Several predominant themes have emerged during the COVID-19 global pandemic that intersect with the nature and process of science. This paper identifies three such themes and briefly explores how they can be used as case studies and narrative cornerstones in teaching and learning. The themes include: (1) the understanding that science is…

This study considers the short list of Nature of Science (NOS) features frequently published and widely known in the science education discourse. It is argued that these features were oversimplified and a refinement of the claims may enrich or sometimes reverse them. The analysis shows the need to address the range of variation in each particular…

This article synthesizes Paul Feyerabend's controversial contributions to 20th-century philosophy of science through the synthesis of his works and the secondary literature, with specific foci on current trends in educational foundations and the potentials and pitfalls for applying Feyerabendian logics to our work. First, I situate his strains of…

P-n junctions form the basic building blocks for any semiconductor device. Therefore, the complete understanding of the junction characteristics is very important. Although being a widely discussed topic in electronics, there are still some gaps such as finding the value and significance of the junction ideality factor, that needs to be addressed.…

The purpose of this commentary on Hodson and Wong's (2017, this issue) article is to clarify the merits of the expanded family resemblance approach (FRA) to science education, briefly alluded to in their article, and to discuss the implications of this approach relative to the question of demarcation they raise. In clarifying the merits of the…

The forgotten history of de Broglie waves as themselves artifacts of a Lorentz transform, not physical lengths and frequencies to be transformed, causes confusion for students and others. In this paper the de Broglie wavelength is derived and dependence of de Broglie frequency on velocity explained in terms of Einstein synchronized reference frame…

In this article, I explore the tension between the current political context in which science needs defending against anti-intellectualism and outright assaults on evidence as a means of decision-making on the one hand and the overzealous scientism that can result from backlash against a perceived lack of rigor in various forms of inquiry. To do…

There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science education. However, we still do not know many specific details regarding how students and teachers learn particular aspects of NOS and what are the most important feature traits of…

In this paper the author discusses how 21st century education researchers could and in his opinion, should approach the scientific description of the various entities that they might encounter. The word "entities" in pedagogical context refers to phenomena and structures such as "an education system", "education",…

This paper discusses the relationships between the terms "hypothesis," "prediction," "theory," and "law." In so doing, it addresses some misconceptions found in the literature and suggests that the only interpretation of the term "hypothesis" needed is that of a causal hypothesis. A more valid…

There is a gap between the facts learned in a science course and the higher-cognitive skills of analysis and evaluation necessary for students to secure scientific knowledge and scientific habits of mind. Teaching science is not just about how we do science (i.e., focusing on just "accumulating undigested facts and scientific definitions and…

A vehicle starts from rest at constant acceleration, then cruises at constant speed for a time. Next, it decelerates at a constant rate.… This and similar statements are common in elementary physics courses. Students are asked to graph the motion of the vehicle or find the velocity, acceleration, and distance traveled by the vehicle from a given…

Tacit knowledge, that is knowledge not expressible in words, may play a role in learning science, yet it is difficult to study directly. Intuition and insight, two processes that link the tacit and the explicit, are proposed as a route to investigating tacit knowledge. Intuitions are defined as tacit hunches or feelings that influence thought with…

Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, had wide and varied interests. They ranged from exploration and travel writing to fingerprinting and the weather. After reading Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," Galton reached the conclusion that it should be possible to improve the human stock through selective breeding, as was the…

Inaccurate measurements occur regularly in data acquisition as a result of improper sampling times. An understanding of proper sampling times when collecting data with an analogue-to-digital converter or video camera is crucial in order to avoid anomalies. A proper choice of sampling times should be based on the Nyquist sampling theorem. If the…