Disagreement exists about how to best spark young children's motivation to learn natural science. Both curiosity and wonder are considered important motivational factors for learning during early childhood (0-8 years). This systematic literature review explores research about scientific curiosity and wonder in early childhood education and care…

Natural History has been part of our curriculum since 1858. Not as a single, continuous subject but embedded in many different subjects and qualifications. As OCR prepares to launch a GCSE in Natural History, this article draws on the historical resources of OCR and its predecessor the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate to show…

In this article, the author describes how nature can link maths and science to develop skills in both subjects. Experiencing maths, seeing maths, touching maths, playing with maths is a great start, giving children the opportunity to learn maths in the way that science is often experienced. This article does not aim to provide an answer for fully…

The final year dissertation is an important part of an undergraduate degree which delivers a wide range of subject-specific and transferable skills. It plays a significant part in students' learning development and overall experience of university. Finding the right project is emotionally important to students and may underpin their subsequent…

Academic networks have been found to play a significant role in career trajectory via employment opportunities, publishing openings, or being alerted to prospects not widely advertised. These results are reflective of Bourdieu's notion that social capital can see an individual's position within a field (in this article the field of academia)…

The UK Government has considerably increased its targets for recruiting chemistry and physics teachers, with a view to increasing the number of students taking separate sciences and to boost science uptake post-16. This article charts the establishment of the science disciplines, rejecting a hierarchy of subjects and the simple splitting of…

The aim of my critical literature review is to identify studies where students are engaged as partners in teaching in higher education and to analyze how tutors and tutees benefit from peer teaching. Thirty studies were included for review. Thirteen countries are represented and two thirds of the studies conducted in the United States of America…

People diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) deserve the same respect as any other person and should be free to benefit from scientific research that can help them achieve skills which enable them to reach their full potential. Over the past 40 years Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) has utilised inductive, natural science methods to…

This article has two main aims: to analyse relevant literature on the doctoral degree, and to assess whether recent funding changes in the UK have changed the nature of the PhD in the social sciences in a research-intensive and prestigious UK university. Data were collected at BlueSkies University where interviews with social sciences PhD…

Purpose: Competition for resources appears to be increasing at a time of political, security (including energy, food and climate) and economic change; leading to potential collapse. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine the impact of policies exercised at the macro level on methods and processes applied at the micro level through, for…

Person detection is an important prerequisite of social interaction, but is not well understood. Following suggestions that people in the visual field can capture a viewer's attention, this study examines the role of the face and the body for person detection in natural scenes. We observed that viewers tend first to look at the center of a scene,…

We have investigated how chemistry textbooks use models of redox reactions in different subject areas, how they change models between and within the topics, and how they deal with specific learning difficulties identified in the literature. The textbooks examined were published for use in the natural science programme in Swedish upper secondary…

Forensic science education has evolved as an interdisciplinary science that includes medicine, chemistry, biology, and criminal justice. Therefore, multiple paths can lead to a career in forensic science. A formal education usually requires the student to attend a college or university to obtain a bachelor's or master's degree. In many cases,…

The aim of this article is to reflect on and explore questions of truth and objectivity in the sociology of educational knowledge. It begins by reviewing the problems raised by the social constructivist approaches to knowledge associated with the "new sociology of education" of the I970s. It suggests that they have significant parallels…

Outlines the history of the relationships for government support for basic and applied science in Britain and describes likely future developments. Considers the possibilities for maintenance of scientists' independence. (AL)