This study analyzes how students' reported teaching practices of their teachers and their attitudes towards science are related to the science achievements of four high-performing countries/economies in PISA 2015: Hong Kong, China, Canada, and Finland. A study of these regions can shed light on the commonalities of and differences between the…

Drawing on sociocultural theorizing, this case study investigates and unpacks the qualities of "scientific play" during children's inquiry-based science activities framed by imagination and play (i.e. Poetry Science). The data were gathered in Finnish preschool groups with children aged five to six years old (N: 31) over a five-week…

This case study examined teachers' on-the-fly formative assessment conversations, that is, how teachers collect information from students' thinking and use that information to support their learning during teacher-student interactions. Previous studies have typically analysed whole-class discussions on the level of speaking turns, and have…

Gender disparities in STEM fields have been under extensive study, the focus of which has been on future career aspirations. However, the primary phases in gender differences are still ambiguous when examined from this perspective, possibly due to the fact that most of the studies have targeted samples of upper secondary school or college…

Teacher questioning has a central role in guiding pupils to learn to make scientific observations and inferences. We asked 110 primary student teachers to write down what kind of questions they would ask their pupils about a demonstration. Almost half of the student teachers posed questions that were either inappropriate or presupposed that the…

Interest in physics and chemistry topics and out-of-school experiences of Finnish secondary school students (n = 3626, median age 15) were surveyed using the international ROSE questionnaire. Based on explorative factor analysis the scores of six out-of-school experience factors (indicating how often students had done something outside of school)…

This research explores and compares primary student teachers' attitudes, subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in physics in two institutions in England and Finland, using a practical physics activity and questionnaire. Teaching of physics activities was rated unpopular both in Finland and England, although English students…

This report is one of a series of reports from a research project that focuses on the evaluation of laboratory work in secondary schools. The study focuses on 12 different laboratory tasks from the biology and chemistry courses of the Finnish comprehensive school. Secondary students (N=212) were observed during laboratory sessions and analysis of…

This article presents the features, design and architecture of the Myst pervasive game platform that has been applied in creating pervasive mobile learning games in various contexts such as science festivals and museums in Finland. Based on our experiences with the development, we draw a set of design principles for creating successfully a…

Data structures and algorithms are core issues in computer programming. However, learning them is challenging for most students and many of them have various types of misconceptions on how algorithms work. In this study, we discuss the problem of identifying misconceptions on the principles of how algorithms work. Our context is algorithm…

Learning objects (LOs), generally understood as digital learning resources shared and accessed through the Internet and reused in multiple learning contexts, have aroused enthusiasm in the field of educational technology. Although LOs offer many possibilities to change educational practices, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the…