While gender and racial/ethnic performance gaps in math and science have been well documented, we know little about how students feel while they are in these courses. Using a sample of 793 high school students who participated in the Experience Sampling Method of the Study of Youth and Social Development, this study examines the gender and…

Due to its complex and microscopic nature, genetics is a difficult subject for many learners to conceptually grasp. Graphics, animation and video material can be extremely helpful to their understanding. A wealth of educational online content about genetics has been created over the past decade in the wake of the human genome being sequenced.…

The Take-away Technique was used in High School Physics and Physical Science courses for the unit on Newtonian mechanics in a teacher (6) by grade level (4) partially crossed design (N = 272). All classes received the same IE instructional treatment. The experimental group (classrooms) did a short Take-away after each class summarizing the key…

Science education scholars emphasize the significance of an integrative, interdisciplinary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education that encourages students to learn about the natural world through exploration, inquiry, and problem-solving experiences. This article reports on a professional development program aimed at…

This study evaluated the effects of a short-term professional development session. Forty volunteer high school biology teachers were randomly assigned to one of two professional development conditions: (a) developing deep content knowledge (i.e., control condition) or (b) evaluating student errors and understanding in writing samples (i.e.,…

The purpose of this research study was to examine the usage and perceived benefits of the ERR (Evocation, Realization of Meaning, and Reflection; Meredith & Steele, 2011) instructional framework and content literacy strategies with middle and high school science teachers. Former students who had participated in an undergraduate or graduate content…

This study investigates how the enactment of a climate change curriculum supports students' development of critical science agency, which includes students developing deep understandings of science concepts and the ability to take action at the individual and community levels. We examined the impact of a four to six week urban ecology curriculum…

This ethnographic study examined middle school students engaged in a virtual learning environment used in concert with face-to-face instruction in order to complete a collaborative research project. Thirty-eight students from three eighth grade classes participated in this study where data were collected through observation of student work within…

This study seeks to inform science education practitioners and researchers in the West about apparent attempts to reconcile science and religion in Pakistan's public school curriculum. We analysed the national high school science curriculum and biology textbooks (English) used in the Government schools in Pakistan, where Islamic faith is the…

The speed of light is an essential topic in the teaching of physics at school and at university, either with respect to the type of experiment or of course with respect to its genuine inherent importance. In reality, the various available experiments are hardly ever performed in class for many reasons. Therefore, we offer this experiment as a…

Within this article, we introduce our conception of text accessibility. First, we synthesize recent research on informational text quality and present key attributes proven to contribute to comprehension of science texts beyond the readability formula. These features include (a) the concreteness of text, (b) the voice of the author, (c) coherent…

Our study monitored the cognitive and motivational effects within different educational instruction schemes: On the one hand, teacher-centred versus hands-on instruction; on the other hand, hands-on instruction with and without a knowledge consolidation phase (concept mapping). All the instructions dealt with the same content. For all…

Whilst sex is considered to be one of the most significant factors influencing attitudes towards science, previous research seems to suggest that, at least in non-science classes, there is no correlation between sex and motivation to learn science. The present study investigates a mixed group of science and non-science students of upper secondary…

In this quantitative study, we compare the efficacy of Level 2, guided inquiry-based instruction to more traditional, verification laboratory instruction in supporting student performance on a standardized measure of knowledge of content, procedure, and nature of science. Our sample included 1,700 students placed in the classrooms of 12 middle…

Laboratory experiences play a substantial role in most high school science courses, and many teachers believe the number of labs they offer is a measure of the quality of their curriculum. While some teachers believe labs are meant to confirm concepts taught during lectures, others feel labs should address students' everyday beliefs about the…