Lecturing is an important aspect of the culture of science education. Perhaps because of the negative associations constructivist educators make with lecturing, little research has been done concerning the generally invisible aspects of the (embodied, lived) "work" that is required. Traditional research on science lectures focuses on…

Helping students develop a sound understanding of scientific concepts can be a major challenge. Lately, learning progressions have received increasing attention as a means to support students in developing understanding of core scientific concepts. At the center of a learning progression is a sequence of developmental levels reflecting an…

Writing-to-learn (WTL) is an effective instructional and learning strategy that centers on the process of organizing and articulating ideas, as opposed to writing-to-communicate, which centers on the finished written product. We describe a WTL model that we have developed and tested with various student groups over several years. With effective…

The research is an investigation of teachers' experience of working with socio-scientific issues (SSI). A large group of teachers (55) chose one of six cases with the characteristics of SSI and were free to organize the work as they found appropriate. The research focuses on how teachers chose content, organized their work and experienced the…

Fostering interdisciplinary learning in biology will require significant changes in the way one teaches science to K-12 students. The perspective on interdisciplinary biology teaching and learning in this essay is based on the author's experiences as a former research cell biologist, high school science teacher, and developer of secondary science…

Acknowledgement of prior students' conceptions by science teacher has proved a significant tool for effective science teaching/learning. So the major objective of this research study is to investigate students' alternative ideas (misconceptions) and to develop an understanding about the existence of high frequencies of alternative ideas among…

This dissertation looks at the effects of an educator-scientist partnership on the creation of an inquiry based science lesson for the middle school classroom. The lesson was initially created by a scientist following their science research, but changed as the scientist began working with teachers. The changes in the lesson show that scientists…

The central goal of this study was to explore the influence of the African Caribbean students' home life on their chemistry achievement. The study utilizes a mixed-methods approach and two research designs. A quantitative correlational design (using Spearman Rho correlational analysis) and a phenomenological qualitative design were used. For the…

A proposal to define the oxidation state of an atom in a compound as the hypothetical charge of the corresponding atomic ion that is obtained by heterolytically cleaving its bonds such that the atom with the higher electronegativity in a bond is allocated all electrons in the bond. Bonds between like atoms are cleaved homolytically. This…

In teaching the materials science aspects of physics, mechanical behaviour is important due to its relevance to many practical applications. This article presents a method for experimentally examining the toughness of chocolate, including a design for a simple test rig, and a number of experiments that can be performed in the classroom. Typical…

A simple in-class experiment was designed to expose students to an aspect of materials science dealing with defects. Students break a series of paper strips to gauge the breaking strength. A precut transverse "crack" weakens the paper strip by a surprising amount. Adding a precut "crack stopper" greatly reduces the effect of the original "crack".…

When the LHC started running at the end of March 2010--after a 14-month shutdown for major repairs--one of the main objectives was reaching a luminosity of 10[superscript 32] cm [superscript -2] s [superscript -1] by the end of 2010. On 13 October 2010 that goal was achieved. One important parameter to take into account to reach this luminosity is…

The air-cushion table is a powerful instrument to demonstrate the motion of an object in the absence of friction. Such devices are often rather large and do not fit very easily in the classroom. In a different version of this experience, gas comes directly out of the disc itself, which is provided, for example, by a tank of dry ice that slowly…

The production of bioethanol from cellulosic waste is described. The experiment is suitable for students in secondary school classroom settings and leads to bioethanol in a concentration high enough to burn the liquid. The experiment consists of three steps: (i) the cellulose of the waste material is converted to glucose by cellulase enzymes, (ii)…

This paper reports on the relationship between the subject matter knowledge of two underqualified teachers and their topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) as they taught genetics at two community secondary schools in Malawi. The study was qualitative and used the multiple case study approach. The sample was purposefully chosen. Data…