Many secondary schools, both in Australia and internationally include community service initiatives as an integral component of students' school experience. This practise is widely based on the assumption that young people benefit from helping others outside of the economies of exchange. Service projects linked intentionally to the regular…

This research draws on developments in educational research where "learning progressions" are emerging as a strategy for synthesizing research on science learning and applying that research to policy and practice, and advances in the natural sciences, where "interdisciplinary research on coupled human and natural systems" has become increasingly…

This study investigates critical thinking in a Physical Geography course and illustrates how students can understand physical geography in the context of their world. As a general education science course, most students are in non-science disciplines and feel disconnected from the material. By using exercises that challenge learning and concept…

It is no secret that many high school students are fascinated with automobiles. The activities in "Fueling the Car of Tomorrow"--a free high school science curriculum, available online--(see "On the web")--capitalize on this heightened awareness and provide relevant learning opportunities designed to reinforce basic physics, chemistry, biology,…

There is a large body of research that has explored students' misconceptions about science phenomena. Less research, however, has been devoted to identifying teachers' misconceptions, but the results of the few existing studies demonstrate that teachers and students possess similar misconceptions. This study explored the physical science…

Because textbooks have the potential to be powerful catalysts for improving science teaching and learning, having reliable methods for analyzing important textbook features, such as their coherence, is essential. This study reports on the development of a method in which trained reviewers, following a set of guidelines defining the ideas to be…

In this article, the author discusses the deliberate policy on the part of Primary Science Committee (PSC) to ensure that not only is primary science embedded in all aspects of the work of ASE but is seen to be there. She also describes the events for the 2010 Annual Conference. Over the coming months, PSC will continue to put much thought into…

This paper discusses the concept of scaling and its biological and engineering applications. Scaling, in a scientific context, means proportional adjustment of the dimensions of an object so that the adjusted and original objects have similar shapes yet different dimensions. The paper provides an example of a hands-on, minds-on activity on scaling…

Research on teacher identities is both important and increasing. In this forum contribution I re-interpret assertions about an African American science teacher's identities in terms of Jonathon Turner's ("2002") constructs of role identity and sub-identity. I contest the notion of renegotiation of identities, suggesting that particular role…

The purpose of this study was to explore the articulated experiences of natural science majors who were participating in a liberal arts living-learning community. Using the American Association of College and University's (2002) report, "Greater Expectations" as an organizing framework, this study sought to determine how--if at…

This article draws on M. M. Bakhtin's (1981) notion of dialogism to articulate what it means to understand a scientific idea. In science, understanding an idea is both conceptual and epistemic and is exhibited by an ability to use it in explanation and argumentation. Some distillation of these activities implies that dialogic understanding of a…

In recent years, many researchers have been engaged in the development of educational computer games; however, previous studies have indicated that, without supportive models that take individual students' learning needs or difficulties into consideration, students might only show temporary interest during the learning process, and their learning…

The Math-Science-Engineering Technology in Iowa on Applied Renewable Energy Areas (MSETI-AREA) projects are aimed at providing area school teachers with an applied mathematics and science curriculum package based on photovoltaic (PV) power, wind power, human power and hydrogen fuel-cell fundamentals. The MSETI-AREA project has established a…

The hypothetical learning progressions presented here are the products of the deliberations of two working groups of science education researchers, each group also including a state science curriculum supervisor, organized by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), with support from the National Science Foundation. Their charge was…

The heart of learning chemistry is the ability to connect a compound's structure to its function; Lewis structures provide an essential link in this process. In many cases, their construction is taught using an algorithmic approach, containing a set of step-by-step rules. We believe that this approach is in direct conflict with the precepts of…