Guided and open inquiry strategies are found to improve students' attitudes toward science. Yet, confirmation and structured inquiry are more often enacted by teachers. The effectiveness of these approaches involving high teacher guidance remains unexplored. Students in six classes (N = 119, M[subscript age] = 11.25 years) were assigned to control…

Evaluating and improving instructional quality is important in pre-service teacher education, given it is a crucial factor for students' learning gains. This process is complex and involves multiple classroom events with various interpretations. Criteria for instructional quality are rarely applied systematically in teacher education, leading to…

The methodological limitations education researchers face in the evaluation of reformed instruction have led to debates as to the evidence advancing evidence-based practices. To conduct more effective research, methodological pluralism in the evaluation of educational reforms can be used to complement the strengths and limitations of a corpus of…

Kinetic energy is usually the entry point for the study of energy in physics and is often perceived as unproblematic. We present evidence, however, that some learners who seem to have accepted the concept, from elementary school students to college physics majors and in-service teachers, nevertheless do not consistently attribute kinetic energy to…

The purpose of this mixed-method study is to investigate and compare students' problem-solving and higher order thinking skills. This study involves two contexts: a traditional teaching program and a Lesson Study program. In qualitative phase, seven mathematics lecturers, a physics lecturer and the researcher forms the Lesson Study group and they…

This study investigates climate change perceptions of secondary science teachers in a Blue state and a Red state. A total of 832 secondary science teachers, 456 from California, and 376 from Texas public schools responded to an online questionnaire regarding their climate change perceptions. Findings indicate that a significant proportion of…

The study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the Predict-Explain-Enact-Observe-Reflect (PEEOR) instructional strategy on general science students' conceptual understanding and motivation in the topic of motion and force. The research employed a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design. The sample consisted of 107 general science summer, year…

Visualisation has been a critical means of scientific reasoning, knowledge development, and communication. In science classrooms, visualisation plays significant roles for teaching and learning. To better understand the landscape of the existing research on visualisation for supporting student science learning in K to 12 classroom contexts, we…

It is generally accepted that a robust science education includes knowledge of science, as well as knowledge "about" science, or, in other words, an understanding of the "Nature of Science." However, debates around what Nature of Science is and how to measure it are far from settled, and this compromises our ability to support…

This study examined the effects of students' argumentation standpoints on their argumentation learning in the context of socio-scientific issues (SSIs). To that end, four kinds of argumentation standpoints were defined: affirmative standpoints, oppositional standpoints, multiple standpoints, and non-standpoints. These four kinds of standpoints…

The purpose of this study was to find out the influence of the integration sequence of interactive simulation on the construction of the scientific explanation of buffer solutions. This study was conducted with 30 pre-service science teachers. The control group was randomly assigned to study with lecture first and then interactive simulation-based…

The aim of the present research is to reveal the effects of preservice science teachers' E[right arrow]STEM approach-based activity development processes on their environmental awareness levels and their views on the process. The research was performed with explanatory sequential mixed design. In the quantitative dimension, a single group pre-test…

Although laboratory work is considered a significant factor in helping students develop their science process skills and cultivate alternative knowledge construction, there are still gaps in the selection, integration, and implementation of the basic elements in physics laboratories. In this study, three modified guided discovery and conventional…

Promoting student understanding of biological concepts is a key part of biology education, and the ability to "understand" a concept forms one of the six categories of the oft-used Bloom's Taxonomy. Despite this, there remains no consensus as to what it means to understand a concept. While several formal definitions have been offered, we…

Contextualised learning is required for learners to master successfully the 'big ideas' of science and to perceive the relevance of science education. Science curricula can either foster or impair teaching for contextualised learning depending on what science they plan to be taught and the way they recommend this to be done. This paper presents an…