Today's school students are faced with complex and harmful global challenges that they will need to address. The ability to think critically and creatively, to work in interdisciplinary teams and to understand the importance of a healthy planet for all life will be key to success. Education, including school education, has a major role in helping…

Today's school students are inheriting complex and harmful global challenges that are potentially irreversible and which they will need to address. The ability to think critically and creatively, to work in interdisciplinary teams and to understand the importance of a healthy planet for all life will be needed for success. Education has a major…

In "Growing and Sustaining Student-Centered Science Classrooms," David Stroupe promotes powerful conversation and action around knowledge-building practices in science education. The book takes readers into inspiring classroom communities in which all students are invited and encouraged to engage in the work of science. An illuminating…

The introduction of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT has raised many challenging questions about the nature of teaching, learning, and assessment in every subject area, including science. Unlike other disciplines, natural science is unique because the ontological and epistemological understanding of nature is…

Despite being one of the largest carbon emitters in the world, the United States has little direct emphasis on climate change in its schools. Even where there is desire to teach climate change, the politicization of climate change sees school leaders steering teachers away from the topic. This piece examines what we know about climate change…

It is 157 years since Mendel presented his results on hybridisation in peas to the Brünn Society for Natural Science. The discipline of genetics has dramatically changed since then, with technological advancements revealing multifactorial causation and trait variability. Whilst none of this complexity featured in the discovery of classical…

We have developed a curriculum for the organic chemistry laboratory in which students draw on authentic usage of spectroscopy, spectrometry, and computational chemistry to explain chemical phenomena. This curriculum, which has been continuously refined over a decade, has been explored by many thousands of students and is scalable to small and…

The adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) requires many teachers to drastically change their classroom instruction. Curricular materials offer a tool to support this transition, but there are questions about the degree to which available curricula truly reflect the shifts required by the NGSS. This study proposes a framework of…

The article "Hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses in science education …", by Flavia Rezende and Fernanda Ostermann (2019), presents an interesting critical analysis of the antagonisms between the meaning of "teaching science" and of "science education." The authors took a critical look at the construction of…

This article explores how the sorting and separating of pupils into entangled categories of social/cultural disadvantage and disability in the 1960s through the 1980s created populations of concern. Even though the United States and Germany are typically contrasted in their approaches to inclusive education, a new scientisation of the…

In this reviewing paper, a couple of issues concerning school science education in Macau are discussed, including science teacher education, science curriculum reform, and opportunities and challenges for science teachers. Especially, more space is devoted to the issue of science teacher development in the social context of Macau. This paper will…

The heterogendered cultural discourse that privileges heterosexuality and normalizes sexual and gender binaries damages the science knowledge and opportunities to engage in science learning that children experience in elementary school science. This article analyzes a typical science lesson on crayfish to show how the heterogendered obsession with…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] Fifteen years ago, following recommendations from research on science education for prospective teachers and for students more broadly, "Physics and Everyday Thinking" introduced activities within an inquiry-based undergraduate physics course…

This article considers the future of STEM education in Singapore, with implications for comparable schooling systems. The Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) interventions since 1997 brought changes to science education ostensibly for economic competitiveness, the results of which can only become visible in international comparisons in this…

Integrated river science provides decision-making life-skills for individuals and communities facing environmental change; it is a variant of critical physical geography through its socio-political dimensions. As an example, the frequency and magnitude of river flooding are amplified by climate change: society needs to understand how to cope…