Can a website make high school teachers without a geological background more self confident towards Earth Sciences teaching?

The structure of this work has been designed in the following chapter sequence. Chapter 1 This chapter presents the general background and motivation of the project, in relation with the Italian situation concerning Earth science teaching at high school. A brief explanation of the International Earth Sciences Olympiad (IESO) is also present. Chapter 2 - This chapter focuses on the research design and the methods adopted to develope the project through all its phases. Especially the selection of the sampling group of teachers, the way questionnaires are developed and tested, the criterion for the selection of the materials and for the data analysis are reported. Chapter 3 ­‐ This chapter presents the results of the preliminary investigation about teachers' attitudes toward Earth sciences teaching. Due to the particular origin of the sampling group of teachers, a section is dedicated to the Natural Science Olympiad explanation. Special attention is given to identify teachers' needs of web­‐based didactical tools for Earth sciences teaching. Chapter 4 ­‐ This chapter focuses on the construction of the website. The technical procedure used for developing the website and its structure are explained. A detailed description of the different kind of learning objects is the central part of the chapter. Chapter 5 ­‐ In this chapter the first testing activity is presented, discussing the feedback received by the teachers about the Plate Tectonics didactical pilot unit. The evaluation of each different learning object is reported and the level of teachers' satisfaction with the website as well. Chapter 6 - This chapter includes the results and the discussions of the final teachers' feedback, received once all the four didactical units were uploaded to the website. Chapter 7 This chapter presents the results and the outcomes of this work. The limitations of the project are underlined and some suggestions about further studies that could be developed at a later stage are proposed as well. Appendix The appendixes include the three questionnaires, the list of the lessons and the list of the didactical extra movies developed during the project. Media resources This includes an example of one lesson, including all the different kind of files: ppt, pdf, video­‐lessons, exercises and extra movies. All the rest of the material is available at the link: http://d7.unicam.it/teachingearthsciences/.