In this article, we tackle the phenomenon of what seems to be a misunderstanding between science education theory and philosophy of science--one which does not seem to have received any attention in the literature. While there seems to be a consensus within the realm of science education on limiting or altogether denying the explanatory role of…

It has been shown that many people do not understand how scientific knowledge is built and accepted, even after scientific education. One way to deal with this problem is through teaching about the Nature of Science (NOS). NOS can be understood as a pedagogical construct aiming to foster the understanding of the main characteristics of scientific…

Energy conversion devices such as fuel cells, metal-air batteries, and electrolyzers have been envisaged as possible solutions for cutting down the continuous accumulation of greenhouse gases resulting from the combustion of fossil fuel. The bottleneck reaction for these devices is the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) occurring at the cathode. The…

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to investigate science teachers' views about the nature of science (NOS); and second, to examine science teachers' views about their NOS integration into instruction. Reconceptualized family resemblance approach to nature of science (RFN) is used as a theoretical and analytical framework. The…

The French natural philosopher Henri Victor Regnault (1810-1878) was one of many researchers who contributed to the development of the thermometer in the 19th century. In this paper, we use an example from Regnault's work to explore how the history of thermometry can provide a context for teaching upper-secondary chemistry students about the…

The purpose of this publication is to present a novel approach to the demonstration of the Dzhanibekov effect. The main idea of our version is to use a lightweight spinning top of a spherical external form but distinct principal moments of inertia floating in the upward flow of air. As a result, the Dzhanibekov effect can be easily demonstrated…

Transcription is the critical first step in expressing a gene, during which an RNA polymerase (RNAP) synthesizes an RNA copy of one strand of the DNA that encodes a gene. Here we describe a laboratory experiment that uses a single assay to probe two important steps in transcription: (1) RNAP binding to DNA, and (2) the transcriptional activity of…

Nature of science (NOS) is considered an important component of scientific literacy. Supporting students to develop a comprehensive NOS understanding is one of the most commonly described objectives within science education. Moreover, history of science can arguably provide a good context for NOS teaching and learning; it has been suggested that…

The central argument of this article is that abduction as a "mode of inference" is a key element in the nature of scientists' science and should consequently be introduced in school science. Abduction generally understood as generation and selection of hypotheses permits to articulate the classical scientific contexts of discovery and…

Historically, classical thermodynamics was developed during attempts to improve the efficiency of steam engines. Those investigations led to the well-known zeroth, first, and second laws of thermodynamics. Although these laws are presented independently, linkages between the zeroth and second laws have been pointed out in the physics teaching…

Researchers of science education, historians, and philosophers of science agree that the teaching of nature of science (NOS) is important to be integrated into K-12 classes. Our previous research showed that NOS is not embedded into science teaching in Greece. To study the possibility of its integration, a PD-program for in-service science…

In this article we analyze the classic Hodgkin and Keynes 1955 paper describing investigations of the independence principle, with the expectation that there is much students and educators can learn from such exercises, most notably how the authors applied their diverse skill set to tackling the numerous obstacles that the study presented. The…

Despite decades of research, NOS is still rarely explicitly and accurately taught in K-12 schools (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2023). Teachers often address NOS ineffectively as a result of inadequate knowledge of NOS and science content (Wahbeh & Abd-El-Khalick, 2014) as well as NOS pedagogy (Hanuscin et al., 2011). A variety of contextual…

Graduates in biology or genetics learn Mendel's laws and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium as students, and they know, use, and sometimes teach these concepts. However, it is unusual to learn about stochastic processes during the graduate studies of these topics, although the applications of Markov chains in the fields of genetics or biology are…

This article reports on the effect of textbook analysis as a tool of teacher professional development on nature of science (NOS) understanding of 10 science teachers in South Africa. The teacher professional development program (TPDP) was based on an explicit reflective methodology of textbook analysis and conducted online due to the Covid-induced…