Students of English as a second language who major in science and technology use English-language textbooks to ensure that they can read English materials upon graduation. Research indicates that teachers spend little time helping these students on the linguistic complexity of such textbooks. Vocabulary, grammar, and article structure are elements…

This study examines the impact of argumentation practices on pre-service teachers' understanding of chemical equilibrium. The sample consisted of 100 pre-service teachers in two classes of a public university. One of these classes was assigned as experimental and the other as control group, randomly. In the experimental group, the subject of…

Curriculum developers and researchers have promoted context-based programmes to arrest waning student interest and participation in the enabling sciences at high school and university. Context-based programmes aim for student connections between scientific discourse and real-world contexts to elevate curricular relevance without diminishing…

Problems persist with physics learning in relation to students' understanding and use of representations for making sense of physics concepts. Further, students' views of physics learning and their physics learning processes have been predominantly found to reflect a "surface" approach to learning that focuses on mathematical…

Although research in science education has led to new assessment forms and functions, the reality is that little work has been done to unpack and capture what it means for a teacher to develop expertise at assessing science. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I suggest a conceptualization of assessment expertise that is organized around…

To gain a better understanding of teachers' beliefs about teaching, as compared with their in-reality classroom practices, case studies were constructed with four science teachers in different schools in Egypt. The main aims of this article were to provide an answer to the research question, "To what extent do science teachers'…

Engaging students with material associated with public budgeting processes can be a challenge. Our experience in an interdisciplinary seminar on education politics and policy suggests that a budget simulation exercise is an effective tool to achieve multiple objectives, including increased student engagement and strengthening student-learning…

Using a pre-/posttest research design, this article measures the learning impact of active-learning techniques such as role-playing simulations in an international relations course. Using the students' different responses to the pre- and postsimulation surveys in a quasi-experimental design whereby two sections that were taught by the same…

Simulations are being used more and more in political science generally and in international relations specifically. While there is a growing body of literature describing different simulations and a small amount of literature that empirically tests the impact of simulations, scholars have written very little linking the pedagogic theory behind…

How can international politics courses be used to generate global civic engagement? The article describes how experiential learning can be used to stimulate student interest in issues of contemporary, global significance and to build students' repertoire of globally and locally relevant civic skills. It describes how students can become…

Assessment through simulation is something that political science pedagogy has yet to explore in a robust manner. This article advances analysis of social science simulation and assessment by laying out a typology of active-learning activities that isolates and examines their potential for assessment. In short, we argue that there are essentially…

This article examines how students' common-sense conceptualizations of "nation," specifically the Swedish nation, operate in teaching situations in which a critical constructivist theory of "nation" is part of the curriculum. Taking its point of departure from discussions of conceptual change, this article examines how…

This article explores the integration of a multiweek legislative simulation with the Blackboard (9.1) Platform in an effort to understand how technology may increase student engagement, collaborative learning, and assessment. We consider the ways in which classroom technologies--blogs and online peer and self assessment tools, in particular--can…

It is widely held among biology teachers that fieldwork is valuable, but little is heard about students' perception of fieldwork or about the reasons for their liking or disliking fieldwork. This paper uses data from students to explore the hypotheses (1) that biology students with a positive perception of fieldwork have a less positive…

This article reports on a classroom study of a unit on New Zealand birds that focused on adaptation and conservation in a Year 7 class. The unit used a "context as social circumstances" model. The researchers observed the nine lessons and interviewed students, the classroom teacher, and three other teachers who had taught the same unit.…