Science education in China has undergone a new round of reform in recent years, emphasizing the development of students' scientific literacy, of which the nature of science (NOS) is an essential component. Curriculum standards are the source of top-down curriculum reform, and the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China promulgated…

Across the curriculum, the questions that teachers ask in class direct learners' attention to key subject matter, and shape what they learn. This paper examines the types of questions that Chinese school Biology teachers ask, and considers how and why they vary their questioning in the context of scientific practices. Six teachers from four…

Massive studies have explored biological motion (BM) crowds processing for their remarkable social significance, primarily focused on uniformly distributed ones. However, real-world BM crowds often exhibit hierarchical structures rather than uniform arrangements. How such structured BM crowds are processed remains a subject of inquiry. This study…

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, whilst in its infancy, presents significant opportunities and risks, and proactive policy is needed to manage these emerging technologies. Whilst AI continues to have significant and broad impact, its relevance and complexity magnify when integrated with other emerging…

The gender gap remains an issue in the biological education community. This study explores the extent to which an egalitarian gender ideology, encapsulated in five biological science textbooks for upper secondary schools in China, manifests through representational, interactive and compositional meanings of social semiotic theory. The findings…

Primary Scientific Literature (PSL) significantly contributes to cultivating students' scientific literacy. However, students' visual strategies while reading PSL remain unclear. This study utilized eye-tracking technology to clarify students' visual attention allocation and fixation transactions during PSL reading, and explored their associations…

This study investigates the alignment between curriculum standards and textbooks, based on a standards-based science education context. The analysis sample includes the High School Biology Curriculum Standards and five editions of biology textbooks in China. Porter's alignment model is used to construct a two-dimensional (content areas and…

The Next Generation Science Standards regard biological structures at both the micro and macro levels as a core idea of life sciences and expect students to understand animals have external structures that perform diverse functions. Using the common creature of bees as a case, this study aimed to ascertain teenage students' ideas of bees through…

Social categories allow us to make sense of the social world and generate predictions about novel encounters. Yet, how people use particular social categories varies by culture. The current study examined how social categorization varies across traditionally individualistic and collectivistic societies among young children and adults. Using a…

Science identity, encompassing perceptions of competence, interest, and recognition in science, alongside learning self-efficacy reflecting confidence to master science skills, are key drivers of outcomes. However, developmental patterns likely vary across contexts. Participants were 512 Chinese students spanning grades 1-3 who completed the…

Governance and regulation of the use of live animals in research and teaching is examined in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and India. A comparison of the systems in different countries will enable the determination of best practice and fit-forpurpose regulation. The most comprehensive government…

Integrating the nature of science (NOS) into textbooks is one of the challenges in science curricula. This case study assessed the issue based on a sample of high school biology textbooks in Mainland China. We quantitatively compared changes in the extent, quality, and distribution of NOS representations between 2004 and 2019 editions. Three main…

The topic 'photosynthesis' contains many intangible and abstract scientific concepts, regarding which students hold many preconceptions. Conceptual learning is a process of co-creation and flow that requires the teachers' higher educational level on conceptual teaching. The present research considers photosynthesis as an example. Results of Ball's…

The profound advances in the biomolecular sciences over the last decades have enabled similar advances in biomedicine. These advances have increasingly challenged our abilities to deploy them in an equitable and ethically acceptable manner. As such, it has become necessary and important to teach biomedical and scientific ethics to our students who…

It has always been one of the hot spots of the whole society to improve teachers' quality and ability. With the progress of the era and the rapid development of biology, it puts forward higher requirements for the cultivation of biology teachers of middle school. How to cultivate a large number of high-quality biology teachers of middle school…