The present study investigates how Greek in-service secondary education biology teachers understand the unique features of school biology and physics when considering the biological theoretical edifice and method. Our theoretical framework focuses on important differences that exist between the neo-Darwinian and Newtonian worldviews, while our…

As biologists accumulate or encounter increasingly large and complex data sets, our field creates the need for students to develop skills in data exploration and visualization. Many biology courses lack the time for students to develop the skills needed to parse complex datasets and visualize them appropriately. We developed a new upper-level…

Science and environmental educators implicitly presuppose that the ecosystem per se is clearly defined and consider learners' misunderstandings to be incorrect scientific interpretations of uncontested knowledge content. The present study, however, explores how in-service secondary education Greek biology teachers address the topic of 'ecosystem…

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…

Hundreds of articles have explored the extent to which individuals accept evolution, and the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) is the most often used survey. However, research indicates the MATE has limitations, and it has not been updated since its creation more than 20 years ago. In this study, we revised the MATE using…

The change in enthalpy of a chemical reaction conducted at constant pressure is equal to the heat of the reaction plus the nonexpansion work of the reaction, ?H = qP + w[subscript additional]. After deriving that relationship, most general and physical chemistry textbooks set w[subscript additional] = 0 to arrive at the claim that ?H = qP, and…

Computational thinking is a contemporary science and engineering practice that has been introduced to the US science classrooms due to its emphasis in the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS). However, including computational thinking into science instruction may be challenging. Therefore, for biological evolution (an essential…

The present study elaborates on a domain-specific approach to NOS (Nature Of Science) and employs a NOTSs (Nature Of The Sciences) agenda to investigate how Greek in-service physics teachers understand the unique features of school physics and biology. Our theoretical framework focuses on the notion of worldview and important differences that…

The present study explores how in-service secondary education Greek biology teachers understand aspects of the concept of ecosystem under the assumption that the ecosystem is an ill-defined concept. If it is to be considered a holistic entity, the ecosystem acquires its definitional features within the ecological field of systems ecology, which…

In England, both Religious Education (RE) and science are mandatory parts of the school curriculum throughout the 5-16 age range. Nevertheless, there remain concerns that, as in many countries, students do not have a good understanding about the scope of each subject nor about how the two subjects relate. This article reports on a study that…

In the context of what are often highly compartmentalised curriculum requirements, this article considers the cyclical nature of the acquisition and transfer of knowledge in the education system in relation to those questions that transcend individual subjects as set out in traditional curriculum divisions. It also considers the detrimental…

This study investigated the conceptions of the nature of science held by pre-service undergraduate biology teachers in South-West, Nigeria. Specifically, the study examined the influence of their gender on their conceptions of the nature of science. The study was a descriptive research of the survey method. The population for the study comprised…

There is a sustained public outcry against the persistent abysmal performance of students in biology and other science subjects at the Senior School Certificate Examinations conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO). Biology is a unique science discipline with peculiar philosophical…

Recent calls to action urge sweeping reform in science education, advocating for improved learning for "all" students--including those majoring in fields beyond the sciences. However, little work has been done to characterize the differences--if any exist--between students planning a career in science and those studying other…

Life sciences became Biology, a formal scientific discipline, at the turn of the nineteenth century, when it adopted the methods of reductive physics and chemistry. Mendel's hypothesis of inheritance of discrete factors further introduced a quantitative reductionist dimension into biology. In 1910 Johannsen differentiated between the…