Teacher professional development (PD) is essential to continuously improve teaching skills, to adapt to diverse student needs, and to promote equity and inclusion. Only a few studies to date have synthesized how PD programs improve teachers' content knowledge and instructional quality, as well as students' academic performance. In this…

Science educators incorporate collaborative engagement in model-based argumentation to meet curricular goals and build students' capacity for scientific epistemic and social practices. During collaboration, groups encounter various challenges (e.g., lack of task understanding) and engage in social regulation to overcome them. However, little is…

Some introductory physics courses begin where student interest is thought to be highest--in waves, sound, and light--before speed, velocity, and acceleration. For students with math difficulties, this order makes sense. But most physics courses, including the author's own, begin with a study of motion. Why? Mostly due to tradition, he admits. When…

Science instruction reform efforts call for increased opportunities for students to engage with science content and practices. School-based citizen science (CS), when implemented well, addresses this call and provides a meaningful context for student learning. Despite CS projects' increasing role in formal science instruction, research on the…

Sarah Bearchell is a science presenter and writer working with children and families. She aims to engage her audiences through careful tailoring of activities. She works in mainstream primaries and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) schools, with visits to science festivals becoming more frequent. Many of the schools she visits and…

Inquiry pedagogies provide opportunities to meet learning outcomes linked to developing scientific literacy. Within a European project intended at promoting Inquiry Based Learning (IBL), this paper presents quantitative and qualitative data about teachers' views of IBL and its enactment in England and Spain. Results show that teachers in both…

School-Based Management (SBM) has served as a key reform program, concretizing decentralization in the basic education sector in different parts of the world, including the Philippines. The study used qualitative research methods, including key informant interviews and focus groups of faculty and administrators, to explore the challenges of SBM in…

Creating and interpreting visual displays of data is an important component of quantitative and scientific literacy. We examined a figure-analysis activity called "Figure of the Day" (FotD) and its impact on undergraduate biology students' figure creation skills. The treatment FotD activity required that students interpret a figure with…

This study presents a descriptive analysis of 71 videotaped lessons taught by 34 highly regarded secondary English language arts, history, and science teachers, collected to inform an intervention focused on evidence-based argumentation from multiple text sources. Studying the practices of highly regarded teachers is valuable for identifying…

The Report of 2018 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (NSSME+) details the results of a survey of 7,600 science, mathematics, and computer science teachers in schools across the United States. Areas addressed include: teacher backgrounds and beliefs; science, mathematics, and computer science professional development; science,…

This study explored Saudi elementary school science teachers' beliefs about the process of teaching and learning science. This involved the exploration of their views about the new Saudi science curriculum, which emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving. Comprehensive interviews were held in 8 schools with 4 male and 6 female--2 of whom…

The major purpose of this study was to determine the questioning patterns of teachers in science classes. The design employed for the study was a case study. To guide this study, five research questions were asked and answered. The samples of the study consisted of 20 senior secondary schools and 60 science teachers. The instruments used for data…

This report outlines a 2-year investigation into how secondary science teachers used professional development (PD) to build scientific classroom discourse communities (SCDCs). Observation data, teacher, student, and school demographic information were used to build a hierarchical linear model. The length of time that teachers received PD was the…

The intention of this study was to determine how science instructors in the university laboratories spend time on instruction. The study, was guided by three research questions and two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study employed a non-participant observation case study design. 48 instructors teaching lower and higher levels…

This paper examines the barriers to technology integration for Manitoban K-12 inservice science educators (n = 430) based on a 10-item online survey; results are analyzed according to teaching stream using the Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. Quantitative descriptive statistics indicated that the leading barriers…