The processes of educational planning and program development at the local and national levels differ in centralized and decentralized educational systems. In Türkiye, there is a centralized education system, and curricula are created centrally to include all students. In the United States of America, there is a nationally disseminated curriculum…

Pseudoscience is a ubiquitous aspect of popular culture which constitutes a direct challenge to science, and by association, to science education. With the exception of politically influential pseudosciences trying to impose themselves on official curricula such as creationism, science education authorities and professional organisations seem…

The purpose of this study was to explore college students' recognition of temporal magnitudes associated with durations of scientific changes through construct validation of a 30-item instrument. We administered the instrument to 514 students from 10 higher education institutions in the United States. Among them, 419 students took the instrument…

This study examines elementary science content standards curriculum coherence between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America. Three aspects of curriculum coherence are examined in this study: topic inclusion, topic duration, and curriculum structure. Specifically this study centers on the following research questions: (1)…

Visual representations are ubiquitous in modern-day science textbooks and have in recent years become an object of criticism and scrutiny. This article examines the extent to which changes in representations in textbooks published in the USA over the past six decades have invited those critiques. Drawing from a correlational analysis of a corpus…

This paper presents the data from a current study involving 41 Romanian secondary science teachers and a previously published study that compared 89 Spanish and 42 US secondary science teachers. All three groups were convenience samples who answered a two part questionnaire that was given in English, Spanish or Romanian, depending on the sample.…

This study examined science textbooks over time to better understand the "science content" expectations that the U.S. educational system deems appropriate for 8th and 9th grade science students. The study attempted to answer the questions: (1) What specific science content has been presented via the textbook from 1952 to 2008? (2) Within…

The content and scope of the USSR's science and mathematics curricula place them far ahead of every other nation. (Author/MLF)

The aim of this paper is to consider some issues in the historical international development of science education making comparisons between the educational systems of Britain and the United States of America. The author's particular interest relates to the role of the textbook in science education, so this is area on which this study will…

An interview-based survey was carried out with British and American university teachers. In both countries there was widespread (but in the UK, not unanimous) support for the proposition that ethics should be taught to Bioscience students. Reasons included a need to help students engage with the ethical issues associated with their subject and the…

The Soviet educational system is now designed to maximize the ability of every student. Only the minority of American students take full advantage of the benefits provided by school programs. (Author/MLF)

Compared 2,500 13- and 17-year-old students in the United States with 350 13-year-old and 340 17-year-old students in Israel using test items from the 1976 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) efforts. The study was designed to examine the results of school science upon affective outcomes of instruction. (JN)

This study explored and documented Taiwanese students' alternative conceptions of animal classification. We examined the understanding of the "animal", "vertebrate" and "invertebrate", "fish", "amphibian", "reptile", "bird", and "mammal" concepts among elementary,…

A large number of American elementary school students are now studying science using the hands-on inquiry curricula developed in the 1990s: Insights; Full Option Science System (FOSS); and Science and Technology for Children (STC). A goal of these programs, echoed in the "National Science Education Standards," is that children should…

International comparisons of American education have become so popular and widespread in the reform debates of the last several decades that many of the current centerpieces of the American reform movement were shaped through evidence and speculation on what other more educationally successful nations were doing that the U.S. was not. The current…