Understanding how the periodic table of elements is organized and how to read information from it is fundamental for understanding chemistry. Introductory chemistry courses usually include discussions detailing what elemental information can be determined by virtue of its position on the periodic table. Although many people have been exposed to…

The purpose was to examine NOS knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge about NOS of in-service secondary science teachers. Data sources included Views of Science and Education scale, lesson plans with rationales for choices, examples of student work products, videotapes of lesson peer reviews, and interviews conducted after the experience.…

The original call for research papers went out in the summer of 2011 and, by September, there were over thirty abstracts returned for review, from many countries including Hong Kong, Nigeria, Poland, Jamaica, Malta, the United States, Japan, Ireland and, of course, Britain. Of the proposals reviewed and accepted, 21 were finally presented at…

This review provides an overview of the the current state of research on professional development in science education. An analytical frame was used, based on what is known about PD from educational research. Clarke and Hollingsworth's model for teacher professional growth was also used to categorise the studies according to their aims and…

"Undiscussables" are topics associated with threat or embarrassment that are avoided by groups, where that avoidance is also not discussed. Their deleterious effect on executive groups has been a point of discussion for several decades. More recently critical action learning (AL) has brought a welcome focus to power relations within AL…

This study is an attempt to gain new insight, on behalf of science teachers, into the integration of metacognition (MC) into science education. Participants were 44 elementary school science teachers attending an in-service teacher-training (INST) program. Data collection was carried out by several data sources: recordings of all verbal…

Background: Science teachers need a deep understanding of how science works in modern society. Purpose: This article reports a case study investigating the ways in which a short-term in-service course on a research site of space technology contributes to this understanding. Design and method: The study is performed in three steps: an evaluation…

Nearly everyone loves chocolate, which makes this an excellent topic for communicating scientific concepts to the general public and to students in the classroom. Here we present the outline and activities for an interactive presentation on the science of chocolate for nonspecialists and their children ages 6 and up. We design the presentation…

In this paper, I describe a lay course in special relativity (SR) given at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI's) at Florida International University and the University of Miami. Courses are also offered in general relativity quantum theory cosmology the nature of time, and the fine-tuned universe. Each course is presented in six…

Drawing on the work of educational anti-consumerists such as David F. Noble (2002) as well as design theory (Cross, 2006; Dorst, 2011; Farrell & Hooker, 2013) and adaptive leadership (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009), these authors frame the complex interactions involving teaching and learning along a spectrum bracketed by training on one…

A key challenge in university geoscience teaching is to give students the skills to cope with uncertainty. Professional geoscientists can rarely be certain of the "right answer" to problems posed by most geological datasets, and reasoning through this uncertainty, being intelligently flexible in interpreting data which are limited in resolution…

In this study, a wiki was integrated into a professional development model that systemically addresses early-career teachers' needs. This study was conducted to examine the impact of wiki-based professional development activities in a scientist-teacher professional learning community and focused on early-career teachers' perceptions of the role of…

There is a need to create competency among Extension professionals on the topic of climate change adaptation and mitigation in animal agriculture. The Animal Agriculture in a Changing Climate online course provides an easily accessible, user-friendly, free, and interactive experience for learning science-based information on a national and…

Two studies were conducted to examine content knowledge changes following 2 weeks of professional development that included scientific research with university scientists. Engaging teachers in scientific research is considered to be an effective way of encouraging knowledge of both inquiry pedagogy and content knowledge. We used concept maps with…

The author describes a professional development model for high school science teachers based on the framework of inquiry and science standards. The "Learn-Teach-Assess Inquiry" model focuses on guided inquiry labs as the central theme and builds on these labs to reinforce science concepts and abilities to understand and engage in inquiry…