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…

Students' interest is considered an important learning outcome, but it is also a relevant predictor for student learning, and future vocational choices. According to numerous studies, however, students' interest in STEM fields usually declines during the course of secondary education. From the perspective of science education, it is therefore…

Food, cooking, and eating are commonly used as contexts or legitimations to teach and communicate science. However, for teaching to have contextual credibility, the relationship between subject and context is a relevant area of study. The present contribution describes an analysis of curricula from three Nordic countries shedding light on…

In this study, we present a new instrument, the Participation and Engagement Scale (PES), for the evaluation of the students' involvement in STEM-oriented activities. The instrument was administered to about 1000 secondary school students who participated in the activities of the Italian "Piano Nazionale Lauree Scientifiche" in Biology,…

Making decisions, reasoning, and constructing arguments with scientific evidence are essential skills for all members of society, especially in a world facing complex socioscientific issues such as climate change and pandemics. Argumentation is a complex linguistic practice but little is known about how students from diverse language backgrounds…

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…

This study aims at investigating students' awareness of green chemistry principles (GCPs) which are infused in two context-based projects that are related to socio-scientific issues, namely climate change and materials' recycling. At first, content analysis of the projects' activities showed the infusion of four GCPs. Subsequently, the students'…

This study took 'context' as a focal point in the context-based approach and its investigation was anchored on an analytical framework, which is composed of three dimensions of context: origins, intentions, and occasions. Content analysis was employed as the research methodology with 878 contexts identified from 96 copies of awarded chemistry…

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),…

The need to develop clean-energy storage systems, harvesting technologies, and new functional materials are but a few of the many contemporary challenges in the domain of science today. To address these challenges, problem solving has become a key skill of the 21st century. It is generally documented, however, that experts and students differ in…

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…