Science teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning are a vital component of teachers' professional competence and are often assumed to impact classroom practice. To date, these beliefs have been predominantly investigated regarding teaching and learning in general or for a particular science subject (e.g., physics). It remains to be determined…

Students' out-of-school science participation has been identified as a factor that supports adaptive science outcomes. Researchers have largely investigated students' out-of-school science participation in terms of structured science activities (e.g., attending a science camp), with far less consideration of how students' involvement in…

Marginalized communities cannot and do not have decontextualized experiences with how socioscientific issues, such as exposure to COVID-19 as frontline essential workers, high Black infant mortality rates, air pollution leading to respiratory problems, and other issues, affect their communities. As PreK-12 science teachers and teacher educators…

National governments are concerned about the disconnection of young people from science, which hampers the development of a scientifically literate society promoting sustainable development, wellbeing, equity, and a green economy. Introduced in 2015 alongside Agenda 2030, the "open schooling" approach aims at enhancing students' science…

In many countries, play is the vehicle for teaching and learning, requiring early childhood teachers to recognize and assess children's demonstrations of knowledge and capabilities as they are displayed during play. In the context of science learning, assessing what children know already, referred to as "assessment for learning," equips…

Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…

This article describes a teaching experience at an year 8 classroom (students aged 12-13) in a state secondary school in London, UK that aimed at widening learning about nature of science (NOS) with the input from the field of Global History of Science (HOS), which looks at science as a product of material and cognitive exchanges, appropriations…

All over the world, educational science outreach programs in which students can perform laboratory work have been developed. A common goal of these programs is to counteract students' decreasing motivation in STEM education. In Germany, several outreach science labs have been established over the last 20 years. It is assumed that the…

Over the past decades, a large body of research has examined students' magnitudes of evolution acceptance and related measurement issues resulting in questions concerning instruments' validity and operationalization. Until now, several studies investigated validity aspects of often-used evolution acceptance instruments and came to diverging…

Previous studies highlight the positive effects of science outreach labs, in particular on students' motivational variables. However, out-of-school learning is generally associated with high novelty and specific setting characteristics that can impact learning and development. Indeed, previous studies call for further research on students'…

In the past, students' participation in science competitions has been positively associated with their aspirations to pursue a career in science. Previous studies, however, were predominantly focused around successful competitors, overlooking the largest group of participants: those who are faced with early elimination. We therefore aimed to…

Science self-schemas are students' cognitive generalizations of their selves in learning science. Students who hold contrasting science self-schemas are hypothesized to learn consistently with their salient self-conception in science. A survey and an experiment provided complementary evidence supporting the self-congruent engagement hypothesis.…

In this article, we explore how children of late elementary to middle school age, from low-income communities in an East-Central metropolitan area of Canada, described their interests in and attitudes toward science in an out-of-school science club program. We used the children's descriptions of emotional engagement to gain insights into the…

Task orientation is currently a prominent concept under discussion in primary school didactics. It focuses on tasks along which pupils acquire competences on distinct levels of competence. The qualitative empirical study TAPSE (Textbook Analysis in Primary Science Education) pursues the question which conception of task orientation is present in…

Girls are underrepresented in mathematical and science Olympiads, global informal learning activities which often serve as stepping stones for admission to top universities and future STEM careers. The present article aims to investigate the role of implicit gender-science stereotypes on representation and achievement among participants of the…