The cognitive reflection test (CRT) assesses an individual's capacity to restrain impulsive and intuitive responses and to engage in critical reflection on mathematical problems. The literature indicates that several factors influence students' performance on CRT, including gender, age, and prior knowledge of mathematics. In this study, our…

Physics preparation for primary school teachers has received attention only in recent decades. Research on science education provides useful guidelines, often disregarded. Several interrelated research questions must be addressed by field research, namely, (a) which physics subjects to teach in primary school and its relationships with other…

As humanity reaches the 5.0 industrial revolution, education plays a critical role in boosting the quality of human resources. This paper reports bibliometric research on emerging TiP during 1993-2022 in the educational field to analyse its development on any level of education during the last three decades. This study employed a Scopus database.…

We investigated how the endorsement of gender stereotypes affects disciplinary identity across three different science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) areas: physics, biology, and chemistry, and whether such relationship is mediated by self-concept constructs, such as self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Building on the…

The purpose of this study was to analyse Italian high school and university students' attitudes towards physics using the Semiotic Cultural Psychological Theory (SCPT). In the SCPT framework, attitudes represent how individuals interpret their experience through the mediation of "generalized meaning" with which they are identified. A…

In this longitudinal study, we investigate how demographic, cognitive and meta-cognitive variables affect students' success in chemistry and physics exams in two Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics undergraduate courses, biology and engineering. Independent variables include high school final examination performance, chemistry and physics…

The article describes the analysis of the Italian physics curriculum documents in terms of the coverage of nature of science (NOS). NOS is not explicitly presented as part of the Italian high-school physics curriculum. The article focuses on analysing the implicit aspects of the curriculum documents. The Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) to NOS…

We report a research-based proposal on electromagnetic induction within the theoretical framework of the Model of Educational Reconstruction. The proposal is based on a sequence of inquiry-based experimental activities centered on hands-on materials and "Real-Time" quantitative experiments, through which students explore the…

School visits to research laboratories or facilities represent a unique way to bring students closer to science and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics careers. However, such visits can be very expensive for students and teachers, in terms of both time and money. In this paper, we present a possible alternative to on-site visits…

The overarching goal of this paper is to illustrate the interplay between theory, design principles, and curriculum (meant broadly, to include both written and enacted curriculum). This dialogue is illustrated in the context of the design and implementation of a particular curricular unit on thermodynamics intended for advanced secondary students…

Over the past few decades a growing awareness has developed in the science education community about the educational power of the history of science. Yet, the historical approach is not implemented in many ministries of education policies. In order to investigate what factors contribute to this, we have conducted a survey of attitudes toward the…

General relativity (GR) represents the most recent theory of gravity, on which all modern astrophysics is based, including some of the most astonishing results of physics research. Nevertheless, its study is limited to university courses, while being ignored at high-school level. To introduce GR in high school, one of the approaches that can be…

The paper contains progress reports supported by data about two short activities aimed at introducing physics themes in primary school. The first is a formal storytelling intervention named "Mommy Comet" carried out in first- and fifth-grade classes and concerning motion in the absence of forces in the Solar System broad context. The…

This study investigated the effects of providing domain information in an early stage of an inquiry process, together with an aligned hypothesis scratchpad, on inquiry learning, and hypothesis generation in particular. Participants were provided with basic domain information that was adapted to their prior knowledge (experimental condition) or…

The need for an effective communication between scientific research and society is widely known to the broadest scientific community, and the sad times we are living in make it even clearer. At the same time, the need of establishing long-term structural connections between the worlds of research and that of education and scientific communication…