Using engineering design practices, student groups reverse engineer their own oil cleanup techniques and processes.

Science is an important domain in early childhood education. Though, initial results indicate that preschool teachers rarely offer science activities. Against this background professional development aims to encourage preschool teachers to provide science activities more frequently. In Germany, professional development is often offered as…

Play-based approaches to science learning allow children to meaningfully draw on their everyday experiences and activities as they explore science concepts in context. Acknowledging the crucial role of the teacher in facilitating science learning through play, the purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how teacher-guided play, in…

An experiment which investigates the wettability of natural surfaces was developed for undergraduate students, which allows them to explore concepts of surface structure, wettability, superhydrophobic surfaces, and self-cleaning. The students choose their own samples of leaves and flowers present in their local environment, examine their surface…

This research explores how explaining an anchoring phenomena and engaging students in investigations, as central designs of a model-based inquiry (MBI) unit, afforded or constrained the representation of scientific activity in the science classroom. This research is considered timely as recent standards documents and scholars in the field have…

We designed an activity-based science curriculum that used Minecraft to support microbiology learning for students enrolled in the Lang Science Program at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. Minecraft offered an option to consolidate complex science content into digestible activities for modeling concepts and…

The purpose of this study is to present an activity based on integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics [STEM] approach, its implication, steps, and necessary documents. The activity started with a daily-life problem stated in the STEM literature. Later, activity worksheets were provided. Learners were asked to design a process…

This research is concerned with how children's processes of imagination, situated in cultural and social practices, come into play when they invent, anticipate, and explore a problem that is important to them. To enhance our understanding of young children's learning and meaning-making related to science and sustainability, research that…

There has been growing criticism over the aims, methods, and contents of practical work in school science, particularly concerning their tendency to oversimplify the scientific practice with focus on the hypothesis-testing function of experiments. In this article, we offer a reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's scientific writings--particularly…

A 4-week mini-project is proposed for an experimental Physical Chemistry course applied in Food Science training. Activities include preparation of beet extract for the extraction of betanins and analysis of the kinetics of betanins in thermal degradation at three temperatures (60, 70, and 80 ºC). In addition to developing common laboratory…

At a time when changes in standards and curriculum compound the pressures of fifth-grade state testing, the authors wanted to find an engaging way to involve students in authentic science and engineering. Rather than put their efforts into a traditional science fair that would inevitably lead to inequitable input by parents and students alike,…

This study aimed to determine the views of pre-service science teachers about STEM education. A two-hour Arduino based STEM learning activity was conducted for fifteen pre-service science teachers. Afterwards, the views of the participants were investigated by conducting an online survey consisting of open-ended questions. Finally, the obtained…

Many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outreach programs focus on children, but relatively few efforts are dedicated to voting-age populations. These groups are important to reach because misinformation about science is widespread and difficult to detect, often interfering with informed voting on science-related issues. Science…

The study aimed to investigate pre-service early childhood teachers' (PSTs) collective pedagogical content knowledge (cPCK) and personal pedagogical content knowledge (pPCK) on the knowledge used in scientific process (SP) through the content representation (CoRe) design, interview, and knowledge used in scientific process (KSP) forms. The data…

This study, whose purpose is to examine the effect of scientific discussion-oriented activities on eliminating misconceptions in the 'Change of Matter' unit, has been designed in accordance with the action research method. Action research is a research approach that is carried out by practitioners alone or with a researcher to understand and…