This study researches relationships between 12th-grade students' epistemological beliefs towards science and their conceptual understanding of evolution by natural selection. Forty-two 12th-grade students in a suburban high school in Cyprus, who participated in a biology course, completed measures of their: (1) epistemological beliefs towards…

A new didactical approach named "Learning by Being" (LBB) is proposed and its correlation with current educational paradigms in science teaching is analysed. The key idea in LBB is the assumption by the students of cognitive goals, and three components are mandatory in LBB: a) student's personal learning effort, b) student-teacher mutual…

General chemistry students need to understand the concept of intermolecular forces and use them to predict the properties of materials. To do this, they must create symbolic representations of molecules, relate these to physical observations, and explain them using submicroscopic theoretical constructs. When these concepts are taught separately,…

We investigated the correlation between argumentation and critical thinking skills simultaneously on students' understanding of basic biology concepts in classes taught by Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) and conventional learning models. This study involved 180 pre-service science teachers (18-19 years old) who undertook the basic biology course in…

This study aimed to determine the effects of the argument-driven inquiry learning method on students' conceptual learning in science education. The study is conducted with embedded mixed-methods research design from mixed research methods. The study was conducted with 64 7th-grade students consisting of 31 students in the experimental group and 33…

In the United States, reform movements have been a part of the science education community for decades. Inquiry-based instruction has a long history in reform documents and while it is not explicitly used in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the underlying tenants of this instructional strategy are still evident. Thus, inquiry-based…

Big Brother, newspeak, doublethink, vapourised people and thought police became worldwide famous expressions. 1984 novel portrays a nightmare society controlled by information manipulation and by suppression of both history and science. This study aimed to investigate the impact of using the 1984 dystopian novel associated with socio-scientific…

This study investigated science classroom discourse in terms of the types of teacher discursive moves (TDMs) and the relationships between the types of TDMs and student-led cognitive contributions in different science concepts by considering the classroom context. An experienced seventh-grade science teacher and her 19 students were engaged in…

Many studies investigating inquiry learning in science domains have appeared over the years. Throughout this period, inquiry learning has been regularly criticized by scholars who favor direct instruction over inquiry learning. In this vein, Zhang, Kirschner, Cobern, and Sweller (2022) recently asserted that direct instruction is overall superior…

The purpose of the study was to examine undergraduate students' conceptions of inquiry and the relationship of inquiry conceptions to epistemic beliefs. Data were obtained from 107 university students (80 female, 27 male) using an open-ended questionnaire to examine their conceptions of inquiry and Schommer's Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire…

In this research, after extracting the pre-inquiries (student-level question) for which students had curiosity in the elementary science and analyzing their correlation with the elementary science curriculum, highly correlated inquiries (meaningful pre-inquiries) were selected and applied in class. After organizing an experiment group and a…

Despite the importance of understanding how the human reproductive system works, adolescents worldwide exhibit weak conceptual understanding, which leads to serious risks, such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Studies focusing on the development and evaluation of inquiry-based learning interventions, promoting the…

The purposes of this study were to (a) develop and validate instruments to assess elementary students' scientific creativity and science inquiry, (b) investigate the relationship between the two competencies, and (c) compare the two competencies among different grade level students. The scientific creativity test was composed of 7 open-ended items…

Advances in science education research have the potential to improve the way students learn to perform scientific interpretations and understand science concepts. We developed active, collaborative activities to teach skills in manipulating flow cytometry data using FlowJo software. Undergraduate students were given compensated clinical flow…

Systematic studies on effectiveness of in-service teacher professional development (PD) are important for science education research and practice. Previous studies mostly focus on one certain aspect of the entire program, for example, effectiveness of PD on improvement of teachers' knowledge or students' learning outcomes. This study, however,…