This article examines the teaching of creation in a year six and a year three Religious Education (RE) class in schools in the south of England with a focus on the type and role of teacher questioning in relation to classroom discussions. The nature of knowledge, curriculum content and the relationship between RE and other subjects is currently…

Open badges are portable, digital credentials that offer the opportunity to reward learning in both formal and informal settings, providing an inventory of competencies and interests. Previously, a comprehensive framework of open badges in the 'Working Scientifically' strand of the National Curriculum in England (ages 5-16), extending into post-16…

Informal Science Learning (ISL) is a policy narrative of interest in the United Kingdom and abroad. This paper explores how a group of English secondary school science teachers, enacted ISL science clubs through employing the Periodic Table of Videos. It examines how these teachers "battled" to enact ISL policy in performative conditions…

Motivation in science in school is a national issue but is often overlooked in educational reform (Usher, A., and N. Kober. 2012. "Student motivation -- An overlooked piece of school reform". Centre on Education Policy, Graduate School of Education and Human Development. The George Washington University). Despite new curriculum content…

Teaching about the nature of science (NOS) is seen as a priority for science education in many national contexts. The present paper focuses on one central issue in learning about NOS: understanding the nature and status of scientific theories. A key challenge in teaching about NOS is to persuade students that scientific knowledge is generally…

The headquarters of an organisation, both the building and staff who work in it, has a key role to play in the way in which it operates and portrays its character. After presenting a brief history of the buildings the Association for Science Education (ASE) has occupied during its 50 year history, this article reflects on the role of ASE…

This article reviews an important but neglected area of the science curriculum: connections with work and the workplace. The first section offers some historical background, arguing that economic and practical relevance has from the beginning been an important theme within science education. The article then undertakes a broader exploration of the…

Current school science curricula attempt to reflect contemporary constructivist-provisionalist related epistemologies as accepted by professional science. It is argued that conversely, the effect of science education is the creation of pupils holding naive-realist epistemological beliefs, largely inductivist-positivist absolutists who chase an…

This study explores the acquisition of proportionality by investigating the relationship between an understanding of proportionality and the development of cognitive structure in the domain of mechanics. (Author/MA)

Reports on a study designed to ascertain the proportion of children at different Piagetian stages of development in the general population, in selective schools, and in super-selective schools. Advocates the use of developmental data in curriculum development work. (GS)

The paper documents experiments designed to compare essay and multiple-choice tests as means of testing science learning. Results indicate it is easier to score high on multiple-choice tests; some students substitute quantity on essay tests; and essay tests reveal weaknesses hidden by multiple-choice tests. (RE)

In this paper, the authors argue that chemical knowledge in the classroom will be enriched by the application of characterizations of models drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. This discussion highlights two important issues relating to chemical knowledge in the classroom: (1) the status of chemical knowledge in the classroom,…

Not being listened to, or having their advice mistrusted, is a daily problem for teachers and parents, as well as for doctors, scientists, technologists and other experts. It is also a serious dilemma in applied social psychology (Eiser, 1986) as well as in education where educators talk persuasively with strong evidence about not taking drugs,…