As a rule, an experiment carried out at school or in undergraduate study courses is rather simple and not very informative. However, when the experiments are to be performed using modern methods, they are often abstract and difficult to understand. Here, we describe a quick and simple experiment, namely the enzymatic characterization of ptyalin…

In this paper, a self-created analogy is presented based on comparing the process of osmosis with a situation recreated in a train carriage. It was implemented with upper-secondary education students at a secondary school in Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz, Spain). To assess the progression of the students' models on osmosis, their activities…

Tanzanian secondary school students have consistently performed poorly in the topic of motion in a straight line, which involves kinematics formulas and graphs. Despite instruction, many struggle to plot and interpret these graphs, largely due to limited conceptual understanding among both learners and teachers. This study examines the conceptual…

One of the critical goals of teaching chemistry is to enable learners to gain conceptual understanding. Traditional instruction has often been associated with rote memorisation, resulting in learners failing to explain observed chemical phenomena, make predictions based on acquired concepts, advance convincing arguments, and engage in meaningful…

Understanding the general ideas and methods of detecting molecular structures is essential in high school chemistry. However, there is a need for more practical activities in teaching. A hands-on activity was designed in this study, which uses flexible foam balls and long sticks such as knitting needles to imitate how scientists construct the 3D…

Big ideas in science education are meant to be interpretive frameworks that empower student learning. Unfortunately, outside of the broad conception of scientific evaluation, there are few theoretical explanations of how this might happen. Therefore, we contribute one such explanation, an instructional concept called integrative analysis wherein…

An important educational goal is enabling students to learn scientific concepts. The scientific concepts learned in class are developed within students' cognitive structures. Despite the successful application of Semantic Network Analysis (SNA) to study these cognitive structures, there has been limited examination of students' concept networks…

Global climate change (GCC) is one of the greatest challenges of our age and a highly significant socio-scientific issue (SSI). Developing secondary students' understanding about the Earth's climate and GCC is critical for empowering future citizens and a key focus of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States, 2013). In…

Newton's laws are a ubiquitous topic in introductory physics instruction. One common problem involves asking what will happen if you stick your finger into a cup of water sitting on a scale. A way to solve the problem would be to first recognize that the water exerts a buoyant force upward on the finger, which students can recognize as being the…

The concept of relative density is introduced in the middle school and high school curricula by an intuitive approach based on the phenomena of immersion and flotation. In high school, the same concept is taught as the ratio between the masses of two bodies of the same volume. This dichotomy of the concept of relative density between the two…

Some descriptions of learning represent the process as the development of organisations of elements. Various organisations have been proposed, for example, schemata and conceptual structures. Such representations assume that mental entities, such as concepts, are sufficiently stable and differentiated to be treated as units. We discuss these…

Circus art excites amazes and delights. Most of circus genres are based on the principles of classical physics. Dialogic discussions are known as an instrument to identify conceptual barriers (misconceptions) and facilitate their further revision. The present study integrates the three worlds: physics education, dialogic teaching and circus art;…

This article describes the design and evaluation of a simulation environment for special relativity (SR) education at the secondary level. In recent years, SR has become increasingly popular in secondary school curricula worldwide. Because the key concepts in SR are very remote from everyday experience, they are difficult for students to learn.…

Teaching and learning quantum mechanics is one of the most demanding educational and conceptual challenges, in particular in secondary schools where students do not possess an adequate mathematical background to effectively support the description of quantum behaviour. Educational research shows that traditional approaches, generally based on…

Thermodynamic processes are often presented in so called P-V diagrams and the processes are often isobaric, isochoric, isothermal, and adiabatic. The purpose of the qualitative research reported here was to explore students' reasoning and interpretation of P-V diagrams that were presented by the help of GeoGebra. The research group had 15 students…