To investigate students' interest in physics, this study explores the impact of a brief teaching intervention on the increase of interest. The intervention focused on modern physics, specifically exploring Einstein's theory of gravity and the dual nature of light. A total of 325 Greek students participated in the survey, comprising 83 students in…

Misconceptions hinder and challenge the learning of physics and science subjects in general. This study aimed to identify misconceptions in physics topics, namely gravity and force, and to overcome them through timely and appropriate interventions among ninth-grade students at Khuruthang Middle Secondary School in Punakha district, Bhutan. This…

In Australia, it has been observed that there have been significant declines in the proportion of students studying senior sciences over the last two decades (Commonwealth of Australia 2017 & 2018; Steidtmann et.al, 2023). It has been suggested that one of the causes for this decline could be a link between students' literacy achievement and…

In this article, I report a two-year study of working closely with science teachers and examining perceptions of Year 9 (12-13 year olds) students in 13 New Zealand secondary schools. The Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) was used. The questionnaire was administered to 327 students in the first year and 362 students in the second…

Current research has shown that writing to learn strategies have a positive impact on overall student learning. However, previous studies mainly assessed student learning through instruments that have been self-designed by researchers and there is little research examining relations between writing to learn strategies and science related context…

For efficient and effective pedagogical interventions to address Uganda's alarmingly poor performance in Physics, it is vital to understand students' motivation patterns for Physics learning. Latent profile analysis (LPA)--a person-centred approach--can be used to investigate these motivation patterns. Using a three-step approach to LPA, we sought…

Energy is an important concept in all natural sciences, and a challenging one for school science education. Students' conceptual knowledge of energy is often low, and they entertain misconceptions. Educational research in science and mathematics suggests that learning through depictive representations and learning from errors, based on the theory…

This study focuses on at-risk students entering 9th grade in Cambridge, MA and ways to increase their connectedness and science learner identity. At-risk students were invited to participate in a research-based, summer intervention program called Rise Up for four weeks prior to entering 9th grade in the fall. Students were grouped into three…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and apply the notion of romantic understanding by outlining its features and its potential role in science education, to identify its features in the story of Nikola Tesla, and to describe an empirical study conducted to determine the effect of telling such a story to Grade 9 students. Elaborated features of…

Considerable research has focused on how best to satisfy modern societies' needs for skilled labour in the field of science. The present study evaluated an intervention programme designed to increase secondary school students' motivation to pursue a science career. Students from 3 schools of the highest educational track participated for up to 2…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of students' motivational beliefs (learning goal orientation, task value and self-efficacy) in science learning on students' self-regulation in the science classroom. The study also examines the moderating effect of gender on the proposed relationships. Data were collected from 719 boys…

Too often, students enter our classrooms with insufficient knowledge of physical science. As a result, they have a difficult time understanding content in texts, lectures, and laboratory activities. This lack of background knowledge can have an impact on their ability to ask questions and wonder--both key components of inquiry. In this article,…

The study aims to demonstrate evidence of (a) students' conceptual change on solution rates; (b) students' sub-microscopic explanations of dissolution; and (c) retention of the concepts of solution rates. The sample consists of 44 Grade 9 students (18 boys and 26 girls) drawn purposively from two different classes (22 each) in the city of Trabzon,…

This study concerns the question of how teachers can help pupils to perceive the concept of weight (gravitation). Fifth and ninth graders were asked in a paper-and-pencil test to compare the weight of two objects suspended in a pulley-in-balance half a year after the learning intervention consisting of three successive pulley-in-balance…