Jaume Ametller | School of Education Staff

Dr Jaume Ametller

Research Officer

Tel: +44 (0)113 3434673

Room: ECS 10.63

Multimodal communication in science classrooms, influence of classroom discourse on teaching and learning sciences, collaboration with school teachers in science curriculum development

Member of CSSME.

Interests

I studied Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, Catalonia) where I also studied an MSc on Science Education, and my PhD.

My main research interests are multimodal communication in science classrooms, the influence of classroom discourse on teaching and learning sciences and collaboration with school teachers in science curriculum development.

While in Barcelona I worked as a research assistant in a European funded project, STTIS, coordinated by Dr. Roser Pintó.

I first came to Leeds in 2001 as a Marie Curie Fellow. Later on I applied for a Research position and I have been working as a Research Officer since 2003.

Since I arrived to Leeds I have been involved in several research projects.

During 2003 I worked on EPSE(Evidence based Practice in Science Education), a joint project of the universities of York, Kings College London, Southampton and Leeds.

From 2004 until 2006 I was a member of the University of Leeds team that undertook the evaluation of the "Twenty Frist Century Science Project"(coordinated by Professors Phil Scott and John Leach: funded by University of York),looking at pupils' learning aspects.

From 2005 until 2007 I worked on "Dialogic Teaching in Science Classrooms" (coordinated by Profesors Phil Scott and Neil Mercer: funded by ESRC, is focused on communicative practices in upper primary and lower secondary school classrooms when teaching science.

During 2007 I was part of the design team of "Interactive Teaching", a project commissioned by the Secondary National Strategy that developed short teaching sequences to introduce key scientific ideas to students at KS3 (11-14)

In 2007 (October-November) I visited the University of Hokkaido (Japan) with a fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to conduct a research on collaboration with Professor Eizo Ohno. The project explores Dialogic Teaching in Japanese (middle and high) schools considering cultural influences on the clasroom communication in science education. We are currently working on the analysis of the data and its comparison to English schools.

I am a member of LISTeD (The Leeds Institute for Science Teaching Design) since its foundation in 2007 and I am presently working on an ongoing longitudinal project (LISTeD 1) involving the three science specialist colleges in the Leeds LEA (Local Eduactional Authority). The project studies the sustained use of research informed designed teaching sequences by whole science departments, their joint develpment with teachers, related aspects of CPD and changes in both teaching practice and students' achivement.

I teach and/or have taught in in post-graduate programmes in Catalonia, Finald, Norway and Spain. My teaching focus, mostly, on classroom discourse and the use of video as a research methodology as well as workshops on the use of qualitative research software (Atlas.ti, NVivo, Transana and Videograph).

Selected Publications

PAPERS

Scott, P., Ametller, J. (2007). "Teaching Science in a meanigful way: striking a balance between 'opening up' and 'closing down' classroom talk". School Science Review, 88(324), 77-84.

Ametller, J., Leach, J., Scott, P (2007). "Using perspectives on subject learning to inform the design of subject teaching: an example from science education". Curriculum Journal, 18(4), 479 - 492.

Ametller, J.; Leach, J.; Scott, P.; Lewis, J. and Hind, A. (2005). "Utilizar los resultdos de investigación en el diseño de secuencias didácticas. El proyecto EPSE (Evidence-Informed Practice in Science Education)". Paper presented at the Enseñanza de las Ciencias de las Ciencias conference, Granada,, Spain, 2005.

Pintó, R., Ametller, J., Couso, D., Sassi, E., Monroy, G., Testa, I., and Lombardi, S. (2003). "Some problems encountered in the introduction of innovations in secondary school science education and suggestions for overcoming them". Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, 8,(1), 113-134.

Ametller, J. and Pintó, R. (2002). "Students' reading of innovative images of Energy at secondary school level". International Journal of Science Education, 24(3), 285-312. Read Abstract.

Pintó, R. and Ametller, J. (2002). "Students’ difficulties in reading images. Comparing results from four national research groups". International Journal of Science Education, 24(3), 333–34.

Ametller, J., and Pintó, R (2002). "Utilización de imágenes para inroducir conceptos en las claes de ciencias". Aula de Inonvación educativa, XI, 45-48.

CHAPTERS

Leach, J., Scott, P., Ametller, J., Hind, A., Lewis, J. (2006). "Implementating and evaluating teaching interventions: Towards research evidence-based practice?" in: R. Millar, J. Leach, J. Osborne, M. Ratcliffe (Ed.) Improving teaching and learning: Towards evidence-based practice in science education. Routledge Falmer.

Ametller, J. and Pintó, R. (2005). "Teachers' transformations of innovations: the case of visual language" in: J. Bennett, J. Holman, R. Millar and D. Waddington (Ed.) Making a difference. Evaluation as a tool for improving science education. Waxmann.

Extended list of publications.