This paper addresses the teaching of advanced high school courses or undergraduate courses for non-biology majors about genetics or history of genetics. It will probably be difficult to take the approach described here in a high school science course, although the general approach could help improve such courses. It would be ideal for a college…

This study examines the use of a digital video annotation tool used by beginning in-service secondary science and mathematics teachers in the Teacher Induction Network (TIN). TIN is an online induction program in its ninth year of existence and has served over 180 teachers. The need to provide spaces for beginning teachers to reflect on their…

This paper describes strategies used by novice biology teachers to exert sociolinguistic control over conversations when teaching unfamiliar subject-matter content. These discourse control strategies were identified in a year-long study of teacher subject-matter knowledge and its effects on teaching, and are illustrated in three lessons taught by…

Argumentation can contribute significantly to content area learning. Recent research has raised questions about the effects of discussion (deliberation) goals versus persuasion (disputation) goals on reasoning and learning. This is the first study to compare the effects of these writing goals on individual writing to learn. Grade 7 and 8 students…

Many countries recognize the positive and effective results of improving science education through the introduction of reforms in the sciences curriculum. However, some important issues are generally neglected like, for example, the involvement of the teachers in the reform process. Taking the sciences curriculum reform under analysis and…

The practices of argumentation have recently been upheld as an important need to develop students' understanding of scientific concepts. However, the present education system in Malaysia is still largely examination-based and teacher-oriented. Thus, this study aims to examine the mastery level of scientific argumentation and its scheme among…

The authors describe a vocational training course that was developed to give more than just an overview of how aircraft work, or a course on how to fly. This training course was a half-year course in aviation technology. Powered flight is an area of interest for many students, and the intent of creating a curriculum rich with science, technology,…

For many middle school students, connections between their lives and concepts like chemical reactivity, microbial contamination, and experimental sampling are not obvious. They may also feel that, even if there were connections, understanding the monitoring and quality of natural resources is something for grown-ups and beyond their…

The study reported the findings of an only post-test control group research design and aims to analyze the influence of problem-based learning approach, school level, and students' prior mathematical ability to student's mathematics critical thinking ability. The research subjects were 140 grade ten senior high school students coming from…

This paper sets out an argument and approach for moving beyond a primarily arts-based conceptualization of cultural capital, as has been the tendency within Bourdieusian approaches to date. We advance the notion that, in contemporary society, scientific forms of cultural and social capital can command a high symbolic and exchange value. Our…

In secondary science education, the learning and teaching of coherent conceptual understanding are often problematic. Context-based education has been proposed as a partial solution to this problem. This study aims to gain insight into the development of conceptual coherence and how context-embedded learning-teaching activities (LT) can promote…

Studies in cognitive science have verified that working memory (where the brain solves problems) can manipulate nearly all elements of knowledge that can be recalled automatically from long-term memory, but only a few elements that have not previously been well memorized. Research in reading comprehension has found that "lecture notes with…

In this study, structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied to an instrument assessing students' understanding of chemical change. The instrument comprised items on understanding the structure of substances, chemical changes and their interpretation. The structural relationships among particular groups of items are investigated and analyzed using…

So far relatively little research in education has explored the pedagogical and learning potentials of applications (Apps) on tablet PCs (TPCs). Drawing upon research on learning technologies and taking an embodied perspective, this study first identified educational functionalities of TPCs and generated guidelines to design educational Apps for…

In this review, we explore the notion of teaching science to English language learners (ELLs) as a balancing act between simultaneously focusing on language and content development, on the one hand, and between structuring instruction and focusing on student learning processes, on the other hand. This exploration is conducted through the lens of a…