Science education is crucial for fostering knowledge across academic disciplines. Past efforts to enhance science achievement at the elementary level have explored various instructional strategies. Among these, the Understanding by Design (UbD) model has shown notable potential in improving science achievement outcomes compared to traditional…

Science education reform efforts have emphasized the incorporation of more authentic and meaningful scientific practices into formal learning environments. With this focus on practices, such as scientific modeling, a powerful tool for sense-making and reasoning, comes a need to observe and understand if and how it is actually occurring,…

Studies maintain that computational thinking (CT) is associated with science content and scientific processes as well as with many disciplines. It is thought that designing teaching processes in which science and CT processes take place together makes science learning more meaningful. With this in mind, in this study, the researchers integrated…

Argumentation is fundamental to science education, both as a prominent feature of scientific reasoning and as an effective mode of learning--a perspective reflected in contemporary frameworks and standards. The successful implementation of argumentation in school science, however, requires a paradigm shift in science assessment from the…

When conducting biological investigations, experts constantly integrate their conceptual and quantitative understanding of variation with the design and analysis of the investigation. This process is difficult for students, because curricula often treat these concepts as separate components. This study describes the effect of a curricular…

Worldwide, teachers are expected to engage their students in authentic practices, like scientific modeling. Research suggests that teachers experience challenges when integrating modeling in their classroom instruction, with one explanation that teachers themselves lack the necessary modeling competence. Currently, theoretical conceptualizations…

Currently critical thinking skills is becoming an important education issue to overcome the challanges of industrial revolution 4.0. Previous studies reported that the pre-service teachers' critical thinking dispositions and skills were still low, therefore, both aspects of critical thinking should be improved through learning activities in higher…

The Japanese lesson study (JLS) model for curriculum development has seen limited application to middle school science classrooms. The JLS model was used to develop and refine three hands-on activities focused on four major eighth grade science topics from the California curriculum. Prior assessments of these topics showed limited understanding by…

Growing evidence has come to suggest that model-based inquiry can improve student learning outcomes and attitudes toward STEM in the biological sciences and beyond. In our introductory biology laboratory course that focuses on cellular and molecular biology, we introduced model-based inquiry (MBI) labs to create a more student-focused course that…

Computer programming is a difficult course for many students. Prior works advocated for group learning pedagogies in pursuit of higher-level reasoning and conceptual understanding. However, the methodological gaps in existing implementations warrant further research. This study conducted a three-armed cluster-randomized controlled trial to…

Reading can be considered constitutive epistemology for science and a fundamental aspect of scientific literacy. This study attempted to give further insights into the comprehension of different genres of science texts (textbook and popular science) and the assimilation of the academic language by adolescent age students. The writings 14- and…

This research was conducted to facilitate the conceptual understanding of the solutions that contain abstract concepts and not to understand easily. The aim of this research is to determine the effect of applied methods on the achievement level of prospective science teachers and conceptual understanding level at the particulate nature of matter…

Textbooks currently circulating have not been adapted to online learning systems and their contents are less interactive, less communicative, and have not been based on local content potential. This research aimed to produce digital textbooks based on Madura local content and augmented reality to improve students' scientific reasoning ability.…

This study aims to obtain information about the modelling situations related to the topic by performing concentration analysis of teacher candidates' responses to Force Concept Inventory (FCI). The research was conducted using survey model, which is a quantitative research method. The study was carried out in the fall semester of the academic year…

Composite scores are an exceptionally important psychometric tool for behavioral science research applications. A prototypical example occurs with self-report data, where researchers routinely use questionnaires with multiple items that tap into different features of a target construct. Item-level missing data are endemic to composite score…