The aim of this cross-sectional study was to compare acceleration outputs of the parkour-style "tic tac" action with those of the drop jump and the lay-up shot in youth basketball players. A total of 25 participants (17 boys, 13.80 ± 1.30 years of age; and eight girls, 15.00 ± 0.80 years of age) completed three trials of each action…

The latest AI language modules can produce original, high quality full short-form (300-word) Physics essays within seconds. These technologies such as ChatGPT and davinci-003 are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. In this work, we present evidence of AI generated short-form essays achieving First-Class grades on an essay…

Some descriptions of learning represent the process as the development of organisations of elements. Various organisations have been proposed, for example, schemata and conceptual structures. Such representations assume that mental entities, such as concepts, are sufficiently stable and differentiated to be treated as units. We discuss these…

Background: Recognizing the declining interest of school students in Physics, this study sought to explore the situation in England, Hong Kong and Singapore. Purpose: To ascertain students' views about various aspects of physics. Sample: A total of 2719 students participated in this study. Design and methods: A survey approach was used to…

Representing conceptual change is challenging. Claims that conceptual change has occurred are sometimes based on data from a small number of probes given over a relatively long interval. Data collected in this way do not allow short-lived variability to be distinguished from more stable conceptual change and can lead to mistaken conclusions about…

Practical work is widely seen as an integral part of school science. Research and teacher guidance have tended to consider practical work in science, rather than in individual science subjects or topics. This study used a questionnaire of selected- and open-response items to probe the views and reasoning of a sample of 43 pre-service teachers in…

GCSE examinations (taken by students aged 16 years in England) are not intended to be speeded (i.e. to be partly a test of how quickly students can answer questions). However, there has been little research exploring this. The aim of this research was to explore the speededness of past GCSE written examinations, using only the data from scored…

Many technological applications (apps) purport to help children learn academic material. Building on research in developmental and educational psychology, we developed and tested an app to teach biological and physical science content to preschool children. There were 21 children in the control condition (M[subscript age] = 50.30 months, SD =…

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to better understand the transition from secondary school to higher education regarding students' assessment and written-exam experiences. We used mixed methods to investigate students' experiences of first-year university physics exams and cancelled secondary school exams, regarding their motivational…

As an important tool for STEM education, online labs have gained significant research attention. However, our understanding of online labs is limited by the inattention to the factors that contribute to the acceptance of online labs. This study adopts the UTAUT model to investigate the salient determinants of use of online labs. We test the…

The Richard Taylor Primary School in Harrogate, North Yorkshire is committed to a focus on a whole-school vision to teach every child the wisdom, knowledge and skills to be a creative life-long learner, enabling them to shape their future. In so doing, they pride themselves on widening children's science capital and experience. Their recent…

Item banking involves tests being constructed by selecting from a bank of pre-written questions. There are various examples of multiple-choice tests where item banking is used, but few examples involving other question types. This research explored the use of banking with structured questions. Three question writers were asked to construct…

A simple, cheap, and easy to make ionisation chamber to investigate the decay of Radon-220. Requires no expensive meters, experiment is carried out using thoriated gas mantles to produce the Radon-220, and the chambers are used with low cost digital multimeters. An opportunity for 16-18 students to carry out a hands-on experiment with an ionising…

A workshop using dance to introduce particle physics concepts to young children is presented. The workshop is realised in the dance studio, the children assume complete ownership of the activity and dance becomes the means to express ideas. The embodiement of the physics concepts facilitates knowledge assimilation, while empowering the students…

Fusion energy research is 'mission oriented' big-science. It has both rapid progress and a reputation for being forever distant that excites many with a curiosity for science. However, it is difficult to give time to in lesson plans given both its lack of associated learning objectives and complexity. Outreach at the Fusion Centre for Doctoral…