In January of 2019 I received the AAPT [American Association of Physics Teachers] Melba Phillips award. The award provided me the opportunity to reflect on the many programs in which I had participated and the outstanding AAPT leaders that I had the privilege to know. Those reflections are represented in the following narrative that I delivered at…

Several studies have shown that "learner-generated external visual representations" (LGVRs) play a vital role for learning scientific concepts and processes. However, we know little about teachers' reasoning as to why and how to implement LGVR activities in their teaching. Thus, the purpose of our study is to determine why teachers let…

The objective of this study was to analyze visual representations of redox reactions and related content in four Brazilian secondary school chemistry textbooks. The study aimed to identify which representations were used and to evaluate how these representations were linked to one another and to the main text. Data were analyzed regarding…

Looking at the current discourse on how to teach disaster, one apparent gap is that the scientific aspect of disaster is discussed and taught mostly in isolation from its human aspect. Disaster educators seem to be primarily interested in addressing issues such as social vulnerability, community resilience, personal action-related knowledge and…

The move of much anatomy teaching online in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been successfully implemented within very short time frames. This has necessitated a high degree of dependence upon the use of digitized cadaveric resources, has entailed immense workload demands on staff, and has disrupted students' studies. These educational…

Current research in science education and the cognitive sciences has highlighted the importance of epistemic tools in scaffolding learners to think in ways consistent with scientific practices. However, recent studies on epistemic tool have mainly focused on epistemic cognition, but not epistemic metacognition. Epistemic metacognition, which…

Video and interactive media provide visual exposition and review for students to formulate cognitive representations where learning and reflection take place, especially in science laboratories. More inclusively, open educational resources (OER) with interactive content can facilitate access to media-enhanced learning. This paper reports part of a…

I describe an effort to enhance student engagement and classroom inclusion in a sophomore Introduction to Modern Physics class, through the use of assigned student groups, cold-calling, and exposure to the work of female physicists of varied backgrounds. These approaches took minimal effort, appeared to have positive impacts, and had no…

In contrast to the determinist and non-discrete structure of classical physical concepts, the probabilistic and discrete/quantised structure of quantum physics embeds certain difficulties in deeper understanding and teaching activities. In this study, in order to understand and to teach the concept of quantization more effectively, a clear analogy…

This paper analyzes the implementation of socio-scientific issues (SSI) as an alternative in science learning. The content analysis approach is used for mapping implementation of social-scientific problems around the world and is created using the ArcGIS 10.5 program. The findings highlight how the distribution patterns of SSI implementation are…

Instructive, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly laboratory syntheses of two highly luminescent copper(I) complexes CuI(PPh[subcript 3])[subscript 2](py[superscript R]) (py[superscript R] = pyridine, 4-cyanopyridine) are described for second-year/upper-division undergraduate inorganic chemistry students. Both complexes exhibit bright…

Tao Xingzhi was the initiator of science education in China. He initiated the 'marrying science with the public' movement in 1931, which formed the starting point of modern science education in China. The two cores of the movement are science popularization and saving the nation through science education. Looking back at the history of nearly…

For the past century, humans have been increasingly dependent on plastics, but have not developed adequate disposal practices. In this lab, students are asked whether burning plastic for energy seems like a reasonable disposal technique. To answer the chemical aspects of this question, students use bomb calorimetry to quantify the combustion…

Many scientists are in agreement: the world is in a climate and ecological emergency. This has led to a media bombardment of doom-and-gloom stories that pupils are increasingly picking up on and developing what has been termed 'climate anxiety'. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (UNDP, 2015) were agreed by all United Nations member states…

The aim of this paper is to provide physics teachers and physics students with interdisciplinary cultural and scientific related content. The "dombra" is on the one hand a cultural symbol of Kazakhstan with a long tradition. On the other hand, the dombra as a musical instrument is an object of interest in acoustics. The topic can lead to…