University of Tartu (UT) / Estonia

The University of Tartu (UT), founded in 1632, is the oldest and largest university in Estonia. There are eleven faculties in the university, approximately 3000 researchers and administrative staff and 15 000 students. The Centre for Science Education is within the Faculty of Biology and Geography. It has developed considerable expertise in the area of research into scientific and technological literacy and in science education generally through research projects, running workshops and research conferences and in developing a number of courses in this field. It has been involved in both formal and non-formal education developments and has a strong alliance with the scientists in the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Faculty of Biology and Geography, as well as with a newly established Science Centre within the University which runs public awareness events for the general public. The Centre for Science Education staff has been heavily involved in developing teaching-learning materials in Estonia. The participants have published a book on supplementary teaching materials related to STL (Holbrook and Rannikmae, 1997) and produced unpublished resources for UNESCO based on material-writing workshops in a range of countries around the world. The Centre was involved with a project introducing biotechnology in the secondary schools as part of the EU programme - European Initiative for Biotechnology Education (EIBE). The Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology has been involved in a number of European Commission projects - Cooperation in Science and Technology with Central and Eastern European countries (CIPACT), PECO 1993 Copernicus; TEMPUS joint European project 1998-2000; EU Framework 5 programme on new strategies for the treatment of cancer and EU Framework 5 programme on ethical, legal and social targets of human genetic databases. 

Dr Miia Rannikmäe, Centre of Science Education, have considerable experience in science education in Estonia, in Europe and worldwide. She has a strong school teaching background, is currently an ICASE and IOSTE committee member and has ran workshops on developing science teaching materials and resources and attended numerous science education conferences in many countries worldwide. She has considerable experience in pre- and in-service teacher training and has strong links with science teacher associations worldwide.