Understanding the nature of science (NOS) is an important goal of science education, and textbooks are a key factor in shaping students' conceptions of NOS. In this study, we analysed NOS represented in middle school chemistry textbooks in the Chinese mainland. The selected materials were three most commonly adopted textbook series, which were…

A large body of research has studied the role and potential of inquiry to increase the quality of teaching in science education. While much of this existing research is based on international large-scale assessment studies, we still lack a clear understanding of the factors that influence the quality of inquiry-based science teaching in actual…

Research on nature of science (NOS) has confirmed that students' understanding of NOS is best achieved by explicitly considering NOS a cognitive learning expectation and providing opportunities to reflect on it. However, little has been discussed on how to design and use tasks enhancing students' NOS understanding. In an attempt to fill this gap,…

A sociocultural perspective considers science textbooks as 'cultural supportive tools' with significant cultural missions. By juxtaposing symbolic, mathematical, and visual-graphical text, textbooks present the intertexts deployed by the scientific community to convey conceptual understandings in a way that no one form can. Intertextuality entails…

To mitigate climate change, immediate actions are needed, but who is responsible for taking these actions and what actions will people support? This article examines pre-service teachers' (N = 230) views on who is responsible for mitigating climate change and what they perceive as the most effective ways to do so. The data consist of essays,…

To broaden perspectives presented in undergraduate courses, instructors often invite guest speakers, yet there is limited research on students' perceptions of guest speakers and the potential influence they may have on student learning. In this exploratory study, we describe how senior undergraduate students, in a natural resource management…

This study presents new ways of visualising technology-enhanced collaborative inquiry-based learning (CIBL) processes in an undergraduate physics course. The data included screen-capture videos from a technology-enhanced learning environment and audio recordings of discussions between students. We performed a thematic analysis based on the phases…

Numerous case studies suggest that integrating art and science education could engage students with creative projects and encourage students to express science in multitude of ways. However, little is known about art integration practices in everyday science teaching. With a qualitative e-survey, this study explores the art integration of science…

Prismatic refraction is a classic topic in science education. To investigate how undergraduate students think about prismatic dispersion, and to see how they change their thinking when observing dispersed images, five teaching experiments were done and analysed according to the Model of Educational Reconstruction. For projection through a prism,…

The objective of this study was to characterise the changes in the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) about electric fields of two Colombian physics teachers (Isabel and Alejandro) at the high school level (pupils of ages 17-19), the emotions and their relationship with PCK. The research was conducted during two consecutive years, before and…

This study investigated two science teachers' meta-strategic knowledge (MSK) of argumentation teaching by applying the repertory grid technique (RGT). One teacher was a novice, while the other was experienced in teaching argumentation. Using the RGT, we elicited the objectives and strategies of the two teachers regarding their argumentation…

Learning about scientific inquiry (SI) is an important aspect of scientific literacy and there is a solid international consensus of what should be learned about it. Learning about SI comprises both the doing of science (process) and knowledge about the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI). German reform documents promote inquiry generally but do…

One way for teachers to develop their professional knowledge, which also focuses on specific science content and the ways students learn, is through being involved in researching their own practice. The aim of this study was to examine how science teachers changed (or not) their professional knowledge of teaching after inquiring into their own…

Learning to talk science is an important aspect of learning to do science. Given that scientists' language frequently includes intentions and purposes in explanations of unobservable objects and events, teachers must interpret whether learners' use of such language reflects a scientific understanding or inaccurate anthropomorphism and teleology.…

To date, there has only been little conceptual change research regarding conceptions about glaciers. This study used the theoretical background of embodied cognition to reconstruct different metaphorical concepts with respect to the structure of a glacier. Applying the Model of Educational Reconstruction, the conceptions of students and scientists…