Background: Practical work in school science has been ineffective due to students not connecting hands-on to minds-on aspects. With the designation Thinking-Back-and-Forth (TBF)we present a framework with a taxonomy of TBF activities. Purpose: Aim was to gain insight how teachers stimulate and support their students in TBF. Detailed information…

This study investigates the challenge faced by eighth-grade students at Southern State Middle School in grasping abstract concepts within the domains of physical science, physics, and chemistry. This difficulty is manifested in their poor performance on summative assessments. A comprehensive analysis of state-provided data, in conjunction with…

It is widely recognized that we need to prepare students to think with data. This study investigates student interactions with digital data graphs and seeks to identify what might prompt them to shift toward using their graphs as thinking tools in the authentic activity of doing science. Drawing from video screencast data of three small groups…

This study aims to examine the 9th-grade 2018 physics curriculum according to various criteria. A cross-sectional survey model was used. The sample consists of 36 physics teachers working in various high schools in 12 regions of Turkey in the 2022-2023 academic year. The data of the study were collected via the "9th-grade 2018 physics…

The purpose of this research is to analyze and describe learning textbooks that include elements of science literacy, particularly in the Integrated Science-Physics Test Book for junior high school grade VIII. This study is part of a quantitative descriptive study analyzing the content of science literacy elements contained in textbooks. The…

Developing a deeper understanding of scientific concepts is one of the primary goals of science education. To improve students' conceptual understanding, it is necessary to explore the major characteristics of their learning process. Informed by previous work on conceptual understanding, this study focuses on the concept of evaporation, exploring…

The use of simulations to better convey abstract scientific concepts or difficult-to-observe scientific occurrences through the manipulation of variables or virtual objects has the potential to improve student science learning. However, misconceptions or extraneous load may emerge if simulation support is insufficient. In this study, we used a…

When the thermal expansion of water is discussed in school or university lessons, functional relationships are often inferred without considering measurement uncertainties. Moreover, in some learning materials, the goal of experimentation and the experimental setup do not match. This creates the wrong picture of scientific practice. In this…

To investigate students' interest in physics, this study explores the impact of a brief teaching intervention on the increase of interest. The intervention focused on modern physics, specifically exploring Einstein's theory of gravity and the dual nature of light. A total of 325 Greek students participated in the survey, comprising 83 students in…

Physics teaching should facilitate students to acquire knowledge, increase metacognitive awareness and motivation for learning physics. The implementation of cooperative learning could be useful for improving teaching. The aim of this research was to examine the effect of cooperative learning (specifically the jigsaw technique) on students'…

Storytelling has the potential to successfully convey knowledge, understanding and experiences in an unintimidating and exciting way to experts as well as non-experts in almost all fields. Storytelling's utility as an information transmission medium makes it an attractive choice for use in classrooms where knowledge sharing, and the construction…

Through a meta-analysis, this study examines how effective particulate nature of matter (PNM)-based intervention studies are at improving academic performance. Well-known databases (e.g., ERIC, Springer Link, Taylor & Francis, and ScienceDirect) were used to look for the PNM-based intervention studies via specific keyword patterns. Also, a…

Affective and cognitive outcomes of science teaching in schools may be enhanced by science outreach labs (SOLs). Particularly interesting is whether and how to connect SOL visits to in-school science learning. Recent studies--among others, in this journal--have confirmed SOLs' positive affective effects. However, research remains inconclusive…

Although there has been extensive research on students' understanding of the particulate nature of matter (PNM), there is still a lack of research on contexts that can be used to teach this challenging topic. In a previous design-based research study, the authors developed a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) on the PNM in the context of crystal…

The natural sciences, by their very nature, are based on the exploration of the physical world, and digital mobile devices are considered appropriate to support this exploration (Suárez et al., 2018) since they offer the tools that make this investigation more accessible but also ubiquitous (Crompton et al., 2017). Inquiry-based learning is a…