The article attempts to answer the question why females prefer humanities/social studies, whereas males opt for technology/science. For this purpose, the study majors selected by 445 females and 431 males were linked by logit functions with: (1) parents' and (2) teachers' expectancies, (3) students' self-expectancies, (4) their self-concepts of…

Considerable research has focused on how best to satisfy modern societies' needs for skilled labour in the field of science. The present study evaluated an intervention programme designed to increase secondary school students' motivation to pursue a science career. Students from 3 schools of the highest educational track participated for up to 2…

This study explored the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and its development of four experienced biology teachers in the context of teaching school genetics. PCK was defined in terms of teacher content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and knowledge of students' preconceptions and learning difficulties. Data sources of teacher knowledge base…

Research studies that deal with student ability to investigate and carry out inquiry oriented investigations often call for educational practitioners to pay particular attention to incorporating the skills of scientific inquiry in the process of teaching and learning. This has the aim of helping learners acquire the skills needed to become problem…

In this study, students' understanding of chemical changes was investigated in relation to four individual differences, related to logical thinking, field dependence/independence, convergence and divergence thinking. The study took place in Greece with the participation of students (n = 374) from three grades (8th, 10th and 12th grades) of…

Although high school physics students solve problems using the expression E = mc[superscript 2], the origin of this expression and its deep conceptual meaning are hardly ever discussed due to students' limited prior knowledge. In 1946, a year after the atomic bombs were first dropped, Albert Einstein published a popular scientific paper explaining…

The essence of Genetics lies in the understanding of the concepts of Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. Although these ideas are fundamental to the field, they are notoriously difficult to understand and visualize. While simulation-based instructional materials are found to improve the teaching-learning process in science education, little has…

We present an instructional approach to incorporate into biology lessons an exchange of videos between international practicing scientists and secondary-school students. We validated the approach in German school settings in three curricular contexts: genetics, cell biology, and immunology. The participating students (n = 255) were native speakers…

People are regularly confronted with environmental and science-related issues presented to them in newspapers, on television, or even in their own doctor's office. Often the information they use to inform their decisions on matters of science may be ambiguous and contradictory. This article presents an activity that investigates how students deal…

The current study aims to investigate students' representations of the atomic structure in a number of student cohorts with specific characteristics concerning age, grade, class curriculum and some individual differences, such as formal reasoning and field dependence/independence. Two specific task contexts, which were designed in accordance with…

The aim of this study was to develop a three-tier concept test to determine high school students' conceptual understanding in terms of chemical bonding, and at implementing a reliability and validity study for the test. A total of 175 high school students participated in the research. A three-tier test of 15 questions was employed in the study.…

The ability to represent the world like a scientist is difficult to teach; it is more than simply knowing the representations (e.g., graphs, words, equations and diagrams). For meaningful science learning to take place, consideration needs to be given to explicitly integrating representations into instructional methods, linked to the content, and…

This paper evaluates the viability of using controversies in teaching. An educational project has been elaborated in which some historical-philosophical clashes were introduced into the classical syllabus of physics. The historical-philosophical controversy dealt with here, took place between the French physicists Biot and Ampere in the 19th…

We compared students' performance on a paper-based test (PBT) and three computer-based tests (CBTs). The three computer-based tests used different test navigation and answer selection features, allowing us to examine how these features affect student performance. The study sample consisted of 9,698 fourth through twelfth grade students from across…

The aim of this work is to develop and investigate the model for assessing learning management on the enrichment science classrooms in the upper secondary education of the Development and Promotion of Science and Technology Talents Project in Thailand. Using the research methodologies with the four phases: to investigate the background of the…