Middle school teachers tend to rely heavily on texts that have become increasing more visual. There is little information available about the graphical demands of general middle grades' science texts. The purpose of this study was to quantify the type and quality of the graphical representations and how they interacted with the textual material in…

Many teachers view practical work as an essential feature of science education. This study examined whether there had been any changes in the relative importance of the aims science teachers assign to the use of practical work, across the full secondary age range (11-18), since the last such national survey undertaken by Kerr 46 years ago. A…

This article investigates the relation between cognitive style and motivation to learn science. The concept of cognitive style proposes the interplay of two core psychological dimensions, empathizing and systemizing. The cognitive style is defined as the interplay between the two abilities. We used the so-called EQ score (empathy quotient) and the…

Students at the junior high school (JHS) level often cannot use their knowledge of physics for explaining and predicting phenomena. We claim that this difficulty stems from the fact that explanations are multi-step reasoning tasks, and students often lack the qualitative problem-solving strategies needed to guide them. This article describes a new…

Off-road motorcycle racing and ATV riding. Gardening and fishing. What do these high-adrenaline and slower-paced pastimes have in common? Each requires soil, and the texture of that soil has an effect on all of them. In the inquiry-based lessons described here, students work both in the field or laboratory and in the classroom to collect soil…

The starting point of the present research is the following question: since we live in an age that makes increasing use of visual representations of all sorts, is not the visual representation a learner constructs a window into his/her understanding of what is or is not being learned? Following this direction of inquiry, the present preliminary…

The continued downward spiral of enrollment in physical sciences in the USA and Europe has science educators concerned on both sides of the Atlantic. Physics has been particularly hard-hit, with the percentage of students choosing to major in the subject at the lowest level in decades. University physics has a reputation as a difficult, abstract…

This study examined the learning opportunities provided to students through the use of complex geological data supporting scientific inquiry. Through analysis of argumentative discourse in a high school Earth science classroom, uses of US Geological Survey (USGS) data were contrasted with uses of geoscience textbook data. To examine these…

This article discusses how real research on Down syndrome, being done in a lab at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), was incorporated into a laboratory activity for middle school students. The activity asked students to evaluate real evidence from the research laboratory of a GK-12 fellow (a graduate student funded by the…

This study examined the interrelationship between tenth-grade students' problem solving ability (PSA) and their domain-specific knowledge (DSK) as well as reasoning skills (RS) in a secondary school of Taiwan. The PSA test was designed to emphasize students' divergent-thinking ability (DTA) and convergent-thinking ability (CTA) subscales in the…

Lab notebooks provide students with authentic science experiences as they become active, practicing scientists. Teachers gain insight into students' understanding of science content and processes, while students create a lasting personal resource. This article provides high school science teachers with guidelines for implementing lab notebooks in…

Environmental education "is a process that aims to develop an environmentally literate citizenry" (NAAEE 2004). It is an effective way to engage students of all levels and has improved learning outcomes and achievement in science and other subjects (Lieberman and Hoody 1998). Worldwide, students report that schools are a key place for…

The aims of the study were to investigate (a) the relationship between the attitudes toward biology and perceptions of the biology learning environment among grade 11 students in Tulkarm District, Palestine and (b) the effect of gender and residence of these students on their attitudes toward biology and on their perceptions of the biology…

Although many states in the United States are adopting policies that require all students to complete college-preparatory science classes to graduate from high school, such policies have not always led to improved student outcomes. There is much speculation about the cause of the dismal results, but there is scant research on the processes by…

In the United States, there is a national agenda to increase the number of qualified science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) professionals and a movement to promote science literacy among the general public. This project explores the association between formal human evolutionary biology education (HEB) and high school science class…