The science achievement of primary students, both in Australia and abroad, has been the subject of intensive research in recent decades. Consequently, much research has been conducted to investigate primary science education. Within this literature, there is a striking juxtaposition between tertiary science teaching preparation programs and the…

High-stakes testing (HST) is critical in the educational system of East-Asian countries like China, and the ongoing standards-based reform in many Western countries like the USA. HST has been criticized for corrupting an educational system through means like disengaging students from authentic learning. It seems that students' affective learning…

Student teachers struggle to identify themselves as teachers in their field placement during their student teaching year, and some of the difficulty can be attributed to the change they encounter when they must communicate scientific ideas to students in a language that differs from how they recently learned science at the university level. Using…

This study is aimed at examining science teachers' views of argument in scientific inquiry and argument-based science instruction. Questionnaires were collected from 53 middle and high school science teachers in the metropolitan area of the Republic of Korea. More than half of these respondents seemed to have a clear understanding of argument in…

Building on previous research that demonstrates the association of youth experiences in afterschool science and higher science identities, this paper presents a network study of 421 middle school students that examines afterschool science participation, friendship ties, and science identities. Participation in afterschool science clubs is…

Previous studies noted the scantiness of diagnostic instruments for the assessment of students' understanding of fundamental biochemistry concepts. Consequently, within this study, a four-tier test for the examination of secondary school students' conceptual understanding of amino acids, proteins, and enzymes has been developed. Items in the test…

In Sweden, a new curriculum and new methods of assessment (grading of students and national tests) in science education were introduced in grade 6 in 2012/2013. We have investigated what implications these reforms have for teachers' teaching and assessment practices in order to explore the question of how teachers transform their teaching habits…

This work uses new materialist perspectives (Barad 2007; Lenz Taguchi 2014; Rautio in "Children's Geographies," 11(4), 394-408, 2013) to examine an exploration of concepts as agents and the question how intra-action of human and non-human bodies lead to the investigation of scientific concepts, relying on an article by de Freitas and…

Contrary to the situation at primary, middle, and secondary school levels, university science courses provide students with very few opportunities to reflect upon the nature of science (NOS). The first goal of this study was to provide evidence that the co-construction of evolutionary trees, an important component of university biology education,…

The purpose of this study was to examine "pre-service science teachers'" (PSTs) development of multiple levels of representation and written arguments using an immersive approach to argument, the "science writing heuristic," in general chemistry laboratory I and II courses. Fifty PSTs participated the study, 20 experiments were…

The present study examines the exemplification practices of a university biology instructor during a semester-long course. Attention is given specifically to how the instructor approaches "memorable exemplification"--classroom episodes identified by students as a source of memorable learning experiences. A mixed-method research approach…

This article presents the results of a qualitative study aimed at determining the effectiveness of the camera obscura as a didactic tool to understand image formation (i.e., how it is possible to see objects and how their image is formed on the retina, and what the image formed on the retina is like compared to the object observed) in a context of…

This paper reports an empirical study of teacher development in the process of implementing an integrated science curriculum in a junior high school in China. Six science teachers with different subject backgrounds were invited to participate in this study. A pragmatic model of teacher learning that includes both cognitive and situated-learning…

This paper describes the development, final design and validation of an instrument that measures a range of student interactions and satisfaction in undergraduate chemistry laboratories. Student surveys or conceptual and attitudinal instruments are widely used techniques for collecting relevant information on student learning. However, there is a…

Science education theory and reform call on elementary educators to provide authentic science learning experiences in a constructivist learning environment. The natural surroundings of the schoolyard offer an often undeveloped and/or undiscovered pedagogical tool that can help teachers meet these reform-based goals in science teaching. There is…