Professor Panos Kokkotas (1936-2015) was the founder and the inspiration of Research Paths.
He was Professor in the Department of Primary Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He taught Science Education, Multimedia (audio, visual etc.) teaching tools and Museum Education to both initial and in-service teachers. He had a degree in Physics awarded from the Faculty of Physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He held Ph.D. on pedagogy in science education awarded from the University of Wales. He taught science in high school and he had been a school advisor for science teachers.
His later academic books cover the topics of Science Education, the constructivist approach to teaching and learning include Science Education I (Athens, 2000), Science Education II – The constructivist approach to teaching and learning science (Athens, 2002). Additionally he edited Teaching Approaches to Science Education (Athens, 2000); he edited as the Greek translations of the books: Words, Science and Learning by Clive Sutton (Athens, 2002) and also of the book Making Sense of Secondary Science by Driver et al. (Athens, 2000).
He was also writer of science textbooks for students of the primary and the upper secondary education which have been evaluated and chosen to be taught in all schools in Greece over the last two decades.
Furthermore, he was the coordinator of three European Union projects
a) “The MAP project: A teacher training program based on Science education and history of science”
b) “Science Teacher e-Training (STeT) Project – Teaching Science using case studies from the History of Science” that aimed at the enhancement of the quality of Science Education by encouraging transactional cooperation among five European Universities
c) the S@TM:Storytelling Teaching Model. A contribution to Science Teachers’ Professional Development
www.science-story-telling.eu, which was a Comenius multilateral project that (is based on the use of storytelling as a methodological tool for the teaching of science and 18 interesting short stories from history of science narrated by a professional narrator. The project has been translated in five languages (Greek, English, French, German and Polish), i.e. the languages of the partners. Fourteen of the stories have been used for the construction of a course for distance learning for the in-service training of science teachers. It also provides a course for distance learning of students.
Professor Kokkotas participated also in the ENKDIST project (European Network for Knowledge diffusion of Digital Storytelling), which wass a KA3 project. The last two projects were selected for funding in 2011. He coordinated 13 National Projects on Science Education, co funded by EU and the Greek State.