Feedback loop reasoning is an essential part of systems thinking, which includes the analysis and description of system behaviour and regulative measures. In feedback loops, every change can simultaneously represent a cause and an effect. Research on reasoning in feedback loops is limited to investigating students' existing mental models. This…

Background: An increasing number of educational institutions are incorporating virtual reality (VR) applications in the instruction methodology for their laboratory science courses. However, there is debate about the use of the physical vs. the virtual lab as according to research the former offers a positive research-training environment, whereas…

The call to raise educational standards in the UK has a particular focus on the underachievement of pupils attending schools facing challenging socioeconomic circumstances. In 2017 the Education Policy Institute (UK) reported that the most disadvantaged pupils in England are on average over 2 years of learning behind non-disadvantaged pupils by…

Many high schools, two-year colleges, and universities offer a conceptual physics course for non-science students who have to take a basic science course. The students often enter the course unmotivated and may eventually withdraw. So, how do we make the course interesting enough for these students to gain the knowledge we desire and, more…

One of the most challenging aspects of teaching anatomy and physiology is using teaching tools that enhance active learning and keep students actively engaged during the lecture courses. This study explored the use of a student response system that was easy to use, cost-efficient, and re-usable for multiple anatomy and physiology courses. More…

Students who aim to become physics teachers for secondary education partake in physics courses together with other physics students. The aim of this study is to understand what is valued, taken for granted, and possibly reproduced in physics teaching given for future secondary school physics teachers. This study is based on observations in…

What contributes to science skepticism? Virtually every U.S. high-school student is required to study biology, at minimum, to earn a diploma. But the exact content of the course varies from state to state. This article investigates the role of state standards for high-school science content in shaping knowledge and attitudes about…

Students' critical thinking skills and awareness of the environment are low. One of the efforts to improve this is through the development of eco-literacy-based interactive teaching materials (EITM). This study aims to test the feasibility of EITM to enhance students' critical thinking skills. The EITM feasibility test was conducted by two content…

Indigenous students are underrepresented in science, and the exclusion of Indigenous knowledge from Western education may be a contributor. Recently, Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers have called for a better integration of Indigenous knowledge systems into Western science. One suggestion from the literature is to integrate Traditional…

During the Spring of 2020, instructors across the nation scrambled to transition their faceto-face courses to remote/online modalities. Necessarily, teaching practices adapted. This study investigated how the usage of evidence-based practices as defined by scientific teaching (ST) was impacted during this rapid transition. More than 130 science…

Physics instruction is often unable to support students' self-efficacy. The remote teaching brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected learning. We surveyed an introductory quantum mechanics course for three years during a transition into the spin first approach, adapting the student-centered "prime-time learning" model and…

There is a high need for well-qualified teachers across all STEM content areas, especially in secondary physics. Our work examines why individuals choose to pursue physics teaching. This study, at a primarily undergraduate institution in the Northeastern United States, uses a modified version of Watt and Richardson's Factors Influencing Teacher…

Science teaching in general and physics teaching in particular often fail to meet the challenges of motivating and engaging learners. Consequently, students do not adequately understand concepts, leading to the poor acquisition of expected practical skills. In response to this need, we conducted a study to document physics teachers' instructional…

The Arduino board and its communication with several sensors are becoming more and more popular in the physical science community. They offer inspiring possibilities for learning different physical concepts. In this article, we focused on creating a very practical educational system for experimenting with diffraction of laser light and graphically…

At constant current (I) the forward bias potential (V) of a "pn" junction diode may be considered to vary linearly with temperature (t) within a temperature range. Based on this property we have constructed diode thermometer using germanium (Ge) and silicon (Si) diodes. The experimental "V-t" data at constant forward current…