audience attending not only their cognitive skills, social representations, context but also to the very own specificities of this science.

There is a gap between scholars working at the universities and teachers working at schools [1]. It is up to higher institutions to open their doors to innovative teachers, but not to impose a research agenda upon them. Instead, scholars should look into teachers' needs in order to get a closer understanding of the field and, thus, define common agendas, at the example of what has already been done to identify teachers' training needs [2, 3]. With these goals in mind, we challenged Portuguese science teachers that have attended at least one of the three conferences on science education and communication held at our faculty in the last three years to join us on a meeting to discuss their thoughts about current innovations on science education and communication. More than 100 teachers participated in the three-hours meeting. They had the chance to get to know researchers and discuss ongoing projects with them. After a short presentation, by the research group leaders, about the goals of the meeting and the kind of projects going on, participants were randomly assigned to groups with 5-7 elements and asked to reflect on their own priorities and concerns about science education and communication. At the end of the meeting, one spokesman of each group delivered a synthesis of the discussion held in the group. In this communication, we focused on the expectations, needs and interests of 67 physics and chemistry teachers as reported on individual worksheets. A content analysis was carried out in order to identify the major themes. The most frequent themes reported by teachers were: integration of digital technologies in the classroom and in the laboratory (e.g., computer simulations, educational tools, and smartphones); maker spaces in the schools (often to connect with families); evaluation (with a special focus on laboratory activities); pedagogical strategies (inquiry, projects and problem-based learning); spaces or opportunities to share of experiences among teachers; enhancement of laboratory practices; science communication; citizen science and connection among schools, firms and universities. If many of these themes are aligned with our own research agenda (digital technologies, maker spaces, inquiry, science communication and citizen science), others are beyond our current interests (e.g., evaluation of laboratory activities). Likewise, some themes in which we are interested on did not grab teachers' attention (e.g., activities with parents on the computers, science and religion, storytelling in primary schools). These results, even if preliminary and exploratory, ask for further tuning of interests, expectations and needs between scholars and practitioners. The network of teachers and scholars, which relevance is acknowledged both by us and teachers, might become a space for this tuning to happen, if only we allow it to grow as organically as possible.