This paper develops the ideas of "The Pedagogical Power of Context: Iterative Calculus Methods and the Epidemiology of Eyam" (French "et al." 2018 "J. Phys. Educ."), where we considered the application of the Euler method to solve epidemiological problems. Our purpose was to convey some examples of school level work…

A teacher's self-efficacy has been found to be one of the most important factors contributing to a successful teaching-learning outcome for both the teacher and the students. Numerous studies have shown that there is a relationship between students' self-efficacy, students' academic achievement, teacher burnout and a teacher's sense of…

Particle physicists are literally rewriting what we know about the physical world; yet, the typical high school physics curriculum spends little to no time on particle physics. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the inclusion of the particle physics topic in the curriculum increased the engagement and knowledge of high school…

The goal of this article is to inform professional understanding regarding preservice science teachers' knowledge of engineering and the engineering design process. Originating as a conceptual study of the appropriateness of "knowledge as design" as a framework for conducting science teacher education to support learning related to…

Assessment of practicum activities has not been performed maximally in which it is limited to unstructured observations without applying assessment instruments and it only covers some skills oriented aspects. For that reason, this research aimed to develop instruments for student performance assessment in physics practicum in State Senior High…

Recent science education reform has emphasized teaching science as practice -- striving to engage students in the authentic work of scientists so they gain deeper understanding of scientific knowledge and how that knowledge is established. To make this vision of science education a reality in classrooms, teachers must be well prepared to teach…

Although for most of the time the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN collides protons, for around one month every year lead ions are collided, to expand the diversity of the LHC research programme. Furthermore, in an effort not originally foreseen, proton-lead collisions are also taking place, with results of high interest to the physics…

Estimating measurement uncertainties is important for experimental scientific work. However, this is very often neglected in school curricula and teaching practice, even though experimental work is seen as a fundamental part of teaching science. In order to call attention to the relevance of measurement uncertainties, we developed a comprehensive…

Infographics present information or data in an accessible and concise manner to help a viewer understand a phenomenon. Creating infographics requires students to make sense of multiple sources of data and synthesize these data into a compelling visual form to make a central claim. Unlike posters, which tend to be purely informational with…

The saga of the search for the ultimate constituents of matter has long been one of finding a seemingly fundamental structure that, in turn, was found to be made of even smaller building blocks. Matter is made of molecules. Molecules are in turn made of atoms, which are themselves made of electrons and atomic nuclei. The nucleus consists of…

The topic of chemistry safety was included at the margins of traditional chemistry education in China. In order to understand the concerns of the safety issues based on the new chemistry curriculum in the mainland China secondary school, this study analyzed old and new secondary chemistry curriculum standards via the Natural Language Processing…

Hydraulic fracturing ('fracking'), like other complex social and environmental issues, is a controversy about science which raises educational questions about how best to prepare young people to understand, respond to and, where necessary, act (or not) in response. It raises political questions. We present a state-of-the-art review of research…

The importance of chemistry practical work in enhancing students' performance and 21st-century skills has been highlighted in the literature. However, Malaysian Matriculation chemistry lecturers were lack of knowledge in the 21st-century pedagogies and practiced the cook-book recipe teaching style which proved ineffective in enhancing students'…

This study was conducted to determine the differences in the conceptual understanding of 52 Turkish students who were taught with a scientific argumentation approach in grade 12 chemistry. The concept test was administered to the participants as a pre-test and post-test, and it contained two questions. The first had two sub-questions had two…

In an earlier contribution in "Physics Education" (Bitzenbauer and Meyn 2020 "Phys. Educ." 55 055031 [see EJ1263541]), we presented a new teaching sequence on quantum optics on the secondary school level, and we reported on promising results of a first pilot study concerning its learning effectiveness. In the sense of…