Krstovic's Thoughts on Education

This semester I have been working on implementing the STEPWISE framework in my Grade 10 Science. In light of this innovation, I’d like to review several stages of staff concern about an innovation based on the Concern-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) by Hall, Wallace and Dosset (1973). Here they are: Awareness. The science staff becomes aware [...]

I have been writing about STSE (Science, Technology, Society and Environment) action projects and my attempt to implement the STEPWISE framework in the last several posts. As a reminder, the STEPWISE framework is designed to help students explore various socio-scientific issues by carrying out secondary and primary research and to use their research to inform [...]

About a year ago I wrote a post on Critical Thinking and Student Engagement. In that post, I reviewed some data on student engagement. I don’t know the author of that study (I’ll try to find out), but this is what’s suggested: Students in arts and tech classes were more engaged than students in ‘academic’ [...]

This semester at OISE/UofT I am taking a class that deals with collaborative cultures in inclusive schools. I am writing this blog mainly to help me learn steps is negotiating, and along the way, to inform any interested readers.   Opening the negotiation: The key in opening a negotiation is to uncover the other party’s [...]

Over the last two weeks I have been training my students to take action on various socio-scientific issues. They had a choice of what issue to choose – acid rain, dangers of household chemicals, oil spills or smoking. The goal of the project is to first learn a bit about the issue and why it [...]

Today I introduced my Grade 10 students to their Chemistry application assignment which focuses on several socioscientific issues. The students have a choice of which issue to explore: household chemicals, smoking, acid rain or oil spills. For this project I stressed the importance of ACTIVISM! I want my students to learn about their selected issue, [...]

This past week my Grade 11 Chemistry students raised $202.20 for the Terry Fox Foundation in just three days. The whole school participated in the fundraiser, and the class that raises the most money will win a pizza party. We still don’t know if we won a pizza party for our class, but I am [...]

I am going to keep this blog rather short – I hope! The school year started very well, and this is largely due to my own state of mind. I recharged my batteries this summer and gained a lot of spiritual strength from the Elders of Mount Athos, who bestowed upon me peace and courage [...]

This summer I am in Bosnia and Hercegovina visiting my family. I have been talking to a lot of people about their lifestyle in Bosnia, and it seems that many people are struggling to make ends meet. The average salary is around 350 dollars, however the standard of living is comparable to all other European [...]

Recently I completed a 10,000 word report on science education reform for one of my Master’s courses. I started writing on July 5 and I submitted the final report on July 14. Throughout these ten days, and at least five days prior to starting to write, I had reviewed the suggested literature about the nature [...]