Researchers and policy-makers have recognized the importance of including and promoting socioscientific argumentation in science education worldwide. The Swedish curriculum focuses more than ever on socioscientific issues (SSI) as well. However, teaching socioscientific argumentation is not an easy task for science teachers and one of the more…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the constructivist learning environment among Palestinian science students. The study also aimed to investigate the effects of gender and learning level of these students on their perceptions of the constructivist learning environment. Data were collected from 125 male and 101 female students from the…

Students' concerns about mathematics can significantly affect their ability to learn the subject. In particular, their anxieties and attitudes can greatly affect how they perceive their own mathematical competence, and in return, this may make them reluctant to pursue mathematical studies. Many researchers believe in the role of active learning…

This study used phenomenography, a qualitative method, to investigate Taiwanese mathematics teachers' conceptions of school mathematics, school statistics, and their differences. To collect data, we interviewed five mathematics teachers by open questions. They also responded to statements drawn on mathematical/statistical conceptions and…

Learning to think spatially in mathematics involves developing proficiency with graphics. This paper reports on 2 investigations of spatial thinking and graphics. The first investigation explored the importance of graphics as 1 of 3 communication systems (i.e. text, symbols, graphics) used to provide information in numeracy test items. The results…

In this study, we investigate the meaning students attribute to the structure of mathematical induction (MI) and the process of proof construction using mathematical induction in the context of a geometric recursion problem. Two hundred and thirteen 17-year-old students of an upper secondary school in Greece participated in the study. Students'…

Beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing have been investigated extensively in educational and developmental psychology research. Hofer's framework on personal epistemology is adopted in the present study for assessing Lebanese university students' epistemologies of science. Participants were 213 students in their first year of…

This study diagnosed the understanding about energy and biological-context energy concepts held by 90 first-year South African university biology students. In particular, students' explanations of energy in a biological context, how energy is involved in different biological situations and whether energy is present and what types of energy are…

The present study aimed at investigating children's and adolescents' understanding of constant and accelerated motions. The main objectives were (1) to investigate whether different task formats would affect the performance and (2) to track developmental changes in this domain. Five to 16 year olds (N = 157) predicted the distances of a moving…

This study investigates the similarities and differences of mathematics-related teaching competencies between the future secondary school teachers of Taiwan and Singapore by using data from the international Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), organized by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational…

A crucial issue for prospective teachers (PTs) in their education is to develop pedagogical content knowledge (PCK; i.e. how to make a topic comprehensible to pupils). However, research has shown that PTs may have tacit ideas about teaching that act as filters preventing consideration of unfamiliar and discrepant ideas. These ideas must be…

This study investigated a gap that may have existed between students' expectations and perceptions of the 2007 Pre-Entry Science Program (PESP) cohort at the National University of Lesotho and factors that might have influenced these expectations and perceptions. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection and…

There is, no doubt, untapped potential in using technological tools to enhance the understanding of science concepts. This study examines the potential by observing 7th and 8th grade middle school students' (n=23) use of portable data collection devices in a nine-week elective class, "Exploring Technologies". Students' use of the data collection…

This paper is an initial investigation of teachers' and students' preferences for mathematically-based (MB) and practically-based (PB) explanations and the relationship between those preferences and sociomathematical norms. The study focuses on one fifth grade teacher and two of her students and discusses three issues. The first issue concerns…

When the United Nations General Assembly authorized holding the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, it was hardly a secret--or even a point in dispute--that progress in implementing sustainable development had been disappointing since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. With poverty deepening and environmental…