Teachers do not work in a vacuum. They are, in most cases, part of a science department in which teachers and the chairperson have important roles in science education reform. Current reform is shaped by national standards documents that emphasize the pedagogical and conceptual importance of best practices framed by constructivism and focused on…

Physics and physics education in the United States suffer from severe (and, in some cases, worsening) underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and Native American people of all genders and women of all races and ethnicities. In this paper, we describe an approach to facilitating physics students' collective and continued education about such…

Women of color are deeply underrepresented in physics. Between 2002 and 2012, only 1% of graduating physics majors were Black women and another 1% were Latinas; only 61 American Indian women total completed degrees in physics in those years (out of 48,000 physics majors). This isolation can lead to additional obstacles that women of color majoring…

This article reports the findings of a recent survey of how often south London secondary schools use local green spaces and parks for teaching science. Comparisons are made between these findings and those reported from a similar study of east London secondary schools in 2006. The article discusses how an external project responded to the needs…

Graduates in the areas of Science and Technology are believed to have traditionally been employed in a number of specific industries, but the recent restructuring of some industries may have affected this phenomenon. In order to examine the trends concerning employment issues in more detail, a case study was conducted by surveying employment…

The research recounted in this paper was designed primarily to attempt to understand the reasons for the low uptake of the natural sciences beyond compulsory education in England. This has caused widespread concern within governmental quarters, university science departments and the scientific community as a whole. This research explored the…

When science departments are designed for new builds, or are to be refurbished or moved to other parts of the school, design of preparation areas should be a major feature. It is vital that the brief contains everything that is needed including, in particular, a chemical store. But no matter how well a brief is specified, the people who actually…

There has been little research into the work environments of teachers at the subject department level. Understanding and investigating the work environment at this level could provide insight into the type of work environment that might lead teachers to remain in the teaching profession. This article reports the development, validation and use of…

Some soil and crop science university programs undergo curricula revision to maintain relevancy with their profession and/or to attract the best students to such programs. The Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University completed a thorough data gathering process as part of its revision of the undergraduate curriculum and…

In China, science educators as a professional group were originally referred to as academic staff responsible for teaching the subject-based science teaching methods course at the related science departments at teachers' universities. In this study, a biographic method was used to approach the professional life of Zhixin Liu, who was a senior…

The purpose of this work was to investigate ways in which everyday computers can be used in schools to fulfil several of the roles of more expensive, specialized laboratory equipment for teaching and learning purposes. The brief adopted was to keep things as straightforward as possible so that any school science department with a few basic tools…

This article describes how the Science Department at Shoeburyness High School in Essex introduced a space-themed year 8 (ages 12-13) science course to increase student engagement and motivation. As well as discussing the rationale for such curriculum change, it describes the processes of planning and resourcing the course, and the barriers that…

In this paper, we discuss how a community of scholars came together to create assessments across science departments for the initial teacher preparation program in secondary science teaching. The steps of the process taken to meet accreditation standards are described, as well as some surprising findings from our road trip down the path of…

While most studies on diverse organizations have been directed at business organizations, the academic sector has also become increasingly international and heterogeneous. Few large-scale studies have investigated multicultural academic departments and none of those have dealt with diversity and group processes. Therefore, a survey was directed…

The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between preservice teachers' time and study environment management, effort regulation, self-efficacy beliefs, control of learning beliefs and metacognitive self-regulation. This study also investigates the direct and indirect effects of metacognitive self-regulation on time and study…