Almost every country in the world is obligated to implement education policies to enable an inclusive school system. However, implementing techniques to be inclusive in schools is a major challenge to teachers, especially to those teaching a subject at secondary level and higher. Most of the literature concerning inclusive science education was…

The term 'Plant Blindness' describes people tending to overlook plants, even though they have an enormous importance for life on earth, especially because of their ability to photosynthesise. Many attempts have been made to counteract plant blindness in biology education. However, so far there is no comprehensive tool to assess the degree of plant…

This article reports the development of a two-tier simple electric circuits test (2T-SEC Test). Simple electric circuits are introduced to students early in their school years and are an important part of the physics curriculum all the way to the university level. However, many students do not develop an adequate conceptual understanding of simple…

This brief examines Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) science achievement of the 20% highest and the 20% lowest performing fourth and eighth graders in 11 countries. To do so, the authors compare achievement distributions across countries, using measures of relative equality within countries. Such an examination…

Background: Vaccination policy has grown increasingly polarised, and concerns about vaccination practices are often articulated jointly with fears over declining trust in scientific expertise and the demise of evidence-based policy. This has led to a discursive deadlock in which evidence comes to denote something that is crafted and monopolised by…

The overall project "Denken lernen - Probleme lösen" has been expanded in recent years after an initial sub-project in elementary school to include one for the lower secondary level. Schools throughout Austria were provided with the micro:bit and related materials. A training initiative for teachers was rolled out. In this article I…

Implicit stereotypes associating science with male might play a role in the development of gender differences in students' motivations for physical science. Particularly, the stereotypes of influential adults may induce students' regulatory foci and subsequently their motivational beliefs. Drawing on expectancy-value theory, this study…

Using robot programming activities for learning in the classroom is one way to drive interest and engagement in the STEM field among students, especially girls. And this is afield that is particularly characterized by an underrepresentation of women. Accordingly, many countries are increasingly integrating activities related to computer science…

The range of teaching materials now available is becoming increasingly diverse. Despite this, however, the use and influence of textbooks in teaching still remains very high. When instructing reading comprehension, teachers often use textbooks as the basis for teaching in language lessons. Establishing a good match between textbooks and the skills…

This follow-up study presents a design-based research (DBR) setting implemented over a three-year project called 'eKidZ - Teach Your Parents Well' which uses research-based learning and follows the four phases of DBR. In an iterative cycle, 20 teenagers aged 14-16 took on the role of researchers and investigated intergenerational learning and the…

Science standards have been a topic in educational research in Austria for about ten years now. Starting in 2005, competency structure models have been developed for junior and senior classes of different school types. After evaluating these models, prototypic tasks were created to point out the meaning of the models to teachers. At the moment,…

Background: Key to optimizing Computational Thinking (CT) instruction is a precise understanding of the underlying cognitive skills. Román-González et al. (2017) reported unique contributions of spatial abilities and reasoning, whereas arithmetic was not significantly related to CT. Disentangling the influence of spatial and numerical skills on CT…

Information literacy--i.e. obtaining, evaluating and using information--is a key element of scientific literacy. However, students are frequently equipped with poor information literacy skills--even at university level--as information literacy is often not explicitly taught in schools. Little is known about students' information skills in science…

This paper describes the second in a series of studies exploring the acceptance of the subatomic structure of matter by 12-year-olds. The studies focus on a novel learning unit introducing an atomic model from electrons down to quarks, which is aimed to be used at an early stage in the physics curriculum. Three features are fundamental to the…

The quality of learning processes is mainly determined by the extent to which students' conceptions are addressed and thus conceptual change is triggered. Colour phenomena are a topic within initial instruction of optics which is challenging. A physically adequate concept of white light is crucial for being able to grasp the processes underlying…