While spatial reasoning skills have been found to predict mathematical achievement, little is known about how primary students' conceptual understanding of three-dimensional objects develops. This paper reports insights into a Year 4 student's spatial reasoning when constructing and describing the properties of rectangular prisms, using Froebel's…

The study presented here is an action research that was conducted in a science and technology teaching course in a pre-service elementary teaching program at a private university in Turkey aiming at improving the pre-service elementary teachers' understanding of science and teaching science. In order to achieve this aim, an innovative approach,…

Indigenous knowledge is at risk of being lost in many parts of the world. It is important to find ways to preserve it for both cultural and practical reasons, since it is often well-suited to addressing local needs using available resources. If indigenous knowledge can be incorporated into school science curricula, it can also provide familiar…

Science educators demonstrated that students' framings -- their expectations of what is going on -- influence how they participate, and what science knowledge they reveal, in clinical interviews. This paper complements research that explores how interviewers are likely to affect student framings, by exploring how subtler interactions can lead…

One well-known learning obstacle is that students rarely use the concepts in the way that scientists use them. Rather, students mix up closely related concepts and are inclined towards matter-based conceptualisations. Furthermore, some researchers have argued that certain difficulties are rooted in the student's limited repertoire of causal…

There is a plethora of concept inventories available for faculty to use, but it is not always clear exactly why you would use these tests, or how you should administer them and interpret the results. These research-based tests about physics and astronomy concepts are valuable because they allow for standardized comparisons among institutions,…

Children's ideas concerning natural phenomena often differ from those of scientists, and these ideas are termed as alternative conceptions. The prevalence of alternative conceptions is highest among young children who possess less experience with the natural world as compared with adults. Children's ideas about micro-organisms are of special…

Agency is a construct facilitating our examination of when and how young people extend their own learning across contexts. However, little is known about the role played by adolescent learners' sense of agency. This paper reports two cases of students' agentively employing and developing science literacy practices--one in Singapore and the other…

A review of research into teaching and learning in political science education concludes that this literature emphasizes student outcomes and "show and tell" descriptions of pedagogical interventions (Craig 2014). The present study instead aims to open the "black box" of conceptual learning in political science, illustrating…

This paper is inspired by the widely accepted need to develop critical thinking in physics students and teachers. More specifically, it is focused on the development of a critical attitude in prospective physics teachers. The question of a possible interplay between the development of conceptual comprehension and that of a critical attitude…

Research has suggested that teaching and learning in molecular and cellular biology (MCB) is difficult. We used a new lens to understand undergraduate reasoning about molecular mechanisms: the knowledge-integration approach to conceptual change. Knowledge integration is the dynamic process by which learners acquire new ideas, develop connections…

Enzyme-substrate interactions are a fundamental concept of biochemistry that is built upon throughout multiple biochemistry courses. Central to understanding enzyme-substrate interactions is specific knowledge of exactly how an enzyme and substrate interact. Within this narrower topic, students must understand the various binding sites on an…

Single photon experiments involving a Mach-Zehnder interferometer can illustrate the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, e.g., the wave-particle duality of a single photon, single photon interference, and the probabilistic nature of quantum measurement involving single photons. These experiments explicitly make the connection between the…

While many university students take science courses in multiple disciplines, little is known about how they perceive common concepts from different disciplinary perspectives. Structure-property and structure-function relationships have long been considered important explanatory concepts in the disciplines of chemistry and biology, respectively.…

Zero-order systems provide an interesting opportunity for students to think about the underlying mechanism behind the physical phenomena being modeled. The work reported here is part of a larger study that seeks to characterize how students integrate chemistry and mathematics in the context of chemical kinetics. Thirty-six general chemistry…