In Study 1, 72 internet documents containing creationism, ID (intelligent design), or evolution content were selected for analysis. All instances of proof cognates (the word "proof" and related terms such as "proven", "disproof", etc.) contained within these documents were identified and labeled in terms of the manner in which the terms were used.…

Studies in the history of science and education have documented that the reception and understanding of evolutionary theory is highly contingent on local factors such as school systems, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, and language. This has important implications for teaching evolution in primary and secondary schools. No universal…

Science educators and classroom teachers often present idealized descriptions of science and religion that reflect our own misunderstandings. These generalizations are often over-simplified and inaccurate and can compound misunderstandings of both domains. The first half of this paper presents an in-depth analysis of authority issues and aims to…

Lay conceptions of energy often conflict with scientific knowledge, hinder science learning and scientific literacy, and provide a basis for ungrounded beliefs. In a sample of Finnish upper secondary school students, energy was attributed with features of living and animate beings and thought of as a mental property. These ontologically confused…

We consider the emergence of "notables" within the disciplines of the modern university, the foremost among whom may be selected to appear on postage stamps. Noting that disciplinary culture is as important as content in university education, we suggest that some knowledge of the identity of these notables, passed on by encultured tutors, should…

In this paper, I describe the strong and reciprocal relations between the emergence of the specialized expert in the natural sciences and the establishment of science education, in early Modern Greece. Accordingly, I show how science and public education interacted within the Greek state from its inception in the early 1830, to the first decade of…

A case study of secondary experimental science instruction in Belgium demonstrates the importance of cross-national communication in the study of science education. Belgian secondary science education in the years 1880-1914 had a clear internationalist dimension. French and German influences turn out to have been essential, stimulated by the fact…

This paper considers the adoption of general science courses in two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec, during the 1930s. In Ontario, a few science teachers had followed the early general science movements in the United States and Britain with interest. During the 1930s, several developments made the cross-disciplinary, applied thrust of…

The aim of this paper is to provide a cross-national comparative analysis of the introduction of calculus in Spanish and French military educational institutions through the works of Pedro Padilla y Arcos (1724-1807?) and Etienne Bezout (1730-1783), respectively. Both authors developed their educational work in the context of military schools and…

This study explores the way the concept of temperature was presented in lower-secondary science textbooks in France, Poland and England at the end of the 1950s and in the 2000s. I draw on history of science, history of education and book history to analyze different treatments of an apparently-similar scientific concept with regard to national…

The article first investigates the basis for designing teaching activities dealing with aspects of history, applications, and philosophy of mathematics in unison by discussing and analyzing the different "whys" and "hows" of including these three dimensions in mathematics education. Based on the observation that a use of history, applications, and…

The results of this study establish the validity of the Student Interest Scale and Student Engagement Scale, as well as associations among teacher communication behaviors, student interest, and engagement. Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the factor structures of the measures are stable, reliable, and valid. The results indicate…

This report offers an interdisciplinary approach for conducting assessment on learning outcomes in undergraduate communication research skills where information literacy is embedded in the expected outcome. A Communication Studies department and the University Library piloted a two-year program to develop strategies for coordinated assessment that…

This research comprises two studies examining the antecedents and outcomes of psychological reactance in teacher requests in the instructional context. In Study 1 we investigated the mediating role of reactance in the relationship of perceived teacher request politeness and teacher-student relationship distance with student resistance intention.…

To explore the integration of education processes into social media, we tested an initial model of student learning via interactive web tools and theorized three sources of influence: interpersonal, intrapersonal, and masspersonal. Three-hundred thirty-seven students observed an online lecture and then completed a series of scales. Structural…