Literature indicates that virtual reality (VR) effectively supports and enhances spatial thinking in astronomy education. This study examines how pre-service elementary teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) characteristics manifest during astronomy VR material's development and utilization. Nine sophomores, organized into…

The teaching of laboratory skills to undergraduate students is central to all experimental sciences. In this setting, students must understand the experimental procedures as well as the fundamental principle(s) being demonstrated, all while learning within a limited time. Other limiting factors include access to equipment and reagents, resulting…

Effective elementary science education is fundamentally dependent on teachers' science content knowledge and self-efficacy in teaching science, areas that have been central to science education reform initiatives. This study examines the development and implementation of a physical science content course curriculum incorporating both hands-on…

Funded through an early-phase Education Innovation and Research grant, Using and Leveraging Technology to Reinvent Accessibility: Minecraft Mentor Edition (ULTRA:ME) is an intervention designed to develop teachers' ability to use Minecraft and other educational technology tools to enhance science instruction for students with and without…

A positive physics identity is crucial for women and minorities who are underrepresented in the field of physics. Pedagogical methods that focus heavily on math rather than concepts present a deterrent to many students in physics courses. This research aimed to determine how a 'gamified' physics curriculum with immediate feedback affects students'…

One of the most important skills needed to face the 21st-century challenges is critical thinking. Gender differences are considered to contribute to the critical thinking skills. The objective of this study was to determine students' critical thinking skills based on gender. This quantitative research involved 57 students of the Natural Sciences…

Among the efforts directed at remediating contaminated sites, the use of immobilized microorganisms is an appealing alternative because it offers several advantages over the use of free cells, including protecting cells from the toxic effects of hazardous compounds and increasing their survival and metabolic activity. "Pseudomonas…

Teachers can learn a lot from John Dewey's approach to teaching science. The author contends that his thoughts are still relevant and applicable to today's classrooms.

This is a fundamental and pedagogical work in quantum physics/chemistry, where we try to illustrate the Mulliken's question, "What are the electrons really doing in molecules?". And we also briefly review the development of the most popular numerical approaches in computational chemistry. We examine in a novel approach, how we can…

From ancient times, the different features of planets and moons have created a huge interest. Aristarchus was one of the first to study the relative relations among Earth, Moon, and Sun. This interest has remained until today, and therefore it is always relevant to make this knowledge more appealing to the younger generations. Nowadays, smartphone…

People often have difficulty in understanding processes of biological change, and they typically reject drastic life cycle changes such as metamorphosis, except for animals with which they are familiar. Even after a lesson about metamorphosis, people often do not generalize to animals not seen during the lesson. This might be partially due to the…

Student teachers struggle to identify themselves as teachers in their field placement during their student teaching year, and some of the difficulty can be attributed to the change they encounter when they must communicate scientific ideas to students in a language that differs from how they recently learned science at the university level. Using…

Experiment is understood as a core activity in science education as well as science in general. Despite many efforts to improve science education in the laboratory, a cookbook style of verification experiments often dominate school science. In this study, we conducted an open laboratory activity that provided students with an opportunity to think…

Three-dimensional symmetry plays a crucial role in crystallography education. The educational process can be facilitated by introducing the analysis of friezes and plane patterns such as parquets before presenting more sophisticated crystal structures. Analysis of the symmetry of parquets can serve as an opportunity to follow the full routine of…

Each year, an increasing number of science teachers integrate modeling into their instructional repertoires, and in the process, they see how this disciplinary practice helps students reason and revise their thinking about complex events in the natural world. The NGSS Science and Engineering Practice of developing and using models is intended to…