Virtual labs provide space for students to iteratively test, observe, and revise their understanding so as to improve their scientific literacy. However, one of the challenges that students face is that they need to think and act like scientists so as to be sensitively alert to methodological flaws and various sources of error. This study thus…

Research exploring students' learning from physical and virtual labs has suggested that on the whole, students learn science content just as well, if not better from virtual labs as they do from physical labs. However, the affordances of physical labs might support the learning of specific skills and competencies that are just as crucial for…

Inquiry-based learning can be an effective approach when students are provided with sufficient guidance. However, there is an ongoing debate among practitioners about the nature, type, and level of such guidance. This study investigated the effects on middle school students' (N = 116) conceptual knowledge and inquiry skills acquisition of…

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…

One of the main courses that have been affected by instructional technology is science education since the nature of topics covered by the science curriculum may require the usage of technology to teach them better. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of virtual laboratories on the development of gifted children's…

In this study, a process was designed, in which a lemon seed grew into a seedling, using the inquiry-based science learning approach. This aimed to increase the overall development of the scientific process skills of children and their sensitivity to nature. The germination, growth and development of a plant were meticulously and systematically…

This study aimed to develop alternative laboratory experiments (ALEs) in Chemistry 8 and evaluate the perceived improvement of the students' basic science process skills after utilizing the material. This employed a mixed method of research. Initially, a self-assessment survey questionnaire was used to determine the basic science process skills of…

This research aims to develop students' scientific process and innovative thinking skills using digital activities in distance and face-to-face education. A total of 12 sixth-grade students in a primary school participated in the study. The research was action research. The analysis was carried out in the "Transmission of Electricity"…

The Fowler Diet Cola Test (DCT) was originally developed to assess the scientific process skills of students in science classrooms. The use of the test is generally suggested for gifted students in science. There are considerable number of Scientific Process Skills (SPS) tests that the researchers developed for different student population. The…

Learning analytics, referring to the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners and their contexts in order to optimize learning and the environments in which it occurs, is proving to be a powerful approach for understanding and improving science learning. However, few studies focused on leveraging learning analytics…

Building on rich training literature, we examined which skills constituting the control-of-variables strategy (CVS) benefit from a comprehensive training, and which develop similarly during content-focused inquiry at ages 10-12. In addition, we examined whether prior knowledge, reasoning abilities, and reading comprehension explain variation in…

Practical work is a distinctive feature of school science and has close associations with scientific experiment and scientific methods as well. In this study, the nature of practical work was examined in the view of the diversity of scientific methods. Based on an analytical framework derived from Brandon's matrix consisting of four categories of…

Due to the vast territory, there are problems of unbalanced development of education and students' ability level in China. In order to explore the relation between regional education equity and the development of students' scientific ability, and to better promote the development of education and students' growth, it is urgent to carry out the…

The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of science course which is based on inquiry based learning approach on seventh grade students' scientific process skill levels. Both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were used in the study. Considering that both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were…

Science assessments should evaluate the full complement of inquiry practices (NGSS, 2013). Our previous work has shown that a large proportion of students' open responses did not match their scientific investigations (Li et al., 2017a). The present study both unpacks and compares the sub-components underlying students' performance for…