Background: Nature of Science (NOS) is defined to be the epistemology of science, and comprised of distinctive defining aspects. The representation of these NOS aspects in school science textbooks is likely to affect how students understand NOS. Representation of NOS aspects can differ between topics even within the same textbook and these topical…

Through a case study, we explore how four Grade 9-10 biology teachers in Singapore experienced their collaborative approach to curriculum and addressed challenges associated with newly prescribed science curricula, such as the perceived lack of clarity and pressure to complete teaching curricular content. With the teachers participating in a…

This paper examines learning of science in 15 grade nine classrooms by analyzing the type of talk that teachers engaged in. Using transcripts from audio recordings that are part of the Singapore Corpus of Research in Education database, annotations were carried out on the phrases of teacher talk using Mortimer and Scott's framework for meaning…

One way of implementing project-based science (PBS) is to use problem-based learning (PBL), in which students formulate their own problems. These problems are often ill-structured, mirroring complex real-life problems where data are often messy and inclusive. In this article, the authors describe how they used PBL in a ninth-grade biology class in…

This case study involved year 9 students carrying out project work in biology via problem-based learning. The purpose of the study was to (a) find out how students approach and work through ill-structured problems, (b) identify some issues and challenges related to the use of such problems, and (c) offer some practical suggestions on the…