Recent international documents and educational standards have recommended Science Education be based on three dimensions (Scientific Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas). This has resulted in an increased interest in research involving Scientific Practices in Science Education. The objectives of this article are to: I)…

In this paper is presented a pilot study for the investigation of the relevant factors within some experimental works carried out by students, after going through the learning unit "Movement and rest", which can be found in the chapter "Principles and laws in classical mechanics", from the physics curriculum for the ninth grade…

The aim of the present article is to focus on the operational aspects referring to the actions--strategies and on the defined modalities of establishing educational objectives/competences. In the achievement of our work a special attention has been paid to the operational aspects of the learning process of the optical phenomena. There were carried…

The development of demonstration experiments plays a key role in modern and efficient teaching of physics, chemistry, biology and several other disciplines. Today's computers and electronic devices allow the use of simple software-based instrumentation to achieve flexible and surprisingly transparent experimentation, however, the professional…

Experiments, as we all know, are especially important in science education. However, their impact on improving thinking could be even greater when applied together with the methods of inquiry-based learning (IBL). In this paper we present our observations of a high-school laboratory class where students used computers to carry out and analyse real…

Children's mental representations about physical concepts and phenomena play a vital role in the learning process. This is confirmed by the data derived from relevant researches which demonstrate that the students formulate incompatible ideas compared with the scientific ones. In this research we investigate the representations of 14-15 years old…