Phosphates are essential components of any efficient fertilizer. Natural phosphate rock is, however, not available in every part of the world. According to the European Commission, phosphate rock has high economic importance as well as a certain supply risk--at least for Europe. For these reasons, environmental technology research has received a…

This study explores the views of Indonesian junior high school pre-service science teachers (PSTs) towards teaching based on socio-scientific issues (SSIs). Questionnaires were analyzed qualitatively and descriptively. The PSTs (N=62) acknowledged that student competencies ranging from personal to socially relevant skills as well as character…

Educational research and policy suggest inquiry as one of the most prominent ways of promoting effective science education. However, traditional approaches towards inquiry learning are not always sufficiently motivating for all learners. The EU-funded project, TEMI--Teaching Enquiry with Mysteries Incorporated, suggests that mysterious scientific…

Internet forums are interactive, question-answer-based information resources in the Internet. Users can post questions and others can answer from any place in the world and at any time. Teachers can use Internet forums to find answers on how and what to teach, e.g. science; students find or ask for information for school topics or homework…

The years between 2005 and 2014 have been declared as a worldwide Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) by the United Nations. DESD's intended purpose is to promote and more thoroughly focus education as a crucial tool preparing young people to be responsible future citizens, so that our future generations can shape society in a…

Action research is defined as using research activities to develop concrete societal practices. Action research understands the change of practice as being already a central aim of the research process itself, and it also seeks to contribute to the professional development of all participants in the particular field of study. Even though (or maybe…

Sustainable development is a central concern of today's politics across the world. Different political agendas have been developed to promote sustainability and make it a political goal worldwide. As stated in Agenda 21, the political debate seems to agree that education has to play a key role in achieving sustainability. But practices focusing on…

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a secondary school lesson plan for chemistry education on the topic Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The lessons focus both on the chemistry of plastics and on learning about the societal evaluation of competing, chemistry-based industrial products. A specific teaching method was…

By the 1970s a fundamental shift had taken place in German science education. This was a shift away from the learning of more-or-less isolated facts and facets in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics towards a restructuring of science teaching along the general principles of the respective science domains. The changes included also the addition of…

This paper describes a three-year curriculum innovation project on teaching about climate change. The innovation for this study focused on a socio-critical approach towards teaching climate change in four different teaching domains (biology, chemistry, physics and politics). The teaching itself explicitly aimed at general educational objectives,…

This paper describes the potential of long-term co-operation between science educators and science teachers concerning the teachers' continuous professional development, based on Participatory Action Research in science education. The discussion is based on a six-year case study observing a group of about ten German chemistry teachers by chemistry…