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…

Science teachers mediate social and academic language in science classrooms through teacher talk and classroom discourse. In multilingual classrooms, ways home and international languages are deployed can affect conceptual learning of science. This study investigates, through Bakhtin's dialogic perspective, multilingual language practices and…

This study explores prospective primary school teachers' misconceptions concerning basic concepts in chemistry. The data was gathered during the years 2012-2016 among first-year primary school teachers in Finland (N = 389). The results show that every year, as many as 40%-80% of teachers share the same kinds of misconceptions as children ages 5-12…

Research has shown that achieving gender equality in science goes beyond equal gender ratios in the classroom. Female students in science disciplines with relatively higher female participation rates (e.g. biology and chemistry) still experience similar gender issues as students in male-dominated science disciplines (e.g. physics and mathematics).…

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…

Research points to the important role achievement emotions play in academic performance and career choices, yet few studies have examined achievement emotions in non-Western contexts. The current study extends this research base by examining students' achievement emotions among 103 eleventh-grade high school chemistry students in China. Using…

Against the background of many studies focusing either on scientific reasoning or views on the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI), the aim of this article is to present and empirically analyse a framework that associates these central science education constructs. Based on the idea of inquiry methods, the "ScieNo"-framework includes…

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…

Light is used ubiquitously across science and engineering to explore, characterise, understand matter, and catalyse processes. Relative to its utility in science and engineering, very little research has been conducted on how students develop an understanding of light-matter interactions, especially at the quantum level, which is necessary to…

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…

Adding to concerns about falling participation rates in science education, the profile of certain student groups who go on to study decreases, particularly as the year level increases. The aim of this paper is to examine if, and in what ways, demographic factors predict students' post-16 participation in biology, physics, chemistry and earth/space…

This study aimed at investigating the issue of domain specificity of motivation across specific science disciplines (chemistry and physics) in combination with influencing factors related with students' academic major and gender. A clustered sampling was used to select 281 participants who were undergraduate students (105 males and 176 females)…

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…