This paper gives the rationale and a draft outline for a framework for education to teach epistemic insight into schools in England. The motivation to research and propose a strategy to teach and assess epistemic insight followed research that investigated how students and teachers in primary and secondary schools respond to "big…

The human relation to things in the world is at stake in the so-called post-humanist era where the distinction between human and non-human is blurred, as indicated in a term like 'the nano-self'. How should we understand the nature of our relation to things in this era? Or how can we describe an "educationally" meaningful relation we as…

Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits people obtain from nature contributing to our well-being. Although this concept has high didactic potential, its presence in education literature is scarce. This article presents the ES framework as a new teaching principle that, taught together with the biodiversity concept, may help students develop…

Science teaching always engages a philosophy of science. This article introduces a modern philosophy of science and indicates its implications for science education. The hermeneutic philosophy of science is the tradition of Kant, Heidegger, and Heelan. Essential to this tradition are two concepts of truth, truth as correspondence and truth as…

The field of science education has struggled to create robust, meaningful forms of education that effectively engage students from historically non-dominant communities and women. This paper argues that a primary issue underlying this on-going struggle pivots on constructions of nature-culture relations. We take up structuration theory (Giddens,…

Since the 1990s, researchers have increasingly drawn attention to the multiplicity of representations used in science. This issue of "RISE" advances this line of research by placing such representations at the centre of science teaching and learning. The authors show that representations do not simply transmit scientific information; they are…

This article focuses on the need for increased attention to content issues and working methods for science teaching in Early Childhood Education (ECE). Science education research emphasises the importance of not only focusing on specific phenomena, but also on the Nature of Science (NOS). NOS teaching deals with questions about what science is,…

Asserts that physics should be taught to stress the human aspects of laws of nature and scientific application of physical concepts. (CP)

This dissertation is aimed at articulating and empirically characterizing an expansive orientation to field-based socio-ecological systems learning that elevates participatory and ethically-engaged approaches to teaching and learning. Grounded in relational ways of knowing, this dissertation works to expand and transform normative educational…

In life history methodologies, 'human' lives appear to take primacy over other lives. Within science education literature, life history methods often are approached as reflective tools to make meaning out of teachers' pedagogical practices and commitments. In the present research, we tinker with life history research, to follow its performative…

Argues that most teachers do not understand the nature of human memory. Presents an informal introduction to human memory, including information on long-term retention, prior knowledge, retrieval, and cues. States that instructors can design memory-compatible instruction that makes recording and retrieval of new knowledge easier. (TW)

This article argues that the development of criticality in the three domains of knowledge, self and the world can and should be a goal for undergraduate learning in the sciences. It presents empirical evidence that this can be facilitated through teaching and learning that places a strong emphasis on the social dimensions of both the exercise and…

This article sketches a framework of ideas developed in the context of decades of physics teacher-education that was entitled the "perceptional approach". Individual learning and the scientific enterprise are interpreted as different manifestations of the same process aimed at understanding the natural and social worlds. The process is understood…

This article charts some of the historical paths that have helped bring forth, in late-modern societies, what I call scientised educational discourses and practices. Though the project of forming the 'scientific man' can be traced back to the nineteenth century, it is argued that the nature of the project changed once it became aligned with the…

The inclusion of engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as a key component of K-12 science learning has provided both opportunities and challenges for elementary teachers. One challenge is integrating the design thinking processes that undergird engineering with core science concepts and current issues facing scientists and…