The main purposes of this activity are to help students explore possible factors affecting the extent of the damage of earthquakes and learn the ways to reduce earthquake damages. In these inquiry-based activities, students have opportunities to develop science process skills and to build an understanding of the relationship among science,…

This article provides a transcript of the Presidential Address delivered by Martin Rees, Lord Rees of Ludlow, to the Association for Science Education (ASE) Annual Conference at the University of Reading, January 2013. The address is divided into five sections under the following headings: (1) Three Reasons Why the ASE's Mission Is So Important;…

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), through its Article 6, and the Convention's Kyoto Protocol, through its Article 10 (e), call on governments to develop and implement educational programmes on climate change and its effects. In particular, Article 6 of the Convention, which addresses the issue of climate…

Education for Sustainability has become an institutional requirement in many countries. It takes many forms that can integrate the teaching of environmental Socioscientific Issues (SSIs). In this context, we present the French notion of Socially Acute Questions (SAQs). We develop a theoretical frame to analyse educational configurations applied to…

Information graphics, or "infographics," are widely used to convey complex science and its importance to society. To be educated consumers and citizens, students need to understand and be critical of information presented in graphical form. Researchers, accordingly, have called for fostering the "representational competence" of…

In this article, the author addresses the issue of bias in language used in conventional training in scientific writing that encourages adherence to the rule: "don't use 'I' when writing science reports." Such writing is to be objective rather than subjective; it is to be dispassionate, detached, fact-based, and…

This article addresses the need for researchers to move beyond discipline-specific approaches to research and practice and offers an example of how interdisciplinary understandings can increase knowledge in respective disciplines. The specific focus of the article is the shared challenges of broaching controversy in science and social studies…

This paper presents a model to describe technological literacy as enacted by individuals in the course of shaping their lives and the world around them. The model has two interrelated facets--the "potential" for and "enactment" of technological literacy--where enactment and potential mutually constitute each other. This "potential" is made up of…

This article sets out to describe the PROFILES project, a European Commission FP7 science and society project, addresses problems and issues in science education by guiding teachers to embrace a range of teaching factors, such as a context-based approach, motivational constructivist learning; student centred inquiry teaching; enhancing cognitive…

We are probably only at the beginning of our understanding of a period of time that gave us a new name for an old language, "ASL," a new consciousness called "Deaf culture," a national uprising called "DPN," and a science fiction-like new technology called "VP." The two halves of the twentieth century might…

Scientists, engineers, and medical professionals play a vital role in building the 21st- century science and technology enterprises that will create solutions and jobs critical to solving the large, complex, and interdisciplinary problems faced by society: problems in energy, sustainability, the environment, water, food, disease, and healthcare.…

In recent years there has been a global call for more scientific knowledge about education as a basis of governance. This means that exact descriptions of the reality of schooling should inform decisions about what works in education. In this article, evaluation and testing are analysed as cartography, the art of mapping educational spaces, which…

Given my long-time interests in neoliberalism and questions of subjectivity, I am pleased to respond to Jesse Bazzul's paper, "Neoliberal Ideology, global capitalism, and science education: Engaging the question of subjectivity." In what follows, I first summarize what I see as Bazzul's contributions to pushing science education in "post"…

The purpose of this article is to describe several conceptual areas that warrant attention by scholars and practitioners interested in improving access and opportunity to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in urban cities. Thinking conceptually about the urban context has been a part of intellectual traditions in the…

The ethnography of education is challenged by the materiality of the classroom. Ethnographic accounts of school lessons mostly highlight language and interaction and offer no suitable methodology for researching objects and their role in the classroom. Moreover, objects are part of complex and interwoven assemblages involving human actors,…