Sound is a very omnipresent physical phenomenon that plays a crucial role in our daily lives. It is essential for verbal communication and helps us orient ourselves. Children are especially affected by sound and its presence in their daily lives. This circumstance, and the subject-specific interesting facets of the topic of sound, make this…

The goal of this study was to examine the way preservice science teachers depict and develop their understanding of nature of science (NOS), from the perspective of the family resemblance approach (FRA). FRA defines NOS as a Cognitive-Epistemic and Social-Institutional system. Appling the dual-analytic approach via reflective drawing analysis, we…

This article describes a system of analysis aimed at characterizing students' scientific explanations. Science education literature and reform documents have been highlighting the importance of scientific explanations for students' conceptual understanding and for their understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, and despite…

This paper explores the effect teachers' participation in a targeted inquiry-based/nature of science (NoS) continuing professional development programme had on Irish primary children's experiences of scientific inquiry and developing conceptions of NoS. Data were gathered from 459 children from 10 Dublin schools. The findings revealed that their…

The development of science education in many countries is varied and diverse. However, one common goal of science education in the different contexts is the focus on scientific literacy. To promote scientific literacy, the Nature of Science (NoS) is one of the vital components for raising scientifically literate citizens. In view of this, the…

This study investigated some of the aspects that characterise the understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) and "Nature of Technology" (NOT) of 20 children and youths from different countries who perform scientific and technological activities in a non-formal teaching and learning setting. Data were collected using a questionnaire and…

We looked at how far students aged 10-17 years differentiate between the "force" and "energy" concepts for animates and inanimates. Within a structured interview format, participants described situations in which inanimate objects and animate agents interacted. Results showed that the younger students made no distinction…

This study aims to characterize a group of students' preliminary oral explanations of a scientific phenomenon produced as part of their learning process. The students were encouraged to use their own wordings to test out their own interpretation of observations when conducting practical activities. They presented their explanations orally in the…

We used the Rule Space Model, a cognitive diagnostic model, to measure the learning progression for thermochemistry for senior high school students. We extracted five attributes and proposed their hierarchical relationships to model the construct of thermochemistry at four levels using a hypothesized learning progression. For this study, we…

The research reported here investigated the everyday and scientific repertoires of children involved in semi-structured, Piagetian interviews carried out to check their understanding of dynamic astronomical concepts like daytime and night-time. It focused on the switching taking place between embedded and disembedded thinking; on the imagery which…

Research has shown that children usually provide teleological explanations for the features of organisms from a very early age (3-4 years old). However, it is not clear if teleology is applied selectively for organisms, or if it is generally applied to other objects as well (artifacts and non-living natural objects). The present study examined…

This study focuses on second-year university students' explanations and reasoning related to adiabatic compression of an ideal gas. The phenomenon was new to the students, but it was one which they should have been capable of explaining using their previous upper secondary school knowledge. The students' explanations and reasoning were…

The starting point of the present research is the following question: since we live in an age that makes increasing use of visual representations of all sorts, is not the visual representation a learner constructs a window into his/her understanding of what is or is not being learned? Following this direction of inquiry, the present preliminary…

This study investigates the effect of cooperative learning (jigsaw) versus individual learning methods on students' understanding of chemical equilibrium in a first-year general chemistry course. This study was carried out in two different classes in the department of primary science education during the 2005-2006 academic year. One of the classes…

The findings reported in this paper report on an investigation of Chinese people's understanding of the nature of science in relation to their conceptualisations of Nature. As an exploratory and interpretive study, it uses semi-structured interviews with 25 Chinese secondary school science teachers. The paper first presents these teachers'…