Students' argumentation skills are considered a central tool to contribute to scientific controversies in the science classroom. Scientific controversies of social relevance (socioscientific issues; SSI) are subject to multiple viewpoints that are often rooted in diverse disciplines. However, the relationship between issue familiarity and…

Evolutionary theory constitutes the overarching concept in biology. There is hardly any other concept that is more complex, and causes more difficulties in learning and teaching. One instructional approach in optimizing the learning of complex topics is to use worked examples combined with self-explanation prompts that fit to the prior knowledge…

Teaching and learning evolution is challenging. Biology education research shows that the underlying evolutionary concepts are poorly understood among students. This prevents a meaningful understanding of the central biological concepts. The instructional format of self-explanation prompts seems to be promising to respond to these difficulties.…

Science standards of different countries introduced disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts--such as energy--to help students develop a more interconnected science understanding. As previous research has mostly addressed energy learning in specific disciplinary contexts, this study targets students' cross-disciplinary understanding of…