Head of R&D SFTI, Riris Lumban Tobing PhD gave a presentation in the Annual Science Education Conference, Liverpool, North West England. Her presentation was titled “The Features of Science Education in Indonesia.” The topic sparked off interests from the audience members. They were mostly interested in knowing the curricula characteristics and science learning methods in elementary schools (SD) in Indonesia.

The Association for Science Education (ASE) Annual Conference 2008 hosted by the University of Liverpool was opened on January 3, 2008. The three-day conference, gathered around 3,000 attendants from all over the globe, acknowledging “Exploring the Cultures of Science Education” as its theme.

According to Riris Lumban Tobing, with various sessions like frontier science, workshops, seminars, discussions, demonstrations, drop-ins, exhibitions and other special programs, ASE Annual Conference was an excellent model for a conference design.

Sessions like “Science Skills: Ages 11-13”, “Strategies for Developing Thinking Skills in Primary Science”, “CRISPS: Creative Activities in Science for Primary Schools” were three of the many sessions worthy to be noted in the first day of the conference. One particular session, “Active Assessment: Thinking, Learning and Assessment in Science” stood out for its numerous valuable tips on learning process assessment. Also featured on this conference was a session called “The John Lewis Lecture: If It Moves, its Biology. If it Smells, It’s Chemistry. If It Doesn’t Work, It’s Physics – What Makes Physics Distinctive from Other Sciences?” by Professor Wilson Poon of the University of Edinburgh. Offering the well-described distinctiveness of Physics as a subject, she thought that this topic was very addition to the conference. Sessions such as “Listening to Learners: The Role of Discussion in Learning Science”, and “Manchester United Vs Liverpool: A Comparison of Teachers’ Perceptions between England and Korea at the KS3 Level in Teaching and Assessing Scientific Enquiry in the Science Classroom” were presented on the last day. On this day, “Geomagnetic Field Reversals: the Earth’s Magnetic Shield” by Professor John Shaw of Faculty of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Liverpool, a richly informative session due to the help of a demonstration, successfully made the presumably complicated concept of geomagnetic field reversals understandable.

The conference was also an ideal event for networking since it was accompanied by social events like a movie night, an international dinner, cabaret show, disco and karaoke. The participants were provided with lodging in the residence hall of University of Liverpool. ASE Annual Conference 2008 is supported in part by British Petroleum, Rolls-Royce, Philip Harris, Glaxo Smith Kline, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.