I argue that students want to see relevance in their studies. The National Curriculum in England is a list of concepts that we wish them to understand. However, the concepts need to be embedded into a meaningful context, such as climate change, which may become the overarching reason for teaching science. In this article I remember fondly…

In this paper, I present a low-cost interactive experiment for measuring the strength of Earth's local magnetic field. This activity can be done in most high schools or two-year physics laboratories with limited resources, yet will have a tremendous learning impact. This experiment solidifies the three-dimensional nature of Earth's…

The fluent use of the chemical language is a major tool for successfully passing chemistry courses at school or university as well as for working as a chemist, since chemical formulae are both a descriptive and a heuristic tool. However, numerous studies have revealed remarkable difficulties of students with chemical formulae both at school and at…

This paper explores what happens in the encounters between presentations of "basic facts" about the human genitals and 15-year-old students during a biology lesson in a Swedish secondary school. In this paper, meaning making was approached as relational, context-dependent and continually transacted. For this reason the analysis was…

I present a novel way to introduce the lunar orbital eccentricity in introductory astronomy courses. The Moon is perhaps the clearest illustration of the general orbital elements such as inclination, ascending node, eccentricity, perigee, and so on. Furthermore, I like the students to discover astronomical phenomena for themselves, by means of a…

This article portrays the formation of a new problem area within Swedish educational policy in the 1960s, namely the need of scientific manpower and the demands to entice more individuals into studies in science and technology. As a consequence school science was given the mission to be interesting, fun and to change young people's attitudes…

A team of French high-school students sent a weather balloon into the upper atmosphere to recreate Viktor Hess's historical experiment that demonstrated the existence of ionizing radiation from the sky--later called cosmic radiation. This discovery earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936.

With the development of new sequencing and bioinformatics technologies, concepts relating to personal genomics play an increasingly important role in our society. To promote interest and understanding of sequencing and bioinformatics in the high school classroom, we developed and implemented a laboratory-based teaching module called "The…

At the present stage of the development of education of persons with disabilities ways of enhancing the effectiveness of training students with intellectual disabilities undergo active research. One means of improving the efficiency and further upgrading of teaching methods is information technology. The article gives an example of improvement of…

Motivation in science in school is a national issue but is often overlooked in educational reform (Usher, A., and N. Kober. 2012. "Student motivation -- An overlooked piece of school reform". Centre on Education Policy, Graduate School of Education and Human Development. The George Washington University). Despite new curriculum content…

This article is the first of a two-part series that explores science teachers' and their pupils' experiences of using different pedagogical approaches based on understandings of how brains learn. For this case-study research, nine science teachers were interviewed and four teachers self-selected to trial a pedagogical approach, new to them, from…

The aim of this study was to develop a Likert type attitude scale for high school students with regard to high school physics lessons. The research was carried out with high school students who were studying in Ankara. First, the opinions of 105 high school students about physics lessons were obtained and then 55 scale items were determined from…

This study explores how web-based scaffolding tools provide instructional support while implementing a socio-scientific inquiry (SSI) unit in a science classroom. This case study focused on how students used web-based scaffolding tools during SSI activities, and how students perceived the SSI unit and the scaffolding tools embedded in the SSI…

This study investigated the effects of practical activities and manual on science students' academic performance on solubility in Uruan Local Education Authority of Akwa Ibom State. The study adopted pretest, posttest non randomized quasi experimental design. Three research questions and three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. One…

The goal of this research was to examine how Israeli chemistry teachers at high school level use Facebook groups to facilitate learning. Two perspectives were used: Teachers' TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and the self-efficacy beliefs of chemistry teachers for using CLFG (chemistry learning Facebook groups). Three different…