Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…

In the socioscientific issues (SSI) classroom, students need to cross the border between the subcultures of science (i.e., school science vs. everyday science). Traditional school contexts tend to present science as positivistic knowledge and unshakable truth unaffected by sociocultural factors. In contrast, everyday science, including SSI, is…

This study examines how a first-year biology teacher facilitates a series of whole-class discussions about evolution during the implementation of a problem-based unit. A communicative theoretical perspective is adopted wherein evolution discussions are viewed as social events that the teacher can frame intellectually (i.e., present or organize as…

In this study we present an analysis of classroom interactions initiated by students' wonderment questions. Our interest in such events arises from their potential to stimulate active intellectual engagement in classrooms, which can impact upon the subsequent development of the classroom discourse. In investigating this issue we shall address the…

"Situational interest" is a short-term form of motivation which occurs when a specific situation stimulates the focused attention of students (e.g., a spectacular science demonstration could arouse transient interest amongst nearly all the students in a class, even those who are not normally interested in science). However, there have…

This study investigated the development in students' nature of science (NOS) views in the context of an explicit inquiry-oriented instructional approach. Participants were 18 seventh-grade students who were taught by a teacher with "appropriate" knowledge about NOS. The intervention spanned about 3 months. During this time, students were engaged…

This study investigated the influence of two different explicit instructional approaches in promoting more informed understandings of nature of science (NOS) among students. Participants, a total of 42 students, comprised two groups in two intact sections of ninth grade. Participants in the two groups were taught environmental science by their…