Teacher education needs to combine training in content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). One important part of PCK in science education is knowledge about school science practical work to promote learning by scientific inquiry and about the nature of science. In Germany, practical seminars and lab sessions…

In recent years, with the more powerful functions of smartphones, the use of sensors integrated by mobile phones as an auxiliary tool for physical experiment teaching has become more popular. Combined with the related mobile phone apps, people easily can develop and expand the physical experiment contents of mechanics, optics, acoustic phenomena,…

This study investigated the effects of providing domain information in an early stage of an inquiry process, together with an aligned hypothesis scratchpad, on inquiry learning, and hypothesis generation in particular. Participants were provided with basic domain information that was adapted to their prior knowledge (experimental condition) or…

A pilot study, funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, supported 10 secondary schools across England to plan and deliver open-ended investigative practical work within science curriculum time. This enabled all students to experience the benefits of investigative work, rather than just those attending extracurricular STEM enrichment activities.…

The natural sciences, by their very nature, are based on the exploration of the physical world, and digital mobile devices are considered appropriate to support this exploration (Suárez et al., 2018) since they offer the tools that make this investigation more accessible but also ubiquitous (Crompton et al., 2017). Inquiry-based learning is a…

Ever since Newton's groundbreaking work on the composed nature of light, additive colour mixing (and its laws) are subject to the interest of physicists as well as other sciences. In this paper, we present a setup for simple lab or home experiments on additive colour mixing and the laws of colour mixing. Students use the screen of a laptop or…

In this work, an alternative Experimental Didactic Kit for teaching resistors, capacitors and "RC" timing circuits was developed, using the Arduino platform technology, which is composed of a microcontroller and peripherals, due to the easy access to available teaching materials, enabling the reproduction of the prototype in the future…

Science and technology education necessitates teaching and learning experiments involving electronic circuit construction and measurements using experimental equipment. In this study, a novel cross reality system for learning physical circuit construction and performing virtual experiments using virtual experimental equipment with mid-air haptics…

A revised version of a traditional physical chemistry laboratory experiment has been developed to enhance student discussion in the laboratory and to improve students' connections between physical chemistry concepts and real molecular systems. In this experiment, students explore the keto-enol tautomerization of 2,4-pentanedione. However, unlike…

The ability of students to perform quantitative analysis is a fundamental aspect of analytical chemistry courses and laboratories. In this laboratory experiment, students quantitatively analyze both liquid and solid samples through the use of internal standard calibration and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. Using a problem-based approach to selecting their…

How can you switch from a hands-on face-to-face chemistry course to an online course in the face of a pandemic? It is possible to have students do hands-on experiments at home. There are many readily available kitchen, drug store, and garden chemicals that can be used to illustrate the same principles in standard chemistry curricula at multiple…

A set of inexpensive and pedagogically rich experiments focusing on S[subscript N]1, E1, and E2 reactions have been updated to include modern computational and spectroscopic analyses. The S[subscript N]1 experiment involves treatment of "tert"-amyl alcohol with hydrochloric acid to generate the corresponding alkyl chloride, which is used…

This article illustrates the use of Microsoft OneNote as an Electronic Notebook for undergraduate biochemistry lab reports as well as student opinions of this use both before and during the online coursework shift during the pandemic.

Course specific learning outcomes are an important tool to define the scope of a course and can be very helpful when designing experiments and assessments. With slight modification, these learning outcomes can serve as a guide when transitioning to the distance learning format especially in courses with a traditional lab. Here we present such an…

In this study, a process was designed, in which a lemon seed grew into a seedling, using the inquiry-based science learning approach. This aimed to increase the overall development of the scientific process skills of children and their sensitivity to nature. The germination, growth and development of a plant were meticulously and systematically…