The greenhouse effect is a complex scientific phenomenon that plays a crucial role in understanding climate change. Grasping students' understanding of this phenomenon on the content-specific level but also how students' conceptions are organized is vital for effective climate change education. This study addresses both levels and delves into the…

This case study examines students' perception, motivation, and learning gain of a teaching unit featuring wireless sensors as tools to collect scientific data in the classroom. Students analyze data using the corresponding cellphone app, communicate findings to the class, and learn about a changing environment. Wireless sensors are produced for…

Since the viscous behaviour of liquids is evident in many everyday situations, it is plausible to assume that students have (pre-)conceptions about the physics behind these phenomena. As yet, no reliable studies exist on this topic. Therefore, the present study aims to address this research gap by exploring secondary school students' conceptions…

This paper reports on findings from an analysis of trait-formation tasks in the genetic sections of high school biology textbooks. Drawing on studies exploring a range of problems in students' explanations of trait formation, we investigated trait-formation tasks and analysed their potential for knowledge integration and multi-level mechanistic…

Plant blindness has been widely examined in plant education research. However, practical attempts to counteract the common disregard of plants are rare, especially in standard school contexts. We developed and evaluated a teaching concept based upon an 'Educational Seed Mix' comprising eight annual species from six different plant families. With…

Dealing with student errors is a central feature of instructional quality. Teachers' reactions to a student's error and classmates' errors can be crucial to the success of a lesson. A teacher should respond appropriately in terms of motivational and learning-related issues so that the error can become a learning opportunity for students.…

Teacher education needs to combine training in content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). One important part of PCK in science education is knowledge about school science practical work to promote learning by scientific inquiry and about the nature of science. In Germany, practical seminars and lab sessions…

Inquiry-based teaching is considered as contributing to content-related, procedural, and epistemic learning goals of science education. In this study, a quasi-experimental research design was utilized to investigate to what extent embedding inquiry activities in an explicit and an implicit instructional approach fosters students' ability to engage…

Researchers have often noted the potential of the performing arts to support STEM education -- especially in heterogeneous classrooms. This article reports on the implementation of a science theatre project in a secondary school class located in a disadvantaged area of Hamburg (Germany). In the accompanying research study, effects on students'…

Background: The growing population of students that are learning science through a Content and Language Integrated Learning approach (CLIL) has led to concerns about these students' ability to fully participate in a rich classroom discourse to develop content knowledge. A lack of information about science development through classroom discourse in…

No consensus has been reached so far concerning the key topics on quantum physics suitable for secondary school teaching, despite comprehensive research. We identified the the variety of associations with quantum physics among professionals as a potential cause. From an explorative mind map study with N = 29 physics researchers, we derive six…

There has been a growing awareness that graphing is an essential part of the science curriculum. While much research has focused on student conceptions and abilities regarding graphical representations, only few studies have investigated what teachers think about them and how they use graphs in science class. The purpose of this study is to…

In this contribution, I reflect on how multilingual pedagogies can be added to STEM and S.T.E.M. practices, in what could be called a "double-crossing": on the one hand, crossing linguistic boundaries and, on the other, crossing specific subject knowledge. Based on a content analysis of teachers' interviews referring to their pedagogical…

Science explanation videos, especially online ones, have become popular. They cover nearly all topics from school science curricula. Teachers use them in a flipped classroom. Students watch them also in their leisure time. However, there is a lack of research on guidelines that effective science explanation videos should follow. The research on…

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between high school students' understanding of carbon compounds, including their transformations, and their ability to trace matter in the carbon cycle. The rationale of this study is based on the hypothesis that the students' lack of knowledge about carbon compounds and their…