In this paper, we analyse results from one classroom session within an 8-week program in which Year 10 students constructed 'trash' puppets of endangered Australian animals. In making the puppets and using them as part of a 'theatre in a suitcase' performance at Melbourne Zoo, students were expected to integrate both scientific and artistic goals…

Gendered barriers in education and attrition along the academic and professional pipeline are key determinants of the current STEM skills shortage. While enrolment in STEM undergraduate courses has been increasing in the recent decades, STEM degree choices still suffer from considerable gender imbalance, whereby women are underrepresented in…

This paper explores students' resistance when they were expected by their teacher to start learning mathematics through investigations, a pedagogy that emphasizes an active and agentic approach to learning in contrast to the traditional transmission-based teaching to which they were accustomed. This resistance is investigated from the perspectives…

This study aimed to identify the impact of teaching critical thinking skills on the attitude towards biology courses among female students of tenth grade in Jordan using two active learning strategies. To achieve this, the Critical Thinking Scale and the Attitude towards Biology Scale was used, and its validity and consistency were verified. The…

In this article I explore the role that class, and its intersections with gender, play in shaping the way that learners at a private, all-girls school in South Africa conceptualise their sexuality education. Drawing on data from focus group discussions with 2 friendship groups of Grade 10 learners, the evidence reveals the multiple, intersecting…

The purpose of this study was to explore high school students' ideas regarding two theoretical scientific models, either electron cloud or sodium chloride crystal, in the context of active learning in small groups. Conversations among peers regarding these models took place during two types of active learning activities: small-group discussion and…

Noise, although ubiquitous, is seldom considered as a factor that may impede learning. In South Africa, most learners are multilingual and learn in English, which is their second language. Most noise studies have been conducted in the Global North, where the school context differs from the Global South. In this article, using questions selected…

Recent research underscores the importance of the skills, beliefs and behaviors that support student achievement in the classroom and beyond. This set of intrapersonal and interpersonal assets (e.g. perseverance, grit, social skills, efficacy beliefs and mind-sets) are often referred to as noncognitive factors, as they are not measured directly by…

In 2004, the South African Department of Education (DoE) published the White Paper on E-Education. The aim of the E-Education White Paper was to ensure that South African learners could use education communication technologies (ECT) skilfully by 2013. However, these goals have not been met and a significant digital divide exists between learners…

Whereas there are some studies presenting the effects of argumentation on science knowledge development, there is still a need for research discovering the interrelationship between knowledge and argumentation. The purpose of this research was to investigate a possible relationship between students' engagement in argumentation and their conceptual…

Research on school desegregation in South Africa has largely documented an assimilationist process. As in educational contexts elsewhere, the assimilationist position presupposes that learners from non-dominant groups are made to change their ways of being on entering schools from which they were previously excluded. Drawing on an ethnographic…

Educationists are of the opinion that the educational problems relating to quantity and quality could be tackled by the proper utilization of instructional technology. Instructional technology is a systematic way of designing, carrying out and evaluating the teaching learning process. Instructional technology makes instruction more effective,…

Summarizes the author's doctoral dissertation research--a longitudinal, multi-case study of drama practices at the tenth-grade level in a Catholic secondary school for girls. Examines the ways drama education engages girls' experiences and personal/cultural knowledge and expands the perspectives and discourses available to them. Offers strong…

This paper examines how conceptions regarding the legitimate purposes and day-to-day course of science influence students' evaluations of science in the popular media. The students involved in this project attend a secondary all-girls school. Their concept of science focused on practical, life-enhancing goals pursued through the complex,…