According to policy documents and research studies, one key objective of science education is to develop students' inquiry abilities; however, relatively little is known about the interplay among students' inquiry abilities, the dimensions of their engagement, and their inquiry-related curiosity. The purpose of this study is to explore how four…

The primary goal of this study was to identify which of the RIASEC categories the students participating in the sample fell into. The other goal was to determine whether the students' scientific creativity and metacognitive awareness scores differed significantly depending on their RIASEC categories and gender. The study was a descriptive survey…

The role of the school science laboratory, once taken for granted as verification of taught theory using prescribed ('cookbook' to critics) practical activities, has become less clear since the emergence of the 'inquiry' paradigm in which the school laboratory would appear to become a make-believe science research laboratory. But a school science…

Education policies today aim to raise individuals with 21st Century skills considered as a universal necessity and problem-solving skill is the one of the skills that have emerged as a requirement of the 21st century. Teaching problem solving is one of the most important topics of physics education, it is also the field where students have the…

Three-dimensional science instruction advocates for classroom contexts that place equal emphasis on science content, crosscutting concepts, and science practices. This instructional change requires a shift away from content first approaches. Such a shift can be problematic for educators that insist that strong content understanding is necessary…

The SunSpaceArt (SSA) project, led by the author, a solar scientist at the University of Cambridge, comprises a diverse team of scientists and visual artists who run STEAM (STEM + Arts) workshops in schools, space camps and at other venues (museums, science centres and so on). The project focuses mainly on 7- to 12-year-olds, which is a key age…

This study responds to the demands of the rapidly changing landscape of education, the 21st century competencies and development of curriculum. Those competences are being interpreted all over the world resulting to differing curricular changes. In the Finnish National Core Curriculum 2016 they are presented as seven transversal competences that…

HOTS is one part of the skills that need to be developed in the 21st Century . This study aims to determine the characteristics of the Fundamental Physics Higher-order Thinking Skill (FundPhysHOTS) test for prospective physics teachers using Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis. This study uses a quantitative approach. 254 prospective physics…

This study investigates the effects of process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) on the academic performance and science process skills of Grade 10 Filipino students in science. Specifically, this study aimed to (1) determine and compare the level of academic performance of students when exposed to POGIL and non-POGIL and (2) assess the…

The discipline of data science has gained substantial attention recently. This is mainly attributed to the technological advancement that led to an exponential increase in computing power and has made the generation and recording of enormous amounts of data possible on an everyday basis. It has become crucial for industries to wrangle, curate, and…

The goal of undergraduate chemistry laboratories is to allow students to learn about chemical systems and key laboratory skills. They should then apply this knowledge to solve problems and connect macroscopic observations in the laboratory with those occurring at the submicroscopic level. Unfortunately, these needs are not met through traditional…

For the past several decades, high-enrollment undergraduate chemistry laboratory experiences have favored traditional approaches involving disparate daily experiments with optimized protocols provided to students. This model often results in poor learning outcomes and low student engagement, and it lacks any attention to scientific inquiry. Here,…

Existing accounts of student thinking about mechanical wave propagation and superposition emphasize that students sometimes treat wave pulses as objects, saying, for example, that pulses bounce off of one another when they meet. In this paper, we present a context in which students explicitly reason about pulses as not-objects, instead describing…

Guiding students to become practicing scientists entails teaching them the specialized ways of collaborating, writing, and thinking that these professionals utilize every day. Laboratory experiences provide unique opportunities for student-centered curricular activities that mimic these skills. The biodiesel laboratory experience described here…

Engineers are vital to the way we live, our everyday experiences and activities, but despite this engineering receives little focus in the primary classroom. Interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) wanes as children reach the end of primary school. However, providing positive experiences can keep the doors open for…