Background and purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the effect of investigative activities with manipulations in a virtual laboratory on students' ability to design experiments. Sample: Fourteen students in a lower secondary school in Greece attended a teaching sequence on thermal phenomena based on the use of information and…

Background and purpose: This study examines secondary-school students' opinions on participating in authentic science projects which are part of an international EU project on climate change research in seven countries. Partnerships between schools and research institutes result in student projects, in which students work with and learn from…

This study proposed to investigate the effectiveness of learning activities based on a conceptual change theoretical framework by embedding a peer instruction method with structured inquiry (PISI) on tenth grade students' understanding of force and motion concepts. This teaching method was compared to the existing traditional instruction (TI).…

This paper explores secondary school students' representations of a geological map. Ninety-two high school students (ninth graders--15- to 16-years-old) participated in the survey in Turkey. The findings indicate that students have only a vague idea of how a geological map is constructed, and how the map is affected by the topography. The…

As twenty-first century skills become a greater focus in K-12 education, an infusion of technology that meets the needs of today's students is paramount. This study looks at the design and creation of a Multiplayer Educational Gaming Application (MEGA) for high school biology students. The quasi-experimental, qualitative design assessed the…

The aim of this paper is to study the epistemological views of science teachers for the following epistemological issues: scientific method, demarcation of scientific knowledge, change of scientific knowledge and the status of scientific knowledge. Teachers' views for each one of these epistemological questions were investigated during…

The current review is concerned with an information processing model used in science education. The purpose is to summarise the current theoretical understanding, in published research, of a number of factors that are known to influence learning and achievement. These include field independence, working memory, long-term memory, and the use of…

This study involved the development of a two-tier diagnostic instrument to assess Thai high school students' understanding of acid-base chemistry. The acid-base diagnostic test (ABDT) comprising 18 items was administered to 55 Grade 11 students in a science and mathematics programme during the second semester of the 2008 academic year. Analysis of…

The purpose of this study was to examine associations between Turkish high school students' perceptions of their science teachers' interpersonal behaviour and their attitudes towards science. Students' perceptions of the teacher-student interpersonal relationship were mapped with the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI), which uses two…

Technology and engineering education students responded to a survey regarding hands-on and hands-off activities. First, the students listed hands-on and hands-off activities and what characterized the two types of activities. Activities such as building or assembling something as well as working manually with tools were viewed as hands-on. Passive…

Teachers' views are worth hearing in order to get ideas on how to address the trend of declining enrolment in physics at the university level, which is regarded as a global problem. This study explores physics teachers' views on how to encourage more students to study physics at the university level. A sample of 166 physics teachers in Singapore…

Assessing creativity is commonly believed to be difficult but there is evidence that an intuitive, holistic assessment is easy and reliable. Given that children can engage in creative activity and teachers are expected to foster it, some assessment of it could aid planning and optimise support. Assessing creativity intuitively and holistically…

This research investigated Grades 5 and 6 science workbooks for the degree to which they promote scientific inquiry abilities, opportunities that students had to acquire these abilities and the obstacles hindering students from implementing them. A document review technique and a constant comparative method were applied sequentially. A total of 58…

The purpose of this study is to explore students' self-regulation and teachers' influence in science and to examine interplay between ethnicity and gender. Analysis of data from seven Oslo schools (1112 sampled students in the first year of high school) shows that the ethnic minority students reported using learning strategies in science more…

Understanding the science in a "socio-scientific issue" is at the heart of the varied definitions of "scientific literacy". Many consider that understanding evidence is necessary to participate in decision making and to challenge the science that affects people's lives. A model is described that links practical work, argumentation and scientific…