Students' attitudes towards natural science constitute an important area in science education as fewer students are interested in natural science and they do not choose corresponding science disciplines in postsecondary education. The current study reports preliminary results of a survey on high school students' interests and attitudes towards…

The ability to listen closely, speak clearly, write coherently, read with comprehension, and to create and critique media offerings in science contexts is essential for effective science teaching. How might instructors develop such abilities in a physics course for prospective elementary and middle school teachers? We describe here such a course,…

ACT's annual Condition of STEM reports provide essential national data on student interest and achievement in STEM subjects. The latest report--"STEM Education in the U.S.: Where We Are and What We Can Do"--takes the data one step further by pairing the latest findings with promising practices aimed at improving STEM achievement and…

Women of color, specifically African American women, within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) areas are significantly underrepresented. The majority of the research addressing STEM issues is centered on increasing the pipeline, which includes recruitment, and retention of underrepresented groups in the K-12 and collegiate domain.…

Afterschool programs that provide strong science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning experiences are making an impact on participating youth not only become excited and engaged in these fields but develop STEM skills and proficiencies, come to value these fields and their contributions to society, and--significantly--begin to see…

Background: Girls are considerably less interested in scientific subjects than boys. One reason may be that scientific subjects are considered to be genuinely masculine. Thus, being interested in science may threaten the self-perception of girls as well as the femininity of their self-image. Aims: If scientific topics that are considered to be…

The aim of this study is to investigate the grades 4 to 8 students' attitudes towards science under the "liking school", "independent investigator" and "what I really think of science" titles. The affect of gender, grade level and science achievement on students' attitudes was analysed in "liking school",…

Current instructional and learning models insist that when teachers prepare lessons for their technology and engineering classes, they must begin with a sense of what students already know. In preparing lessons, many teachers use their years of classroom experience as data to inform them about students' prior knowledge and about student…

Many countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) note a shortage of highly qualified scientific-technical personnel, whereas demand for such employees is growing. Therefore, how to motivate (female) high performers in science or mathematics to pursue scientific careers is of special interest. The sample…

It has long been understood that children's interest in science generally declines during the transition from primary to secondary school. The English government's "Every Child Matters" agenda states that pupils should "make a positive contribution" and "achieve economic wellbeing", and so there is a need to develop a…

The concern about students' engagement with school science and the numbers pursuing the further study of science is an international phenomenon and a matter of considerable concern among policy makers. Research has demonstrated that the majority of young children have positive attitudes to science at age 10 but that this interest then declines…

This qualitative, multi-case study explored the use of science-content music for teaching and learning in six middle school science classrooms. The researcher sought to understand how teachers made use of content-rich songs for teaching science, how they impacted student engagement and learning, and what the experiences of these teachers and…

This paper reports on an attempt to investigate Turkish primary school students' interest in science by using their self-generated questions. We investigated students' interest in science by analyzing 1704 self-generated science-related questions. Among them, 826 questions were submitted to a popular science magazine called Science and Children.…

The instructor of an integrated science course for nonscience majors embedded content-related video segments from YouTube and other similar internet sources into lecture. Through this study, the instructor wanted to know students' perceptions of how video use engaged them and increased their interest and understanding of science. Written survey…

Student labs are out-of-school learning environments that are assumed to promote students' interest in science. They are characterised by aspects of situated and authentic learning, a prominence of application contexts presented by scientists, and a high amount of practical work. Research has shown the potential for promoting students' interest in…