Many methods have been developed for managing groups in active learning classes, but little research has been done on the effect of group structure itself. Results are presented for an active learning physics class in which half of the class was placed in academically homogeneous groups while the other half was in heterogeneous groups. Students…

Research indicates that troubleshooting activities that require students to reflect on pre-prepared erroneous examples, i.e. erroneous solutions to problems that correspond to common naïve ideas, impact their learning positively. These include asking students to diagnose erroneous examples; in other words, detect the conceptual errors and then…

To encourage the formation of science identity among girls, many scholars and practitioners have suggested to assign same-gender science teachers to students so that the teachers can serve as gender role models. However, direct evidence of any long-term effect of gender-matching is scarce. In a nationally representative survey of college students…

For some years now, the scientific community has been studying how videogames foster acquisition of mental representations of the world around us. Research to date suggests that the efficiency of videogames as learning tools largely depends on the instructional design in which they are included. This article provides empirical evidence related to…

The goal of this research is to provide a rich set of connections between two fields: (i) Nanoscale science and technology (NST) and (ii) topics from a common middle school physics curriculum. NST is emerging as one of the most promising new fields of the 21st century, which is one of the many arguments for including NST topics in secondary…

Training of Physics teachers remains still a quite big challenge in the context of developing secondary education system. Taking into account new objectives in teaching Physics of pupils and students within the emerging philosophy of education and the objective difficulties of mastering the content, the training of a Physics teacher should be…

The aim of the study was to determine the effects of a dialogical argumentation instructional model (DAIM) on pre-service teachers' ability to solve conceptual maths-in-physics (MIP) problems. Using a quasi-experimental design the study included two equal groups of pre-service teachers (N = 40) to follow two instructional methods in which the…

Online "Peer Instruction" has become prevalent in many "flipped classroom" settings, yet little work has been done to examine the content students generate in such a learning environment. This study characterizes a dataset generated by an open-source, web-based homework system that prompts students to first answer questions,…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on education at all levels and types, and the education system, including colleges and universities, has been forced to respond by a sudden shift to online teaching. Successful online teaching requires careful thinking, planning, and technical and human support from teachers. Based on the reflection…

In this study, we examined the teaching emphasis of the history of science (HOS) in science lesson plans. The examination was based on a five-dimensional framework, which comprises conceptual, procedural, epistemological, affectional, and social dimensions. Content analysis was employed as the research methodology, targeting 71 copies of science…

Epistemology plays an important role in detecting learning difficulties in a given field of knowledge and in directing strategies to eliminate them. This quantitative study aimed to get to know the perceptions of 624 students, related to the nature of science and science teaching and learning. The cross-sectional survey, based on the Inventory of…

This investigation proposes to apply the methods of training creativity in the natural sciences to teaching a foreign language for specific purposes. This approach is based on the testing of foreign language competencies in different countries, on the task of training higher education specialists, including foreign language training, on the…

This study explored the self-efficacy of senior high school Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students (n = 134) in an online physics class in terms of gender and its relationship to engagement. The study employed a descriptive correlation research design. Adapted instruments namely "Sources of Self-Efficacy in Science…

The learning characteristics of each student are different. Differentiated instruction considers individual differences, as such guides the learning journey rather than seeing these differences as a challenge. The purpose of this research was to compare the effects of differentiated instruction and 5E learning cycle in physics classes on the…

One argument for keeping the physics Graduate Record Exam (GRE) is that it can help applicants who might otherwise be missed in the admissions process stand out. In this work, we evaluate whether this claim is supported by physics graduate school admissions decisions. We used admissions data from five Ph.D.-granting physics departments over a…