Language is a fundamental tool for learning science. This study highlights the importance of teacher knowledge in utilising language as a tool for knowledge generation in the classrooms. This case study examines elementary teachers' development of declarative, procedural, and epistemic knowledge related to using language, particularly focusing on…

Scientific practices describe behaviors scientists engage in while investigating the natural world. Educators should be aware of different science practice frameworks to better understand their students' progression for learning science practices across the K-20 spectrum. For example, a high school AP instructor would benefit from understanding…

Learning about the Earth through geoscience education is important in order to make informed decisions about the future of the Earth. The aim of this study is to examine students' conceptual development on geoscience subjects based on inquiry-based learning. 7th grade students participated in this study. The researcher prepared lesson plans and…

Students reasoning with data in an authentic science environment had the opportunity to learn about the process of science and the world around them while developing skills to analyze and interpret self-collected and secondhand data. Our results show that nearly 50% of the treatment group responses were accurate when describing the reason for…

The incorporation of epistemic aspects of science in science education continues to be a challenge for researchers and practitioners. The paper presents an empirical study investigating how epistemic framing of scientific methods can be incorporated in science teaching, learning and summative assessment, and what impact such framing has on student…

The aim of this study was to investigate pre-service science teachers' development of the quality of written arguments using science writing heuristic approach and pre-service science teachers' views about the science writing heuristic and its argument components in a General Biology Laboratory Course II. The study was carried out with 21…

National standards that centre on the underpinning epistemic practices of the discipline has emphasised the need for teachers to focus much more on knowledge generation approaches to learning. Adopting a complexity perspective, we attempt to understand how teachers shift over time by examining their epistemic orientation to knowledge generation…

The study using quasi experimental design involving 160 pre-university students, randomly assigned into experimental (n=80) and control groups (n=80), revealed science writing heuristics approach improved pre-university students' understanding of energy transfer in ecosystems and ability to produce quality arguments. After controlling the pretest…

Classical automated test assembly (ATA) methods assume fixed and known coefficients for the constraints and the objective function. This hypothesis is not true for the estimates of item response theory parameters, which are crucial elements in test assembly classical models. To account for uncertainty in ATA, we propose a chance-constrained…

Despite representations' central role in conveying chemical phenomena, mastering them is not trivial, given the wide variety of different conventions to interpret and use them. Furthermore, instructional approaches and materials may overlook explicit discussion on how students should reason with representations. To gather evidence that could guide…

In this study we investigated how a theoretical framework we developed for making differentiated instruction practical worked out in a trajectory (1 year, 5 sessions) that aimed to support 5 secondary biology teachers in designing differentiated instruction practices. The key feature of the framework is the development of cost-effective…

One of the challenges of context-based science education is to construct high quality teaching materials. This paper presents results from a study investigating the heuristic value of an activity-based instructional framework for transformation of authentic scientific practices for use in the science classroom, in line with cultural historic…

The purpose of this research was to determine the heuristics used by pre-service science teachers in understanding the details of hydrogen bonding. The reasoning processes demonstrated were evaluated based on ten heuristic models suggested by Talanquer (2014). Phenomenographic assessment of the 30 participants indicated that all ten heuristics…

This study aimed to determine the effect of the model-based science writing heuristic (M-SWH) approach on students' conceptual understanding and construction of model-based argumentations in elementary school science. Participants (N = 107) were students enrolled in 4 fourth-grade classes of a public elementary school. Two classes were assigned as…

Students in one discipline often receive their scientific training from faculty in other disciplines. As a result of tacit disciplinary differences, especially as implemented in courses at the introductory college level, such students can have difficulty in understanding the nature of the knowledge they are learning in a discipline that they do…