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 paper analyses the current state of postcolonial and decolonial science teaching, based on a systematic review of the literature, with a special focus on the European context. It shows that currently, a very narrow view on postcolonial science teaching prevails, limiting its scope to former colonies. A total of 227 articles published…

Explaining phenomena associated with a system involves describing a system's structure and articulating the process through which the system's structure changes over time. This paper defines geo-sequential reasoning in the context of plate tectonics and uses it to analyse how students explain the geological processes that occur along convergent…

To promote scientific literacy in school science, students need to learn key concepts in science, along with the nature of scientific knowledge and how it is generated. Ideally, this learning mirrors authentic scientific inquiry through student engagement in three key epistemic practices: flexibility and creativity, knowledge construction, and…

Troubleshooting activities require students to diagnose teacher-crafted erroneous examples by detecting and explaining the conceptual errors driving them. In a previous study, the author tested whether diagnosing erroneous examples and then scoring them using a rubric that contained the related worked examples, a step-by-step strategy to solve a…

Integrated science is a ubiquitous school subject that is found in primary and middle-school levels around the world. Being a hybrid subject comprising several science disciplines, it poses many challenges to teachers as they are obliged to teach beyond their disciplinary comfort zones. In addition, this subject is prone to a lack of coherence,…

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…

Promoting problem-solving in students is an important aim of secondary science education. There is a mismatch, however, between the complex, ill-structured nature of realistic scientific problems, versus the well-structured problems students are generally confronted with. The current study investigates a teaching-learning strategy that resolves…

We examine how a unique professional learning experience for teachers, which consists of an opportunity to (a) co-design a new instructional model intended to give students opportunities to participate in scientific argumentation, (b) develop instructional materials based on the new model, and then (c) use the materials inside their classrooms, is…

This study assessed teachers' understanding about the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) and whether this understanding was reflected in their students' responses. The data were collected through the 'Views About Scientific Inquiry' (VASI) questionnaire, a reliable tool for assessing understanding about the NOSI. The sample included science…

This study investigates the alignment between curriculum standards and textbooks, based on a standards-based science education context. The analysis sample includes the High School Biology Curriculum Standards and five editions of biology textbooks in China. Porter's alignment model is used to construct a two-dimensional (content areas and…

Professional development courses help teachers integrate new content knowledge into the high-school curriculum. Designing practical online courses for this purpose is challenging, particularly in emerging fields such as nanotechnology. In this study, we evaluated such a course in three complementary dimensions: (1) knowledge, (2) the complexity of…

Context-Based Learning (CBL) and learning through developing and using models are two important teaching approaches for chemistry conceptual understanding. We aimed to examine the influence of a CBL approach on students' understanding of Multiple Models of Knowledge Representations ("MMKRs") and "multiple molecular…

There are many studies related to gender representation in science textbooks. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which physics textbooks portray women: how women are situated in occupations or works, laboratory activities, and achievements, or to their characters in relation to women's stuff. This textual analysis aims to fill…

Using a phenomenological lens, we investigated how online curriculum resources can support secondary science teachers to explore contemporary science practices with their students. The research used a social constructivist theoretical and a hermeneutic phenomenology methodological framework to describe and interpret the teacher/participants'…