There are international concerns about decreasing rates of chemistry degree enrolment. This article seeks to understand students' reasons for not/choosing to pursue a chemistry degree, drawing on (i) open-ended survey responses from a sample of 506 students in England aged 21-22 who had studied advanced level ("A level") chemistry at age…

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…

In recent years, many studies have researched the impact of teachers' professional knowledge on teaching quality. Those findings are still ambiguous providing unclear evidence for supporting teacher education programs that aim at developing professional knowledge. In this study, we followed a new approach and used a "performance test" to…

The article argues that science assessment should change from an item-driven to a construct-driven practice and pay more attention to disciplinary scientific reasoning. It investigates assessment scales developed from a novel theoretical rationale, describing scientific reasoning as three fundamental practices (hypothesizing, experimenting, and…

A framework for teaching scientific inquiry in upper secondary chemistry education was constructed in a design research consisting of two research cycles. First, in a pilot study a hypothetical framework was enriched in collaboration with five chemistry teachers. Second, a main study in this community of teachers and researchers was conducted on…

As the context of human life expands from personal to global, a new vision of scientific literacy is needed. Based on a synthesis of the literature and the findings of an online survey of South Korean and US secondary science teachers, we developed a framework for scientific literacy for South Korea that includes five dimensions: content…

This study deals with the development of system thinking skills at the elementary school level. It addresses the question of whether elementary school students can deal with complex systems. The sample included 40 4th grade students from one school in a small town in Israel. The students studied an inquiry-based earth systems curriculum that…

Discusses ideas about the particulate nature of matter and assesses the extent to which these represent a compromise between scientific and educational considerations. Analyzes relations between the particulate nature of matter in science and science education in an attempt to understand children's inclination to attribute all kinds of macroscopic…

Discusses schematic modeling and describes an experiment in which Lebanese high school and college students participated in problem-solving tutorials that followed a schematic modeling approach. Results indicate that both groups improved significantly in problem-solving performance and the course achievement of students in the college group was…

Characterizes specific spatial abilities required in geology studies through the examination of the performance of high school students in solving structural geology problems on the geologic spatial ability test (GeoSAT). Concludes that visual penetration ability and the ability to perceive the spatial configuration of the structure are…

This article describes a 3-year study of school visits to four natural history museums and addresses the research agenda with regard to out-of-school learning. More specifically, the findings focus on the "process of learning" in museums. Comprehensive data collection allowed for an analysis of patterns of guided visits, the way the…

Study of the nature of world view presuppositions held by (n=215) science teachers from 5 non-Western cultures shows that the subjects held identical world view presuppositions and suggests either poor conceptualizations of the nature of science or a form of collateral thinking. Contains 46 references. (Author/MKR)

Deals with the problem of the proper interpretation of discourse between students and teachers in classrooms. Presents several interpretations of a concrete classroom protocol in terms of misconceptions. Draws on Davidson's principle of charity and distinguishes between belief and meaning to present an analysis that interprets the discourse…

Analyzes the perceptions of students, teachers, and external observers in order to study the influence of classroom environment on the implementation of an innovative project in science education. Contains 33 references. (DDR)

Uses the Teacher Communication Behavior Questionnaire (TCBQ) which can be used to assess students' and teachers' perceptions of science teachers' interpersonal communication behaviors in their classroom learning environments. (Contains 58 references.) (Author/YDS)