The need for keeping science teachers up-to-date is stronger than ever, but science curricula and teaching is often still focused on outdated approaches and knowledge. We will discuss some of the strong forces that shape the transformations of knowledge from research to curriculum and to classroom - Chevallard (1991)’s Didactical Transposition (DT) - and propose a different approach specifically for teacher professional development. Our research question is: can a different approach reduce detrimental effects of these processes on teacher development and their educational practice? We will bring arguments for an inverted approach that could improve or circumvent DT. We then present the Jump-To-Science (JTS) project developed since 2006, and discuss some results on the basis of on-line questionnaires administered in 2013 (39 responses) and 2019 (47) addressing teachers’ use and perception of JTS. The readership of JTS has regularly grown over the years, suggesting relevance. Respondents mentioned JTS’s importance for their teaching and their awareness of changes in biology. The use of primary articles increased 2013-2019. Teachers’ engagement in the use of primary literature for themselves and for their students is worth noting and promising (effectively using the opportunity to jump to science). Taken together, the results suggest that JTS succeeds in empowering an important fraction of the biology teachers to read authentic scientific research, circumventing the knowledge transformation effects of DT. This might support a progressive move towards more up-to-date and active learning strategies by confronting learners with more authentic sources.

Background: Chevallard’s Didactical Transposition (DT) research shows that scientific knowledge as it percolates from research into classrooms is transformed before it can be used by teachers. It loses the context in which it was elaborated and a large part of its uncertainty, and becomes definitive and generalized in order to be taught. The knowledge teachers effectively use has inspirational thrust, is craft legitimated and locally adapted, proximal and available (Huberman,1983), in stark contrast to classical academic literature.

Purpose:

This contribution discusses a new approach to address the difficult question of keeping in-service secondary school teachers up-to-date with the continuous progress of biology research. Our research question is: can a different approach reduce most of the detrimental effects of the growing distance between taught biology and research biology on teachers’ development and their educational practice?

Setting:

First we will bring arguments for an inverted approach that could improve or circumvent DT. We then propose a sample project in a local setting (Geneva, Switzerland) that implements this approach developed over 15 years, and discuss some results. Understanding these knowledge transformations as inevitable transposition steps rather than bad popularization enables a new approach: rather than attempting to popularize differently down to teachers, the Jump-To- Science (JTS) project proposes helping teachers up to scientific knowledge directly in its most authentic available form: in scientific journals. It also takes into account the characteristics of knowledge that research identifies as effectively used by teachers: it carefully shares teachers’