As a means of achieving scientific literacy goals in society, the last two decades have witnessed international science curriculum redevelopment that increasingly advocates a "new look" inquiry-based approach to learning. This paper reports on the nature of the student-experienced curriculum where secondary school students are learning…

In this study we investigate how 5-year-old children in Brazil and their teachers collectively design science curriculum. More specifically, we develop an agency|structure dialectic as a framework to describe this collective praxis in which science curriculum may emerge as the result of children-teacher transactions rather than as a result of…

The authors created an interactive reflective log (IRL) to provide teachers with an opportunity to use a journal approach to record, evaluate, and communicate student understanding of science concepts. Unlike a traditional journal, the IRL incorporates prompts to encourage students to discuss their understanding of science content and science…

Science education depends on literacy. But adding reading to a curriculum that is already packed with content, experiments, and activities can be tough. So how can a teacher accomplish this, while ensuring that students have multiple opportunities for valuable inquiry learning? This Idea Bank provides three strategies for integrating reading into…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Turkish primary students' scientific process skills under the theoretical framework of cognitive domain. The sample set consisted of 306 sixth and seventh grade students from public, private, and bussed schools. The Turkish Integrated Process Skill Test was used to measure scientific process skills, and…

This study evaluated the effect of a pilot Pre-AP® Science Vertical Team Summer Institute on teacher practices and perceptions of the program. The overarching goals of the Vertical Teams Institute were focused on the tools needed to build or strengthen an AP® Vertical Team and to align science curriculum across grade levels. The evaluation also…

This study investigated the knowledge and skills that biology students may need to help them understand statistics/mathematics as it applies to genetics. The data are based on analyses of current representative genetics texts, practicing genetics professors' perspectives, and more directly, students' perceptions of, and performance in, doing…

Children have formal science instruction from kindergarten in Australia and from Year 3 in China. The purpose of this research was to explore the impact that different approaches to primary science curricula in China and Australia have on children's conceptual understanding of science. Participants were Year 3 children from three schools of high,…

This article describes the experiences of seventh-grade students living in high poverty areas of New York City who participated in the "Choice, Control and Change" (C3) science curriculum. Data were collected from eight case study students in the form of individual interviews, classroom observations, and student artifacts. Analysis of…

The introduction of outcomes-based education in South Africa placed many challenges on the transformation of science classrooms. The 2009 National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) Report concluded that South African rural and township schools are largely dysfunctional. This article examined some of the reasons for the…

In order to be effective competitors in the marketplace, students must be able to think critically, communicate complex ideas through writing, collaborate with peers, and apply their knowledge of biological science to generate solutions for issues facing society. In this paper we examine the nature of the instructional tools, strategies, and…

In this paper, an online game was developed in the form of a competitive board game for conducting web-based problem-solving activities. The participants of the game determined their move by throwing a dice. Each location of the game board corresponds to a gaming task, which could be a web-based information-searching question or a mini-game; the…

Educational affordances are worthy of being explored because the affordances of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide the pedagogical effects for promoting cognitive acceleration, increasing the self-management of students, facilitating data collection, and presentation in science learning. This study aims to explore educational…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two learning contexts for explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction, socioscientific issues (SSI) driven and content driven, on student NOS conceptions. Four classes of 11th and 12th grade anatomy and physiology students participated. Two classes experienced a curricular…

Attempts at integrating mathematics and science have been made previously but no definitive, widely adopted teaching model has been developed to date. Research suggests that hands-on, practical, student-centred tasks should form a central element when designing an effective model for the integration of mathematics and science. Aided by this…