Self-assessment is essential to scientific literacy as stated by the National Research Council Committee on Conceptual Framework for the New K-12 Science Education Standards and has since been incorporated into the Next Generation Science Standards. However, little empirical evidence documents which instructional tools are beneficial in improving…

Studies have investigated various aspects of the use of questions in science lessons, but there is still a lack of research that demonstrates how, during peer reflection, teachers learn through identifying and overcoming obstacles to their own questioning in their professional development process. The present study is aimed at analyzing the types…

Many high school classrooms in the United States have physics teachers who are teaching the subject outside their certified content areas because of a severe shortage of physics teachers. There is a critical need to improve the knowledge base of these out-of-field teachers. This comparative case study examined the instructional practice of…

Background: The high rates of attrition in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programmes causes concern over a future shortage of graduates entering STEM careers. Students' first year experiences critically affect their motivation and are therefore also critical components of students' academic success in terms of retention,…

As scientific models of student thinking, learning progressions (LPs) have been evaluated in terms of one important, but limited, criterion: fit to empirical data. We argue that LPs are not empirically adequate, largely because they rely on problematic assumptions of theory-like coherence in students' thinking. Through an empirical investigation…

This research is driven due to significant role of textbooks possessed in a country. The purpose of this study is to analyse the Malaysian Form Two Science textbook as this learning tool may acts as one of the reason that affects national Science education. The textbook was analysed based on content element adapted from Florida University…

Student grades and motivational outcomes in introductory physics courses can influence their retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines and future career aspirations. We surveyed students in mandatory large introductory level algebra-based physics courses for bioscience majors at a large research university. The…

Background: There is widespread agreement that participation in post-compulsory physics needs to be widened and increased, particularly among women and under-represented communities. This paper contributes to understanding of the processes that produce unequal participation, Methods: The paper undertakes a Bourdieusian analysis of longitudinal…

This is a companion to our previous paper in which we give a published example, based primarily on Perry's work, of a graph of ln "y" versus "t" when "y" is an exponential function of "t". This work led us to the idea that Lord Kelvin's (William Thomson's) estimate of the Earth's age was…

Friction is an important phenomenon in everyday life. All children are familiar with playground slides, which may thus be a good starting point for investigating friction. Motion on an inclined plane is a standard physics example. This paper presents an investigation of friction by a group of 11-year olds. How did they plan their investigations?…

Theory predicts that an egg-shaped body should rest in stable equilibrium when on its side, balance vertically in metastable equilibrium on its broad end and be completely unstable on its narrow end. A homogeneous solid egg made from wood, clay or plastic behaves in this way, but a real egg will not stand on either end. It is shown that this…

In past issues of this journal, the late H. R. Crane wrote a long series of articles under the running title of "How Things Work." In them, Dick dealt with many questions that physics teachers asked themselves, but did not have the time to answer. This article is my attempt to work through the physics of the crystal set, which I thought…

The Gravity-Powered Calculator is an exhibit of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It is presented by its American creators as an amazing device that extracts the square roots of numbers, using only the force of gravity. But if you analyze his concept construction one can not help but recall the research of Galileo on falling bodies, the inclined…

We describe the main principles of the framework theory approach to conceptual change and briefly report on the results of a text comprehension study that investigated some of the hypotheses that derive from it. We claim that children construct a naive physics which is based on observation in the context of lay culture and which forms a relatively…

Much has been written and debated about the Coriolis force. Unfortunately, this has done little to demystify the paradoxes surrounding this fictitious force invoked by an observer in a rotating frame of reference. It is the purpose of this article to make another valiant attempt to slay the dragon of the Coriolis force! This will be done without…