Science education objectives in Brazil have evolved over time. Initially, the focus was on creating scientifically literate citizens who could relate scientific concepts to their daily lives. In 2017, the São Paulo City Curriculum for Natural Sciences was introduced to teach students scientific literacy through inquiry-based teaching methods. This…

Over the past 20 years, significant effort has been devoted to advancing the modular approach to teaching chemistry laboratory courses. The development and implementation of two modules are presented here for teaching a second-semester physical chemistry laboratory course using the modular approach: an inquiry-based module concerning proteins and…

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL®) as a collaborative inquiry method has been widely used in teaching chemistry to high school and college students. This paper presents the impact of POGIL on 65 middle school students' understanding about nature of matter. It is a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design study in which…

We present an interactive discovery-based approach to studying the properties of real gases using simple, yet realistic, molecular dynamics software. Use of this approach opens up a variety of opportunities for students to interact with the behaviors and underlying theories of real gases. Students can visualize gas behavior under a variety of…

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) challenges science teachers to think beyond specific content standards when considering how to design and implement curriculum. This lesson, "Windmills by Design," is an insightful lesson in how science teachers can create and implement a cross-cutting lesson to teach the concepts…

A simplified activity examined gas density while employing cost-efficient syringes in place of traditional glass bulbs. The exercise measured the density of methane, with very good accuracy and precision, in both first-year high school and AP chemistry settings. The participating students were tasked with finding the density of a gas. The…

The first author re-entered the middle grades classroom to teach a new National Science Foundation (NSF) physical science curriculum that was designed to foster conceptual change through a scientific approach. The curriculum design met the need and call for reform in science education through its focus on inquiry, evidence-based reasoning, peer…

While some researchers have argued for science classrooms that embrace open-inquiry by engaging students in doing science as scientists do (cf. National Research Council [NRC] 1996; Driver et al. in "Sci Educ" 84:287-312, 2000; Windschitl et al. in "Sci Educ" 87(1):112-143, 2008), others have argued that open-inquiry is impractical, ineffective,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how WebQuests can be used in physics classes for teaching specific concepts. The study had three stages. The first stage was to develop a WebQuest on Newton's second law. The second stage involved developing a lesson plan to implement the WebQuest in class. In the final stage, the WebQuest was…

In this paper we report on the sustained research and development work at the AMSTEL Institute of the University of Amsterdam to improve mathematics and science education at primary and secondary school level, which has lead amongst other things to the development of the integrated computer working environment Coach 6. This environment consists of…

In recent years, the science teaching community and curriculum developers have emphasised the importance of teaching inquiry and teaching science as inquiry. One way of developing learners' skills for planning and carrying out scientific research is by allowing them to perform independent research, guided by a teacher. It was recently discovered…