In recent years the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma has become widely accepted as a university-entry qualification in the UK, but there has been little quantitative research into the achievements of IB students at degree level. This study investigates IB students from one selective independent school who entered UK universities between…

Transnational branch campuses of universities are a growing phenomenon, particularly in the Middle-East. The cultures of home institutions and host countries are often foreign to each other. The result is a cultural and learning style gap between faculty and students impacting students' learning and teachers' effectiveness. A pilot study of the…

The perception of culture prevailing in the literature on international and intercultural education is often too limited to be effectively utilized by educators who wish to embrace the diversity in their classrooms. Only by reimagining the notions of "culture" and "cultural diversity" and by liberating them from the rigidities of dominant…

Place-based mathematics education (PBME) has the potential to engage students with the mathematics inherent in the local land, culture, and community. However, research has identified daunting barriers to this pedagogy, especially in abstract mathematics courses such as algebra and beyond. In this study, 15 graduates of a doctoral program in rural…

The purpose of the study is to compare problem based learning (PBL) and lecture-based learning (LBL) in Hong Kong secondary students' science achievement. Secondary One students were divided into two groups: group A (n = 37), was taught two topics: "Human Reproduction" and "Density" through PBL; group B (n = 38) was taught the same topics by LBL.…

A 44-item questionnaire was constructed to determine secondary students' views about how useful various specific actions might be at reducing global warming, their willingness to undertake the various actions, and the extent to which these two might be linked. Responses (n = 500) were obtained from students in years 7 to 10 in three schools in…

The findings reported in this paper report on an investigation of Chinese people's understanding of the nature of science in relation to their conceptualisations of Nature. As an exploratory and interpretive study, it uses semi-structured interviews with 25 Chinese secondary school science teachers. The paper first presents these teachers'…

Evolution is an important and sometimes controversial component of high school biology. In this study, we used a mixed methods approach to explore students' evolution acceptance and views of evolution teaching and learning. Students explained their acceptance and rejection of evolution in terms of evidence and conflicts with religion and…

In science education students should come to understand the nature and significance of models. A promising strategy to achieve this goal is using authentic modelling practices as contexts for meaningful learning of models and modelling. An authentic practice is defined as professionals working with common motives and purposes, pertaining to a…

Providing learners with opportunities to engage in activities similar to those carried out by scientists was addressed in a web-based research simulation in genetics developed for high school biology students. The research simulation enables learners to apply their genetics knowledge while giving them an opportunity to participate in an authentic…

Most academic science educators encourage teachers to provide their students with access to more authentic science activities. What can and do teachers say to increase students' interests in participating in opportunities to do real science? What are the discursive "resources" they draw on to introduce authentic science to students? The purpose of…

This study investigated the effect of metaconceptual teaching interventions on students' understanding of force and motion concepts. A multimethod research design including quasi-experimental design and case study designs was employed to compare the effect of the metaconceptual activities and traditional instruction and investigate students'…

This paper reports research from a three-year Australian science teacher professional learning project, the Science Teaching and Learning (STaL) Project, in which groups of science teacher participants (across years K-12) worked with academics over a one-year period as teacher researchers. Through reflecting on their experiences within the STaL…

This study described the process of developing and validating the College Chemistry Self-Efficacy Scale (CCSS) that can be used to assess college students' beliefs in their ability to perform essential tasks in chemistry. In the first phase, data collected from 363 college students provided evidence for the validity and reliability of the new…

As part of a project concerned with developing a better understanding of the detail of appropriate teaching of direct current (DC) electricity concepts, extensive individual interviews were conducted with a number of experienced senior high school physics teachers. These interviews explored teachers' perceptions of difficulties in student learning…