Nature of science (NOS) has been a target of interest for decades. The main goal of this study is to explore the impact of the science, technology, society, environment (STSE) approach on students' understanding of NOS, taking "Galileo's study of free-fall motion" as an example. Participants in this study were 350 students of grade 10…

In this study, high school physics textbooks published by People's Education Press (PEP) and Educational Science Publishing House (ESP) (a total of 6 books) in China were analyzed via a self-developed scale measuring nature of science (NOS) including three first-level indicators of scientific knowledge, scientific process, and scientific…

The experiment that we present in this paper explores the teaching of Galilean motion principles observed in different reference frames, in an astronomical context. All grade 10 students in a French high school (the lycée Condorcet, Val de Marne) participated in two successive teaching-learning sessions, designed within the theoretical framework…

The study investigated how explicit instruction of argumentation-in the context of socioscientific issues (SSI)- and explicit instruction of NOS, compared with explicit instruction of argumentation only, can develop grade 10 students' argumentation skills and NOS conceptions. Participants were 36 grade 10 students enrolled in two sections that…

Ongoing changes in mental and personal characteristics of the modern child initiate the updating of means and forms of education. And they, in their turn, update methodological techniques and approaches to the use of methods during the math class. The source of updating methodological techniques may be the principles used when solving scientific…

Research on nature of science (NOS) has confirmed that students' understanding of NOS is best achieved by explicitly considering NOS a cognitive learning expectation and providing opportunities to reflect on it. However, little has been discussed on how to design and use tasks enhancing students' NOS understanding. In an attempt to fill this gap,…

Epistemology plays an important role in detecting learning difficulties in a given field of knowledge and in directing strategies to eliminate them. This quantitative study aimed to get to know the perceptions of 624 students, related to the nature of science and science teaching and learning. The cross-sectional survey, based on the Inventory of…

This study considers how students change their coherent conceptual understanding of natural selection through a hands-on simulation. The results show that most students change their understanding. In addition, some students also underwent a transformative experience and used their new knowledge in a leisure time activity. These transformative…

This article presents an instructional strategy called Premise-Reasoning-Outcome (PRO) designed to support students in the construction of scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, the PRO strategy involves identifying three components of a scientific explanation: (i) premise--an accepted…

Identifying an instructional tool for merging scientific and indigenous knowledge (IK) is problematic as there is no clear guidance on how this can be achieved. Argumentation is recommended as a possible integrative instructional theoretical methodology as it imbues notions of dialogue and persuasion, while at the same time embracing the…

This paper is a qualitative, practice based study describing the use of the Focus-Action-Reflection (FAR) Guide (Harrison & Treagust, 2000) to address the shortcomings of a pedagogical analogical model in Year 10 Science. The aim of this paper is to present my experience of the FAR Guide in relation to an analogical model that gave rise to…

Design-based research, and particularly its theoretical status, is a subject of debate in the science education community. In the first part of this paper, a theoretical framework drawn up to develop design-based research will be presented. This framework is mainly based on epistemological analysis of physics modelling, learning and teaching…

The study investigated tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade students' alternative ideas relating to the motion of a body travelling in the field of gravity with an initial horizontal velocity. The sample of the study consisted of 40 tenth-grade students, and 33 and 40 eleventh-grade students that attended different sections of upper secondary…

The aim of this study was to elicit students' conceptions about big bubbles in boiling liquids (water, ethanol and aqueous CuSO[subscript 4] solution). The study is based on twenty-four students at different ages and grades. The clinical interviews technique was conducted to solicit students' conceptions and the interviews were analyzed to…