This paper addresses the impact of teachers' beliefs about argumentation and their community of practice framed views of teaching on co-designing an environmental health afterschool club curriculum with researchers. Our team collaborated with a group of four middle school teachers, asking them to co-design a club that would facilitate (1)…

The potential of a theory of variation-framed learning study, a teacher professional development approach, to help teachers overcome curricular and pedagogical challenges associated with teaching new science curricula content was explored. With a group of Singapore teachers collaboratively planning and teaching new genetics content,…

The PISA performance of Hong Kong has prompted this study to investigate if scientific literacy (SL) of Hong Kong students can be improved further through a high school biology course employing the STSE approach. A STSE course was developed in accordance to the contexts of Hong Kong and a framework for the assessment of scientific literacy was…

The purpose of the study was to assess elementary students' science process skills, content knowledge, and concept knowledge after one year of participation in an elementary Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) program. This study documented the effects of the combination of intensive professional development and the use of…

Invertebrates perform many beneficial and essential ecological services for humans. Despite this, the general public tends to view them negatively. Preservice elementary teachers often find themselves in a tenuous position because they possess the same negativity toward invertebrates as the general public but have been commissioned by United…

Stellar parallax is a concept that is dealt with infrequently in the high school classroom other than by qualitative consideration of stereoscopic parallax and argument by analogy. Use of stellar parallax for distance determination can be difficult for students to understand without some type of hands-on experience to explore the concept. Thus,…

Having students design their own methods regarding data collection during a lab may help them formulate appropriate investigative procedures. The authors use a modified gallery walk to develop science skills. (Contains 3 figures.)

The Association For Science Education's "schoolscience.co.uk Great Bug Hunt 2011," in association with Martin Rapley and Gatekeeper Educational, has been a resounding success--not only because it fits into the science curriculum so neatly, but also because of the passion it evoked in the children who took part. This year's entries were…

The Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences at Notre Dame University--Louaize, conscious to the need of experts in the emerging field of sustainability and to the role that an educational institution plays for the service of the community, introduced into the university curricula a major in environmental science. This paper will present the…

A New Turkish Physics Curriculum has been constructed between the years 2006-2009. It is to the gaining of new perspectives. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to reflect on the nature of the New Turkish Physics Curriculum (NTPC). To this end, the authors focus on the five themes of the NTPC using a document analysis method: basic reasons…

Establishing relevant applications for the science curriculum can be a challenge. However, the key that opens science for students is within a teacher's grasp: It is as simple as bringing science connections into his or her classroom through community resources and taking the students to the science that is available. The author encourages…

Recently "Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements" ("CAPS") were introduced in South Africa in response to confusion precipitated by previous curriculum documents. The purpose of this paper is to explore that confusion in the subject 'Physical Sciences' and consider the nature of the transformation from the previous…

The Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education (CASPiE) is a National Science Foundation funded initiative that seeks to introduce first- and second-year undergraduate students to research in their mainstream laboratory courses. To investigate the effects of this research-based curriculum, a longitudinal study was initiated at Purdue…

Using Roberts' (1982, 1988, 1995, 1998, 2003) seven science curriculum emphases as its framework, this investigation into Alberta's physics program-of-study found that pre-service and novice teachers reported focusing on four of the emphases--"Structure of Science"; "Scientific Skill Development"; "Science, Technology, and…

The aim of this case study was to explore health-education students' personal and collaborative meaning making activities during an online science philosophy course in the higher-education context. Through applying the dialogical perspective for learning, the focus was on studying how different contextual resources were used in building…