Many authors stress the importance of basing teaching on students' prior knowledge. To build a bridge between students' everyday knowledge and scientific concepts, the role of metaphors and analogies came into the focus of the science education community during the past two decades. Approaches using metaphor-based teaching strategies often regard…

In this paper, we argue that there is an emergent confusion in the literature in the use of the terms "argument" and "explanation." Drawing on a range of publications, we point to instances where these terms are either used inappropriately or conflated. We argue that the distinction between these two constructs is, however, important as a lack of…

Despite a recent focus on engaging students in epistemic practices, there is relatively little research on how learning environments can support the simultaneous, coordinated development of both practice and the knowledge that emerges from and supports scientific activity. This study reports on the co-construction of modeling practice and…

This study explores how elementary teachers and students use hedges (tentative words such as "maybe") and boosters (expressions of certainty such as "clearly" and "obviously") during science inquiry discussions. Drawing upon semiotic theory, we examine explicit thematic patterns (semantic meaning relations among science concepts) as well as hidden…

The concept of science as argument, and the view that engaging in scientific argumentation should play a key role in science education, has become widely endorsed. The case is made here that this objective will be enhanced by broad understanding of the nature of argument skills and their directions and patterns of development. A line of research…

In this study, the purpose is to develop and illustrate a method that facilitates investigations of students' learning processes in classroom discussions about socioscientific issues. The method, called transactional argumentation analysis, combines a transactional perspective on meaning making based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy and an…

In this study, we test an information-processing model (IPM) of problem solving in science education, namely the working memory overload model, by applying catastrophe theory. Changes in students' achievement were modeled as discontinuities within a cusp catastrophe model, where working memory capacity was implemented as asymmetry and the degree…

Scientific explanation plays a central role in science education reform documents, including the "Benchmarks for Science Literacy," the "National Science Education Standards", and the recent research report, "Taking Science to School." While scientific explanation receives significant emphases in these documents, there is little discussion or…

This paper reports a study that explores Egyptian science teachers' views on religion and science within the context of Islam. It also highlights an ontological and epistemological consideration of these views, particularly the ways through which Egyptian Muslim teachers understand such a relationship with reference to the Qur'anic/Islamic…

This study investigated children's judgments of the epistemic status of justifications for causal claims. Twenty-six children (14 boys, 12 girls) between the ages of 8 and 10 were asked to help two story characters choose the "best reason" for believing a claim. The reasons included appeals to an authority, to a plausible causal mechanism, or to…

This study aims to test the nature of the assumption that there are relationships between scientific epistemological views (SEVs) and reasoning processes in socioscientific decision making. A mixed methodology that combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches of data collection and analysis was adopted not only to verify the assumption…

This paper aims to further articulate multicultural science education scholarship. In particular, it explores the notions of borders and border epistemologies as intellectual resources to think again about the challenges of science education in the global world that demand more sophisticated concepts to unravel some of its complexities. It…

This article draws on M. M. Bakhtin's (1981) notion of dialogism to articulate what it means to understand a scientific idea. In science, understanding an idea is both conceptual and epistemic and is exhibited by an ability to use it in explanation and argumentation. Some distillation of these activities implies that dialogic understanding of a…

Studies of learning in school settings indicate that many students frame activities in science classes as the production of answers for the teacher or test, rather than as making new sense of the natural world. A case study of an episode from a class taught by the first author demonstrates what productive and unproductive student framing can look…

Although there has been considerable focus on the underrepresentation of minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and the need for science instruction that fosters diversity, much of the associated effort has focused on the goal of diversity and tended to assume that science and science learning are…