Science teachers frequently select science news articles as supplementary teaching materials; however, the literature indicates that students encounter difficulties in examining and evaluating the news content and textual elements. This paper reports an instructional strategy of utilizing science news articles and investigates its effectiveness in…

The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in 19 preservice chemistry teachers' understandings of the structure of matter, including the aspects of the physical states of matter, the physical composition of matter, and the chemical composition of matter, before, immediately after, and months after they received a specific instruction.…

In the context of an education reform in Quebec, this case study illustrates how a science teacher's practice was redefined with nine classes over a period of four months on a specific, integrative theme inspired by issues of daily life in an attempt to increase her students' motivation and to better make sense of some scientific concepts…

The objective of this research is to investigate students' mental models of the hailstone formation and explore factors that may affect their mental models. The sample chosen for the study was composed of a total of 84 students. The students attended the 1st to 4 th grade classes of the Social Studies Teaching Programme at Giresun University in…

In the present study we used the technique of word association tests to assess students' cognitive structures during the learning period. In particular, we tried to investigate what students living near a protected area in Greece (Dadia forest) knew about the phenomenon of decomposition. Decomposition was chosen as a stimulus word because it…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels of energy literacy among 276 Form 2 (Grade 8) Malaysian students as no similar study has been previously conducted in the country, as well as the contribution of students' energy-related knowledge and attitudes on their energy-related behaviors. This was a non-experimental quantitative…

Hawai'i is a unique and special place to conduct environmental science inquiry through place based learning and scientific investigation. Here, we describe and evaluate a unique professional development program for science teachers in Hawai'i that integrates the traditional approach of providing training to improve content knowledge, with the…

The aim of this study was to investigate an adaptation of the Study Processes Questionnaire for the discipline of physics. A total of 2030 first year physics students at an Australian metropolitan university completed the questionnaire over three different year cohorts. The resultant data has been used to explore whether the adaptation of the…

In this paper, it is aimed to investigate the persistence of misconceptions in the topic of the human blood circulatory system among students in different grade levels. For this reason, after discussions with biology educators, two tests consisting of open-ended questions were developed by the researcher and administered to students in four…

The present study aimed to explain elementary teacher candidates' energy conservation behaviors by using Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory. Participants in this study were 512 students at Faculty of Education from two public universities in Turkey. Of the 512 students, 35.5% were enrolled in the early childhood education program, 30.9% were in the…

The use of the web in teaching and learning and research studies on this issue are increasingly common in science education. In most of these studies, teachers' and students' perceptions of and their attitudes toward the specific web-assisted/based learning activities and the effects of these activities on their achievement and attitudes have been…

Human negativity toward arthropods has been well documented but the factors that contribute to this negativity have been elusive. This study explored knowledge of arthropod carnivory and herbivory as possible casual factors that contribute to the negative tendencies preservice elementary teachers have toward most arthropods. Specifically, this…

School is assumed to equip students with subject knowledge and contribute to their development as human beings and democratic citizens as well. In this article, the democratic dimension of the teaching assignment is brought to the fore, and an analysis tool for investigating students' conversations on socioscientific issues that emphasises…

In this study, we investigated the ways in which university students connected with science through the use of photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1994) as a pedagogical tool. Results indicated that students came to appreciate their connections to the science that operates in their lives as they reflected on and became empowered with regard to the science…

Increasingly, international and national statements are calling for the development of local sustainability scenarios within partnerships between schools and their communities. The present study addresses the question of reciprocity in such partnerships, by comparing the sustainability agendas underlying schools' educational programs to the…