Research calls for teachers to integrate students' funds of knowledge to bridge the gap between students' lived experiences with that of learning science -- that is, to make science relevant for students. Based on this critical practice, this exploratory study focuses on how pre-service science teachers integrate relevance, specifically students'…

Designing and conducting sound and informative experiments is an important aspect of inquiry learning. Students, however, often design experiments that do not allow them to reach conclusions. Considering the difficulties students experience with the process of designing experiments, additional guidance in the form of an Experiment Design Tool…

Experimentation is a complex problem-solving process. In biology lessons, experiments involve creative thinking and open discovery; however, they still require some degree of instructional guidance. The right balance between discovery learning and instructional guidance depends substantially on students' prior knowledge. Students with low prior…

The past century has seen a debate on what characterises a scientifically literate citizen. Originally, scientific literacy implied that a citizen should know the products of science but has grown to incorporate processes of science and aspects of the nature of science. Studies on students' epistemic knowledge are rarer than ones on students'…

The present study investigated the influence of two factors, namely, argumentation approach and students' prior knowledge on the learning of scientific concept and argumentation in descriptive and theoretical scientific concept-based topics. Four 7th grade science classes totalling 138 students participated and were assigned to four groups…

The purpose of this study was to quantitatively assess the integration of computational thinking with learning about biological evolution. Specifically, we investigated the effectiveness of a framework from a recently developed learning progression that emphasises the complex nature of teaching both computational thinking and biological evolution.…

This study investigated eighth-grade science students' (13-14-year-olds) perceptions of their vocabulary knowledge, learning, and content achievement. Data sources included pre- and posttest of students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge, students' perceptions of vocabulary and reading strategies surveys, and a content achievement test.…

This study investigated the effects of students' prior science knowledge and online learning approaches (social and individual) on their learning with regard to three topics: science concepts, inquiry, and argumentation. Two science teachers and 118 students from 4 eighth-grade science classes were invited to participate in this research. Students…

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is central to teachers' professional knowledge impacting student learning and thus is considered a key attribute of teacher quality. Teacher quality is often indirectly examined by proxy measures such as degrees, certification, and teaching experience. To date, little is known how those proxy measures are…

This study describes primary school students' knowledge about rainfall, clouds and rainbow formation together with teachers' predictions about students' performance. In our study, primary school students' (N = 177) knowledge about rainfall and rainbow formation was examined using structured interviews with open-ended questions. Primary school…

Inquiry-based learning can be an effective approach when students are provided with sufficient guidance. However, there is an ongoing debate among practitioners about the nature, type, and level of such guidance. This study investigated the effects on middle school students' (N = 116) conceptual knowledge and inquiry skills acquisition of…

The ability of school students to use health-related knowledge for their and their community's needs is referred to as health literacy and is regarded as a combination of knowledge and motivational factors. In the case of cancer literacy, high-school students have some knowledge about risk factors, but not much is known about their understanding…

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of content knowledge on students' socio-scientific argumentation in the Swedish National Assessment in biology, chemistry and physics for 12-year-olds. In Sweden, the assessment of socio-scientific argumentation has been a major part of the National Assessment during three consecutive years and…

Teachers make a difference for the outcome of their students in science classrooms. One focus in this context lies on teachers' professional knowledge. We describe this knowledge according to three domains, namely (1) content knowledge (CK), (2) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and (3) curricular knowledge (CuK). We hypothesise a positive…

Current science education efforts emphasise the need to train students to understand the nature of scientific work. In geosciences, training students to understand how science works does not only promote their interest and community engagement in the field, but also has the potential to promote awareness and ethics. However, instructional…