Background: Intercoder reliability is a statistic commonly reported by researchers to demonstrate the rigour of coding procedures during data analysis. Its importance is debatable in the analysis of qualitative interview data. It raises a question on whether researchers should identify the same codes and themes in a transcript or they should…

The aims of teaching laboratories is an important and ever-evolving topic of discussion amongst teaching staff at teaching institutions. It is often assumed that both teaching staff and students are implicitly aware of these aims, although this is rarely tested or measured. This assumption can lead to mismatched beliefs between students and…

Studies have shown that there is a need for pedagogical content knowledge among science teachers. This study investigates two primary teachers and their objectives in choosing inquiry- and context-based instructional strategies as well as the relation between the choice of instructional strategies and the teachers' knowledge about of students'…

The implementation of educational reforms requires behavioral changes from the teachers involved. Theories on successful behavioral change prescribe the following conditions: teachers need to possess the necessary knowledge and skills, form strong positive intentions to perform the new behavior, and have a supporting environment for change.…

In this paper I report on the sociological and educational particulars of "The Biodiscovery Space" exhibition of the Life Museum of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, using Basil Bernstein's framework of pedagogic discourse and recontextualization. Data for analysis was obtained from interviews with the exhibition…

In this paper, we investigate the in-service teachers "sense of agency" after their participation in a research master course. A semi-structured interview was administrated to nine in-service science teachers, coming from three different African countries: Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Burkina Faso. All of them attended a European master course…

This case study reports on a student with special education needs in an inclusive seventh grade life science classroom using a framework of disability studies in education. Classroom data collected over 13 weeks consisted of qualitative (student and classroom observations, interviews, student work samples and video-taped classroom teaching and…

Museums often evaluate various aspects of their audiences' experiences, be it what they learn from a program or how they react to an exhibition. Each museum program or exhibition has its own set of goals, which can drive what an evaluator studies and how an evaluation evolves. When designing an evaluation, data collection methods are purposefully…

Raising awareness about sustainability is an urgent need and as such education for sustainability has gained relevancy for the last decades. It is acknowledged that science education can work as an important context for educating for sustainability. The goal of the present paper is to describe a role-playing activity about the construction of a…

In response to the need to develop leaders to guide the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the Carnegie Corporation of New York provided funding to WestEd to develop a framework that defines the leadership knowledge and actions needed to effectively implement the NGSS. The development of the framework entailed…

This paper reports on a case study of a project-focused introduction to big data science course. The pedagogy of the course leveraged boundary theory, where students were positioned to be at the boundary between a client's desire to understand their data and the academic class. The results of the case study demonstrate that using live clients…

Background: This exploratory study is part of a larger-scale research project aimed at building theoretical and practical knowledge of complex systems in students and teachers with the goal of improving high school biology learning through professional development and a classroom intervention. Purpose: We propose a model of adaptive expertise to…

Beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing have been investigated extensively in educational and developmental psychology research. Hofer's framework on personal epistemology is adopted in the present study for assessing Lebanese university students' epistemologies of science. Participants were 213 students in their first year of…

With recognition of the importance of scientific literacy for the nation and yet the increasing students' disinterest in science through school science curriculum, the Korea Science Foundation launched an innovative program called "Everyday Science Class (ESC)" in partnership with universities and local government offices in 2003. In…

We present an innovative course-based undergraduate research experience curriculum focused on the characterization of single point mutations in p53, a tumor suppressor gene that is mutated in more than 50% of human cancers. This course is required of all introductory biology students, so all biology majors engage in a research project as part of…