Understanding the nature of science (NOS) is an important goal of science education, and textbooks are a key factor in shaping students' conceptions of NOS. In this study, we analysed NOS represented in middle school chemistry textbooks in the Chinese mainland. The selected materials were three most commonly adopted textbook series, which were…

A widespread call has been made to develop and support more integrated approaches to STEM education. The first law of thermodynamics serves as a guiding principle for the crosscutting concept of energy and matter. A qualitative interview study was undertaken to support integrated approaches to STEM education by exploring how chemistry, physics,…

Across science disciplines, light is a common tool for measuring, characterizing, and catalysing molecules and molecular processes. Despite the ubiquity of light-based tools, little research has been done to investigate how students understand light and light-matter interactions (LMI). This topic is typically first introduced in first-year…

The study of questions has occupied a prominent role in the research into classroom discourse. For science teaching, questions are fundamental since they can connect students with the patterns of scientific thinking. In this article, we developed analytical tools to investigate the epistemic dimension of questions in chemistry teaching. We draw…

In this study, we compared the effects of cooperative flipped learning (CFL) on science achievement and learning motivation with those of simple flipped learning (SFL) and traditional lecture (TL) using a mixed-methods design. Three classes containing a total of 65 first-year high school students in South Korea were randomly assigned to the CFL,…

General chemistry are key gateway courses for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. To improve student outcomes, it is critical both to identify at-risk students and implement evidence-based instructional strategies and interventions. These remain active areas of investigation, with recent literature showing that…

We studied the emotions experienced by students during the last two years of compulsory secondary education (15 and 16 years old) when learning physics and chemistry. The objective of this piece of research was to establish different relationship between emotions felt by students and variables like the didactic methodology or the kind of science…

Recently, the chemistry education community has focused considerable effort on incorporating systems thinking into chemistry education as a means to address global challenges such as sustainability. In this project, a series of exploratory workshops was held with secondary educators (N = 12) and tertiary educators and researchers (N = 16),…

This study investigated the time effect of cooperative games on students' emotions of learning science and the treatment effect on their chemistry achievement. This quasi-experimental study compared the use of cards, board games, and riddles, and the use of conventional paper-and-pencil exercises to learn the basics of chemical elements and…

Getting students to understand the particulate nature of matter is a major challenge for chemistry education. In upper secondary school students commonly struggle to distinguish between intra- and intermolecular bonding and analyse chemical bonding in terms of electronegativity. In this study, we explore how creative drama may be used in chemistry…

This study concerns a framework for designing Teaching-Learning Sequences that aims to integrate the implementation of scientific practices in the context of daily problems. Said framework consists of three stages (formulation of the design principles, instructional design and design of the learning activities). It is based on four design…

The importance of attitudes and other variables of the affective domain in education is acknowledged for a long time. In this study, we used an attitude questionnaire to survey 498 Portuguese 9th-grade students to determine the predictive ability of the attitudes towards the discipline of Physics-chemistry on school achievement. Possible gender…

Bringing design practices to chemistry education is gaining interest with recent science curriculum reforms emphasising design, and calls for integrated STEM education. Design is a central practice in the chemistry discipline, and could foster meaningful chemistry education. Although chemistry teachers are key in bringing design to chemistry…

The term 'experiment' is used in different ways to mean different things in school science. This study examines the meanings of 'experiment' and how they have changed in the intended chemistry curriculum (ICC) in China since the early 1950s. A mixed methodology was adopted to analyse the 11 ICC documents from a socio-historical perspective. The…

Previous work at Monash University has shown that students recognise that inquiry-, problem-, context- and industry-based experiments were better contextualised, more open to decision making and aided in the development of scientific and transferable skills. This study investigated whether these gains persisted over a longer time scale, rather…