This study explored five Life Sciences teachers' practices of formative assessment when enacting an inquiry-based pedagogy. The ESRU cycle (teacher "Elicits" a response; the Student responds; the teacher "Recognises" the student's response; and then "Uses" the information collected to support student learning) was…

A great number of studies have investigated science teaching and learning (STL) using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Nevertheless, there is little effort to synthesise these studies. Reviewing the status of research on STL, including the trends,…

Experiments are essential for both doing science and learning science. The aim of the German youth science fair, "Jugend forscht," is to encourage scientific thinking and inquiry methods such as experimentation. Based on 57 interviews with participants of the competition, this study summarises students' conceptions and steps of learning…

In Portugal, the number of students in higher education increased from 80,000 in 1975 to 381,000 in 2000 (a change from 11% to 53% in the age group 18-22), meaning a major change in the diversity of student population with consequences well known and studied in other countries. The teaching of chemistry at the University of Aveiro, for the…

While the traditional meaning of connected knowledge is valuable in some school subjects, it does not address the main activities of knowledge acquisition in subjects such as physics and mathematics. The goal of this article is to analyze the relationships between the concepts "learning for understanding" and "connected…