Conceptions of ecological processes such as the flow of energy and cycling of matter in an ecosystem are increasingly important understandings in a rapidly changing world. This study utilizes a p-prims, or knowledge in pieces, lens to examine understandings and disconnections in students' conceptualizations of energy flow and matter cycling…

To enhance Aboriginal students' educational opportunities in sciences, culturally relevant science curriculum has been examined and practiced in Western Canadian science classrooms. This article shares some examples of inclusion of indigenous knowledge in science curricula and discusses the improvement and challenges of culturally relevant science…

There has been a nation-wide push for an increase in the use of integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the United States. With this shift in epistemological, pedagogical, and curricular content, there is a need to develop an understanding as to what integrated STEM education is, particularly among…

With more diversified student groups entering the university, the 7become more pedagogically challenging. In earlier studies, a validated tool, content representation (CoRe), has been used in teacher education to help pre-service teachers identify and promote pedagogical content knowledge in limited teaching sequences. In the present research the…

The aim of this research is to develop a guide material prepared according to Purdue Model for the 'The Let's Solve the Puzzle of Our Body' unit in the 5th grade science class at secondary school and to research the effects of this guide material on students' creative thinking. For this purpose, the research was carried out by using the quasi…

In this research, the self-reported fear and disgust toward animals of preservice biology teachers and their willingness to incorporate live animals into their teaching were assessed with a questionnaire. An entire generation of pre-service biology teachers (N = 128) participated in this research. The results show that students are mostly afraid…

This study aims to put forth how and to what degree pre-service science teachers can practice 2018 Secondary School Science Curriculum (SSSC). The study employs an illustrative case study design. Identified through purposive sampling, the participants of the study consist of 28 senior pre-service teachers studying at science teaching program at an…

This paper describes pedagogical efforts implemented to promote significant learning in a computational chemistry course. The taxonomy of significant learning advanced by Fink (2013) is used as a framework to discuss the results. Fink identifies six categories of learning: foundational, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and…

Biogeochemical cycles support all anthropogenic activities and are affected by them, therefore they are intricately interlinked with global environmental and socioeconomic issues. Elements of these cycles that are already included in the science/chemical curriculum and textbooks intended for formal education in Greek secondary schools were…

Systems and system models are recognized as a crosscutting concept in the newly released framework for K-12 science education (NRC [National Research Council], 2012). In previous work, I developed a learning progression for systemic reasoning in ecology at the elementary level. The learning progression captured five levels of students' reasoning…

The purpose of this study was to determine if science teachers showed a change in their ability to design and implement science lessons that integrate twenty-first century science practices as a result of their participation in a subject-specific professional development program. A qualitative design utilizing inductive analysis was used to…

One of the challenges of science education is to integrate activities, content, and tools in a meaningful manner. One way to address this challenging goal is the transformation of authentic scientific practices into contexts for learning, in line with sociocultural activity theory. In this respect, authentic scientific practices are interpreted as…

This article narrates the lived experiences of a Physical Science teacher named Thobani (pseudonym) in implementing a new curriculum in South Africa. Drawing on the work of Husserl and Heidegger, the article describes the objects of direct experience in Thobani's consciousness about his life as a learner and teacher as revealed during an in-depth…

This article explores Science-Technology-Society (STS), Science-Technology-Society-Environment (STSE) and Socio-Scientific-Issues (SSI) in science education, and critically examines their contributions to science education and science teaching, and how they are underpinning values and ethics in society. The article presents rationales for the…

This STEM Smart brief describes the challenges of implementing the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) as well as research and promising practices in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development adopting the NGSS.