A common feature of contemporary science education curricula is the expectation that as well as learning science content, students will learn something "about" science--its nature, its history, how it differs from non-scientific endeavours, and its interactions with culture and society. These curricular pronouncements provide an "open cheque" for…

Preparing students to take informed positions on complex problems through critical evaluation is a primary goal of university education. Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been established as effective contexts for students to develop this competency, as well as reasoning skills and content knowledge. This mixed-methods study investigates the…

Even though in the early years of the Republic of Turkey Darwin's theory of evolution was treated as a scientific theory and taught fairly in schools, despite all the substantial evidence accumulated supporting the theory of evolution since then, Darwin and his ideas today have been scorned by curriculum and education policy makers. Furthermore,…

Modern chemists know that alchemists were their historical predecessors, yet they are not proud of this relationship, which chemists today tend to hide or forget. However, no discontinuity exists between alchemy and chemistry and we still use laboratory techniques that were invented by alchemists hundreds or thousands of years ago. Alchemists used…

Contrasting two examples from 2005, a creationism-trial and a recent textbook, the article shows two different ways of employing social considerations to demarcate science from non-science. Drawing conclusions from the comparison, and citing some of the leading proponents of science studies, the paper argues for a novel perspective in teaching…

Science literacy leading to fuller and informed participation in the public debate about science, technology, society, and environmental (STSE) issues that produce justified decisions and sustainable actions is the shared and central goal of the Pacific CRYSTAL Project. There is broad agreement by science education researchers that learners need…

The late 20th century and beginning of 21st century have witnessed unprecedented rapid economic development due to advances in technology and globalization. In response to this development, a renewed call for science literacy has become louder in the USA and many other countries. Common to all science education reforms around the world is emphasis…

The need for the inclusion of socio-scientific issues (SSI) into science curricula has been generally accepted, but relatively few science teachers have incorporated SSI into their courses. Most science teachers feel that their most important task by far is to teach the principles of science, and any substantive pedagogical changes represent a…

Science education researchers increasingly focus on the use of controversial science topics in the classroom to prepare students to make personal and societal decisions about these issues. However, researchers infrequently investigate the diverse ways in which students learn about controversial science topics outside the classroom, and how these…

Research has shown that video games can be good for learning, particularly for STEM topics. However, in order for games to be scalable and sustainable, associated research must move beyond considerations of efficacy towards theories that account for classroom ecologies of students and teachers. This study asks how a digital game called "Citizen…

One of the two most extensive instrument collections in the Netherlands during the second half of the eighteenth century--rivaling the much better known collection at the University of Leiden--belonged to an orphanage in The Hague that was specially established to mold hand-picked orphans into productive citizens. (The other was housed at the…

In his article "Scientists at Play in a Field of the Lord", David Long (2010) rightly challenges our presumptions of what science is and brings forth some of the disjunctures between science and deeply held American religious beliefs. Reading his narrative of the conflicts that he experienced on the opening day of the Creation Museum, I cannot…

Students' learning interests and attitudes toward science have both been studied for decades. However, the connection between them with students' life experiences about science and technology has not been addressed much. The purpose of this study is to investigate students' learning interests and life experiences about science and technology, and…

Scholars have argued that the history of science might facilitate an understanding of processes of science. Focusing on science education for citizenship and active involvement in debates on socioscientific issues, one might argue that today's post-academic science differs from academic science in the past, making the history of academic science…

Discussing themes from my paper "Scientists at play in a field of the Lord," three forum participants identify and discuss continuing social and epistemological issues which continue to challenge effective evolution education. I extend these themes and further amplify the vexing nature of an effective dialectic regarding evolution, especially for…