The way high school chemistry curricula are structured has the potential to convey consequential messages about knowledge and knowing to students and teachers. If a curriculum is built around practicing skills and recalling facts to reach ''correct'' answers, it is unlikely class activities will be seen (by students or the teacher) as…

Several properties of Earth's magnetic field (field vectors, time dependence) are measured in various locations using a smartphone/tablet magnetic sensor. To enable a proper use of the magnetic sensor as a classroom tool, the exact location of the sensor in the device and its resolution must be identified in a first step. Then, students may…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of scripted biology curriculum as a means of providing students with the information required to increase content knowledge, while comparing curriculum developed by the teacher that utilizesthe Understanding by Design (UbD) framework (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The study used a mixed…

This study examined a network of concepts used in the curriculum, textbooks, instruction, and assessment in relation to somatic cell division and investigated the alignment of science concepts used in them. Textbooks and teachers' instruction and evaluation questions were collected to analyse the alignment between the concepts and the conceptual…

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between life sciences teachers' understanding of indigenous knowledge (IK) and their views of integrating Indigenous Knowledge in their teaching practice. A qualitative case study research approach was adopted, and purposive sampling strategy was used to select eight Grades 10-12 life…

Background: Research on chemistry education has found that students have commonly some difficulties in understanding chemical changes. These difficulties in the learning process have negatively affected students' success. For this reason, it is very important to overcome students' learning difficulties with new materials that prevent the…

This study investigated whether the Key Concepts in Science Project influenced the pedagogical development of Natural Science teachers. Grounded in social constructivism, emphasising collaborative learning and hands-on interaction, the study employed qualitative methods to collect empirical data. Through photographic evidence, field notes, and…

Over the course of a two-year curriculum field test study that implemented a curriculum-based professional learning framework, we investigated the factors that influenced teachers' willingness and ability to implement NGSS-aligned, phenomenon-based storylines for teaching the nature of science, evolution, and climate change. Through qualitative…

Health professions outreach programs are important avenues to increase interest in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). One aspect of many of these programs is anatomy, which can be challenging to teach due to its scope. Creative teaching methods, such as the incorporation of examples from pop culture, can help…

Developing students' ability to think about systems, as opposed to isolated facts, is of central importance in much of science teaching. Prior work in this area has focused on students' recognition of the processes occurring within a system. Comparatively, little work has been done on how students organise the objects that are contained within the…

This study aims to determine the topic-specific nature of two experienced chemistry teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the topics of interactions between chemical species and states of matter. The teachers' PCK on these topics was investigated in terms of the following components: orientations toward science teaching (OST), knowledge…

Teachers lack effective curriculum-based instruments to assess their students' scientific competence that would provide information for modifying their inquiry instruction. The main purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Curriculum-Based Scientific Competence (CBSC) test to assess students' scientific competence in a 1-semester Grade…

This research is a needs analysis study aimed at developing a curriculum based on an interdisciplinary context-based learning approach within the 10th-grade physics course, focusing on the electricity and magnetism unit. The research was designed according to the case study model and data were collected from expert, teacher, and student sample…

Project-Based Learning (PjBL) curricula offer unique opportunities for student engagement, yet they do not guarantee an engaging classroom. Furthermore, there has been little scholarly work on PjBL pedagogy that supports student engagement. This qualitative research study explores enactment of a PjBL Advanced Placement Physics 1 curriculum and the…

It is generally considered that students who want to become scientists engage in scientific practices as university students, particularly when pursuing postgraduate studies. However, schools and teachers can help students participate in authentic scientific and disciplinary practices, such as data sampling and analysis, in high school. The…