This study examines how multilingual students (11-12 years) negotiate meaning in writing, drawing, and dialogues in science. Students use emotions, reflections, and experiences from areas other than school when given the opportunity to solve an open-ended task in science. Data consists of texts from three multilingual students and excerpts from…

'A lack of prior knowledge in the other discipline' is often given by geoscience instructors to explain why students struggle to apply knowledge from other disciplines to the Earth. We examine this assumption by considering the disciplinary crossing of buoyancy (physics) to isostasy (geoscience). We investigate the teachers' perspective through…

Readers' prior knowledge is an important factor for comprehending scientific texts. The study used an eye tracker to examine the reading processes of the undergraduates with high (HPK) and low prior knowledge (LPK) while reading a long printed scientific article. The results of measuring the eye movements offered some interesting findings. First,…

The aim of the present study is to explore on the alternative conceptions of impetus theory and projectile motion of students with high functioning autism spectrum disorders and compare them with those of typical development. For this purpose, an experimental investigation was conducted with 19 students with high-functioning autism (age range:…

Presenting novel numbers about climate change to people after they estimate those numbers can shift their attitudes and scientific conceptions. Prior research suggests that such science learning can be supported by encouraging learners to make use of given benchmark information, however there are several other numerical estimation skills that may…

This longitudinal case study explores how students' epistemic uncertainty in argumentation can be adapted as a resource to develop knowledge in a fifth-grade classroom. Major data sources include 12 videotaped whole-class discussions focused on group presentation of arguments to obtain peers' critiques across two course units, the ecosystem and…

Understanding how teaching affects students' attitudes and beliefs is notoriously difficult, specifically in a quickly evolving and societally relevant field such as genetics. The aim of this survey study is to capitalize our previous research and examine how teaching relates to Finnish secondary school students' liking of, self-concept in and…

Understanding plate tectonics is pivotal to development of an integrated understanding of Geoscience topics. However, geology is frequently introduced to students in lower secondary school by describing separate processes, such as sedimentary rock formation, rather than investigating the overall driving forces for change. This study investigated…

While research on embodied learning sheds light on the body's role during science learning, there is a lack of understanding of how the body is drawn upon in subsequent learning interactions. We seek to understand how the body supports cognition and learning during and after embodiment. We elaborate upon the liminal blends framework (Enyedy, N.,…

It is important to question the generalizability of the knowledge about the nature of science (NOS), and thus know whether the knowledge about NOS can be transferred to various contexts. As such, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether students were able to transfer their acquired NOS understandings into contexts that vary in their…

Informal science learning has been proven to have effects on a variety of science learning outcomes. This study explored the direct and indirect influence of both prior and current informal science learning on science performance by using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015. More than ten kinds of informal science…

Designing and conducting sound and informative experiments is an important aspect of inquiry learning. Students, however, often design experiments that do not allow them to reach conclusions. Considering the difficulties students experience with the process of designing experiments, additional guidance in the form of an Experiment Design Tool…

The aim of the present study was to examine science and non-science education secondary school teachers' skill to evaluate arguments, and how this skill relates to their skill to construct arguments and to their perceptions about their ability to teach argumentation skills effectively. The study also examined whether teachers' argument skills and…

This research aimed to investigate the nature of cognitive processes when college students reason about evidence on global climate change (GCC). Twenty-six undergraduate students participated in this qualitative study, where they were interviewed to evaluate competing arguments on key issues related to GCC and discuss their own perspectives.…

Much of the literature on science teaching suggests that elementary teachers lack relevant prior experiences with science. This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science--both in and out of schools--throughout their lives. Our work uses…