Addressing in-service teacher professional development is a significant issue for educational stakeholders as reform movements mobilize to replace teacher-led instruction with student-centred pedagogies. Teachers need access to high-quality professional development to mitigate implementation problems associated with reform practices. Drawing on…

The Lead Teacher Program (LTP) is organized by Beyond Benign, an institution that promotes green chemistry principles and sustainability in education. LTP trains K-12 teachers to run workshops in their own communities across the US and Canada. This research project aimed to study the culture among K-12 science teachers in LTP and how they share…

This edited book explores different international practices in reforming science teacher education programs for STEM education. Incorporating case studies in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, North America and South America, the contributors emphasise the large variety in STEM teacher preparation. Including science-centric versions of STEM…

'It is the belt!' This is how middle school teachers in a science teaching professional development program rationalized why they believe Orion is the most recognizable of all constellations in the night sky. It was from this foundation that we chose Orion to be the focus of a four-phase ethnoastronomy-based project reported here. Ethnoastronomy,…

In today's rapidly evolving global economy, it is essential to equip young learners with the necessary skills and knowledge to thrive in the workforce and contribute to economic development. Education is a vital driver of human capital and development in countries, and the effectiveness of any educational system depends heavily on its curriculum.…

Results from a national needs assessment survey advertised through science teacher networks with the title "Polar Education--Teacher Input Needed" showed that the majority (90%) of teachers that responded are teaching about polar topics or polar regions. We received 508 responses from elementary to post-secondary teachers across the…

In this design-based study, a flipped learning approach using audio-visual resources as prelearning activities was examined in grades 6, 7, and 9 with four teachers and 65 students over one school year. The purpose of this study was to explore the implementation of a technology-enhanced pedagogy in science, math, and social studies. The…

This paper attends to challenges for postsecondary science education improvement initiatives, notably understanding and responding to the realities guiding educators' teaching practices. We explored 16 postsecondary biology educators' instructional planning, providing novel insights into why educators select certain strategies over others,…

We developed an online learning module called ''Organic Mechanisms: Mastering the Arrows'' to help students learn part of organic chemistry's language--the electron-pushing formalism. The module guides students to learn and practice the electron-pushing formalism using a combination of interactive videos, questions with instant feedback, and…

Teaching and learning of many undergraduate science courses often remains confined within the boundaries of classrooms rendering learning of these subjects irrelevant and detached from students' lived experiences. Community-based experiential learning (CBEL) is one way to address this issue. This paper reports the development and implementation of…

A primary goal of university instruction is the students' demonstration of improved, highly developed critical thinking (CT) skills. However, how do faculty encourage CT and its potential concomitant increase in student workload without negatively impacting student perceptions of the course? In this investigation, an advanced biology course is…

Elementary teachers are expected to teach complex and authentic lessons and integrating multiple disciplines. In so doing, they must take many elements into account, such as disciplinary content, learning standards, and pedagogical knowledge, in an ever more complex environment, including pupils' increasingly heterogeneous characteristics. Our…

Although science is a core subject, educators at Uphall Primary School have found in recent times pupils do not display the same enthusiasm for science as they do for other subjects. In order to raise the pupils' science capital and generate an eagerness among the pupils to experiment, learn and develop their curiosity about the world around them,…

Many Canadian universities have created professional development programs for their teaching assistants (TA) but may be uncertain about how to bridge the gap between TAs' knowledge of effective teaching strategies and TAs' confident applications of these strategies. We present a technique used in a two-day training workshop to enhance graduate…

We offer insights for using design-based research (DBR) as a model for constructing professional development that supports curriculum and instructional knowledge regarding science and literacy integration. We spotlight experiences in the DBR process from data collected from a sample of four elementary teachers. Findings from interviews, focus…