The laboratory plays a crucial role in science education. However, teacher education for pre-service teachers' design performance in the laboratory is still challenging. This study paved the way for redesigning traditional laboratory teaching into a student-centered approach: inquiry-based design thinking (IBDT). To investigate the impact of the…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Research on nontraditional laboratory (lab) activities in physics shows that students often expect to verify predetermined results, as takes place in traditional lab activities. This understanding of what is taking place, or…

The Chain Experiment competition has been held successfully for 6 years in Poland and is attracting growing interest. The competition provides participants with a task that involves designing and constructing a contraption that is an element in a chain of events that are based on various physical phenomena. The contraptions are then linked…

One of the goals of secondary science education is to help students develop skills related to scientific inquiry. However, the results of previous studies have shown that students have difficulties in identifying problems, formulating hypotheses, drawing conclusions, and designing experiments. The main objective of this contribution is to indicate…

General education science courses at a Canadian postsecondary institution implemented "Beyond Labz" virtual science labs. Faculty members teaching vocational science-related courses tested this resource. This qualitative study explores faculty member and learner perceptions of the efficacy of these virtual labs in terms of ease of use,…

Limiting case analysis (LCA) is important to practicing physicists. Yet, there is little concrete guidance for physics educators, and a lack of consensus in the research community about how to help students learn, and learn from, limiting case analysis. In this study, we first review existing literature to find commonalities and variations in how…

High school students need more comprehensive scientific inquiry learning instruction through research ethics education. Yet, this topic is often overlooked in the science curriculum. To collect basic data to guide research ethics education for high school students, this study documents the kinds of research misconduct students commit, the contexts…

This article introduces a science game which can be used for innovative teaching and as an assessment tool. The Shadow Races Game is designed for first and second grade students to learn the phenomenon of shadow through inquiry-based activities and questions that require the children to apply inferences from those activities. In this amusing board…

A quasi-experimental control group pre- and post-test study was used to determine the effect of a Multi-Step Inquiry (MSI) approach on pre-service elementary school teacher's conceptual understanding. The MSI study involved the development of a conceptual workbook, and a Physical Science Concept Inventory. The conceptual workbook has activities…

The transition from A-level to degree-level practical classes then to a research project, hence from dependent learner to independent researcher, is a hurdle that all students face when studying for a chemistry degree. This can be daunting so any innovations that aid this transition are of great value. At the University of Reading, the first year…

What can we learn from K-5 science teachers who have integrated science and creative dance for a five-year period? In this paper, the preliminary findings of the qualitative research conducted by a constructivist elementary charter school principal, a university dance professor, and an educational researcher is presented.This research highlights…

This is the start of a road map for the effective introduction of inquiry-based learning in chemistry. Advantages of inquiry-based approaches to the development of scientific literacy are widely discussed in the literature. However, unless chemistry educators take account of teachers' reservations and identified disadvantages such approaches will…

Qualitative research conducted with 237 pupils from Canada, France, and Morocco, between 10 and 12 years of age, on the setting and functioning of simple electric circuits, demonstrates that similar explanatory systems of the students. For this, we had given them a paper and pencil questionnaire of a sixty minutes duration. The first question was…

A critical component of scientific reasoning is the consideration of alternative explanations. Recognizing that decades of cognitive psychology research have demonstrated that relative cognitive accessibility, or "what comes to mind," strongly affects how people reason in a given context, we articulate a simple "cognitive…

Student encountered challenges in performing guided inquiry learning (GIL) activities are a minority literature in science education, but may provide valuable inputs to developing science process skills vital to scientific literacy. This study determined the challenges and difficulties by science-oriented students in performing GIL activities in…