Students' abilities to master the genres of science must include not only factual knowledge. They also have to negotiate what they want to achieve with their texts and their ideas about writing and themselves as writers and science students. In this article, classroom observations, text analysis and interviews are combined in a case study of two…

This study explores the impact of a cryogenics-based enrichment programme, which involves demonstrations that use liquid nitrogen, on attitudes towards science and the learning of science concepts. The findings presented in this paper are based on a sample of 214 fifth-grade students from two schools in Singapore who had their enrichment lesson in…

The qualitative study described in this paper examined the effectiveness of bridging analogies intended to bring about conceptual change as part of a constructivist approach to teaching about action-reaction forces in the 'at rest' condition in physics. Twenty-one 15-year-old students were involved in the investigation with subgroups previously…

The purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire that measures students' motivation toward science learning (SMTSL). Six scales were developed: self-efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, performance goal, achievement goal, and learning environment stimulation. In total, 1407 junior high school students from central…

This paper presents an analysis of how affordances of ICT-rich environments identified from a recent review of the research literature can support students in learning science in schools within a proposed framework for pedagogical practice in science education. Furthermore other pedagogical and curriculum innovations in science education…

This study investigated which plants and animals Swiss children found most attractive and evaluated the effect of an educational programme on children's preferences for species. More than 4000 pupils (8-16 years old) from 248 classes participated in the study. Possible effects of the programme were studied with the help of questionnaires using a…

The aim of teaching science at secondary school level is that of achieving the scientific literacy of all citizens. This must involve diverse objectives, among which may be found the development of procedural skills (thought, manipulative, communicative, etc.). The new curricula of many countries provide for these objectives. However, it is…

This article reports research from a project set up to implement 'bridging work' in science in England. Group interviews of 59 pupils in Year 6 (at the end of primary school) and 48 pupils in Year 7 (at beginning of secondary school) were carried out after pupils had completed bridging work. Twenty-six of this sample were the same pupils.…

Design-based science (DBS) is a science pedagogy in which new scientific knowledge and problem-solving skills are constructed in the context of designing artifacts. This paper examines whether the enactment of a DBS unit supported students' efforts to construct and transfer new science knowledge and 'designerly' problem-solving skills to the…

This article reports the results of an analysis of 1676 science and technology questions submitted by Israeli children to a series of television programmes. It categorizes the children's questions with reference to five different coding schemes: field of interest, motivation for asking the question, type of information requested, country-specific…

This study investigated relationships between students' perceptions of their teachers' interpersonal behaviour and their subject-related attitude in primary science classes in Brunei. Teacher-student interpersonal behaviour was mapped with the "Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction" (QTI) and reported in terms of two independent dimensions called…

This paper highlights specific aspects of high-school students' reasoning while coping with a modeling task of plant growth in a computer-supported educational environment. It is particularly concerned with the modeling levels ('macro-phenomenological' and 'micro-conceptual' level) activated by peers while exploring plant growth and with their…

This article is a contribution to the characterization of teacher-pupil interactions during scientific inquiry. Attention is paid to conclusion phases, as it is at this point in the interaction that a pupil's production is to be accepted or rejected. Sixteen sessions taught by eight teachers in junior high schools and high schools were recorded,…

It is widely recognized that lectures continue to dominate college chemistry instruction, especially in developing countries, and that lectures limit student intellectual engagement. To address this concern, a General Chemistry course in a Philippine university was reconstructed to implement an instructional cycle consisting of three phases: a…

The study is aimed at investigating the effects of four learning methods on students' scientific inquiry skills. The four learning methods are: (a) metacognitive-guided inquiry within asynchronous learning networked technology (MINT); (b) an asynchronous learning network (ALN) with no metacognitive guidance; (c) metacognitive-guided inquiry…