This study aimed to determine science teacher candidates' understanding of the wave concept under the headings of the essential characteristics of waves and their place and importance in daily life. The research was carried out with 53 science teacher candidates studying in the first grade in the education faculty of a state university in Turkey…

Background: Practical work in school science has been ineffective due to students not connecting hands-on to minds-on aspects. With the designation Thinking-Back-and-Forth (TBF)we present a framework with a taxonomy of TBF activities. Purpose: Aim was to gain insight how teachers stimulate and support their students in TBF. Detailed information…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Research on nontraditional laboratory (lab) activities in physics shows that students often expect to verify predetermined results, as takes place in traditional lab activities. This understanding of what is taking place, or…

Background: Science skills play a crucial role in fostering economic development and technological innovation, making the enhancement of science education a global priority. Despite the recognized importance of teacher practices in enhancing equitable and effective learning, much of the research on their impact on student outcomes has been…

Practical work must be assessed in a way that will promote the development of key skills necessary for destinations beyond the physics school laboratory. This paper reports on a study which sought to find out teachers' views and practices on the assessment of Advanced Level ('A' level) physics students' practical work skills. Individual interviews…

Physics teachers are often faced with the challenge of having to set up difficult experiments, or they have to consciously manipulate parameters in order to be able to demonstrate a phenomenon convincingly. Comprehensive laboratory courses are standard procedure in any study program for prospective physics teachers. However, many students, even…

Rapid developments in educational technology show its impacts on classes. One of the recent trends in science education is virtual laboratory environments. The goal of this study is to reveal the effects of inquiry-based hands-on and virtual laboratory environments on pre-service science teachers' inquiry skills. A quasi-experimental research…

A social semiotic lens is used to characterise aspects of representational competence for a discipline such as physics, to provide science teachers with a practical suggestion about how student learning might be organised to develop representational competence. We suggest that representational competence for some areas of science can be…

HOTS is one part of the skills that need to be developed in the 21st Century . This study aims to determine the characteristics of the Fundamental Physics Higher-order Thinking Skill (FundPhysHOTS) test for prospective physics teachers using Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis. This study uses a quantitative approach. 254 prospective physics…

Although laboratory work is considered a significant factor in helping students develop their science process skills and cultivate alternative knowledge construction, there are still gaps in the selection, integration, and implementation of the basic elements in physics laboratories. In this study, three modified guided discovery and conventional…

Introductory physics lab courses serve as the starting point for students to learn and experience experimental physics at the undergraduate level. They often focus on measurement uncertainty, an essential topic for practicing physicists and a foundation for more advanced lab learning. As such, measurement uncertainty has been a focus when studying…

This article discusses a study carried out to investigate scientific reasoning skills among 82 science pre-service teachers at the Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), one of the public universities in Malaysia. Undeniably, the development of general scientific abilities is critical to enable students of science, technology,…

Preparing pre-service science teachers (PSSTs) with the scientific research skills (SRSs) is an ultimate aim of PSSTs' programs. This study aimed to explore PSSTs' understanding level of SRHs (SRHUL). To this end, an action research (AR) was adopted using a pre-post-test design. In doing so, a multiple choice test which consists of 15 items was…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate pre-service teachers' epistemologies of scientific models and their model formation in a model-based inquiry environment. Theoretical underpinnings of this paper are the following: Pre-service teachers' epistemologies of models are structured as their beliefs, can be reshaped by instructional experiences,…

The purpose of this research was to explore students' problem-solving skills through inquiry-based learning with PhET simulation, focussed on direct current electricity matter. The research used a mixed method approach with an embedded experimental model with 34 prospective physics teacher at the State University of Jambi, Indonesia. The data was…