Background: Despite the growing emphasis on research-based teacher education and calls for evidence-informed practice, teachers tend to prefer experiential over scientific knowledge sources to inform their actions, justify decisions and analyse educational problems. This tendency already occurs as early as during initial teacher education, and it…

This study investigated how visual attention differed between students who hold scientific knowledge and those who have misconceptions. We analyzed visual fixations of 98 middle students on problems containing information relevant to scientific knowledge and common misconceptions. It showed that students who acquired scientific concepts paid more…

Online learning has gained increasing attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers face social exigencies to design ways of knowledge dissemination in online instruction. We posit that understanding how knowledge can be represented in successful online academic genres can inform teachers on how they can design students' online learning…

Balancing disciplinary knowledge and practical reasoning in problem solving is needed for meaningful learning. In STEM problem solving, science subject matter with associated practices often appears distant to learners due to its abstract nature. Consequently, learners experience difficulties making meaningful connections between science and their…

The purpose of this study is to determine which features of the nature of science pre-service primary school teachers refer to while making a decision on a socioscientific issue at the end of the explicit reflective nature of science education. For this purpose, an exploratory qualitative research design was used in the study. The research group…

The Irish lower secondary science curriculum emphasises the development of scientific literacy through the use of inquiry teaching and learning approaches. The Science in Society Investigation assessment in this curriculum requires students to carry out inquiry into socioscientific issues (SSI). This research presents two case studies exploring…

Event-related potentials are used to test the hypothesis that an intuitive misconception persists in the mind even after the acquisition of scientific knowledge. We investigated the temporal dynamics of neural mechanisms in solving a scientific problem involving a common misconception. It showed that the increased P2 component was elicited by the…

Scientific knowledge is a primary resource that scientists use to shape their activities to make sense of natural phenomena. Support for students' adaptation of scientific knowledge can enhance their ability to make sense of the natural world. This study aims to examine how ecological concepts are used when students plan field-based modeling of…

Nowadays Molecular Cell Biology (MCB) must be taught as science is practiced. Even though there are several approaches based on scientific practices, a key aspect is to define the purpose of each of these teaching strategies and, most importantly, their implementation. Our goal was to train students to acquire, understand, and communicate new…

Scientific research is a human endeavour, performed by communities of people. Disproportionate focus on only some of the features related to this obvious fact has been used to discredit the reliability of scientific knowledge and to relativize its value when compared with knowledge stemming from other sources. This epistemic relativism is…

Higher Education plays a decisive role in the training of competent professionals and active, responsible and critical-thinking citizens. In addition to acquiring rigorous technical-scientific knowledge specific to their degree, students are also expected to develop a range of transversal skills essential for a successful academic and professional…

In a sample of 455 Taiwanese upper-secondary school students, latent variable structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships between beliefs about knowledge in science, beliefs about justification for knowing in science, and justification of knowledge claims concerning science encountered on the Internet. Results…

This study presents the design and application of a didactic sequence aimed at enhancing high school students understanding of recyclable plastic polymers. The proposed teaching strategy incorporates cooperative learning activities to identify different types of plastics, particularly recyclable ones. The goal is to increase student's scientific…

Education is an important tool which is very useful in everybody's life. A science curriculum should offer students opportunities that relate to life outside the classroom. It should provide students with situations in which they can frame and solve problems of their own making; and it should be supportive of students. Teaching methods and…

In this study, we explore the relation between scientific literacy (knowledge about scientific theories, trust in science, and critical thinking) and unwarranted beliefs (pseudoscience, the paranormal and conspiracy theories). The results show heterogeneous interactions between six constructs: (1) conspiracy theories poorly interact with…