Scientific advances, particularly in evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience and artificial intelligence, present many challenges to religious and popular notions of personhood. This paper reports the first large-scale study on students' beliefs about the interactions between science and widely held beliefs about personhood. The paper…

Many school practical activities focus on scientific methods such as hypothesis testing. Yet science is more than hypothesis testing: it includes other methods. This article presents a framework called 'Brandon's Matrix' that illustrates the diversity of scientific methods. The matrix has been used as part of Project Calibrate based at the…

A pilot study, funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, supported 10 secondary schools across England to plan and deliver open-ended investigative practical work within science curriculum time. This enabled all students to experience the benefits of investigative work, rather than just those attending extracurricular STEM enrichment activities.…

Schools in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, funded by a Royal Society Partnership Grant, engaged in an animal behaviour project with a researcher at the University of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. The pupils used camera traps to conduct wildlife surveys and investigate behavioural responses in European badgers ("Meles meles"). The…

The study sought to determine the effects of a pilot home-based science intervention on deaf and typically hearing children's conceptual understanding of science and their abilities to reason about and communicate their understanding (scientific enquiry skills). Data show that by age 5 years a science attainment gap exists between deaf children…

Background: The paper discusses how the design of summative assessments of practical science can be enhanced through the use of robust theoretical models that capture the diversity of scientific methods. The developments in assessment policy in England and the role of practical science in teaching and learning of science are reviewed. Purpose: The…

The SunSpaceArt (SSA) project, led by the author, a solar scientist at the University of Cambridge, comprises a diverse team of scientists and visual artists who run STEAM (STEM + Arts) workshops in schools, space camps and at other venues (museums, science centres and so on). The project focuses mainly on 7- to 12-year-olds, which is a key age…

This study sought to assess the level of secondary students' scientific literacy in suburban schools in Malaysia and England, a research area which to date has not been fully explored in the literature. The study analyzed the data using the OECD's three domain-specific competencies of scientific literacy, namely: (i) explain phenomena…