There is worldwide agreement that the understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy. However, evidence indicates that both pre-service and in-service science teachers hold naïve views about NOS. Even so, the characteristics of pre-service teachers that influence their learning of NOS are not fully…

This paper explores the spatial dimension of Fleming's Left Hand Rule (LHR), commonly-used in Physics instruction for determining the direction of force using the left hand's thumb, forefinger and middle finger. A new instrument was developed to gauge students' ability to coordinate their fingers in 3D space (egocentric frame of reference) based…

We investigate students' eye movements when they solve sequential and simultaneous synthesis physics problems. In sequential synthesis problems, multiple events occur chronologically, whereas in simultaneous synthesis problems, multiple events take place concurrently. We captured students' eye fixations on each problem diagram and recorded their…

While expository texts are an efficient and dominant genre used by science teachers in the United States, they generally lack justification for their claims and fail to reflect science as practice. In contrast, epistemically considerate texts detail specific scientific experiments, providing the reader insight into the methods and data of a…

Evaluating and improving instructional quality is important in pre-service teacher education, given it is a crucial factor for students' learning gains. This process is complex and involves multiple classroom events with various interpretations. Criteria for instructional quality are rarely applied systematically in teacher education, leading to…

Designing and interpreting controlled experiments are important inquiry skills addressed in many current science curricula. The relevant skills associated with the design and interpretation of controlled experiments are summarised under the term control-of-variables strategy (CVS). Research on elementary school students' CVS skills shows that they…

Visualisation has been a critical means of scientific reasoning, knowledge development, and communication. In science classrooms, visualisation plays significant roles for teaching and learning. To better understand the landscape of the existing research on visualisation for supporting student science learning in K to 12 classroom contexts, we…

While helping students develop informed views about nature of scientific inquiry (VNOSI) has been emphasised in science education, little is known regarding students' current VNOSI at a certain grade level and whether there was evidence of higher attainment of VNOSI in students in higher grades as compared to lower grades? The purpose of this…

Secondary school students often only use the rules for doing scientific inquiry when prompted, as if they fail to see the point of doing so. This qualitative design study explores conditions to address this problem in school science inquiry. Dutch students (N = 22, aged 14-15) repeatedly consider the quality of their work: in a conventional,…

Utilisation of instructional videos for science teaching has become more widespread due to the expansion of online teaching and learning environments and growing awareness of benefits of videos, such as enabling use of effective multiple representations. With this in mind, this study aimed to examine features of instructional videos for teaching…

The Model of the Use of Evolutionary Trees (MUET)-curricular module that systematically and comprehensively introduces the learning of evolutionary trees for the lower-level college students was developed and implemented in an introductory organismal biology laboratory course at a mid-size, doctoral degree-granting institution. A…

Teachers are key players in supporting the understanding of epistemological and social aspects affecting the development and validation of scientific knowledge, but they often hold inappropriate views of the Nature of Science (NOS), therefore hindering this understanding as an essential part of students' scientific literacy. To tackle this…

Cohesion plays an important role in science texts as their comprehension depends much on structural and textual signalling, which demonstrates the organisation of the text, the logical links of ideas, and the intended purpose of the writer. Particularly, research has shown that English learners (ELs) rely more on cohesive markers than their…

Reading can be considered constitutive epistemology for science and a fundamental aspect of scientific literacy. This study attempted to give further insights into the comprehension of different genres of science texts (textbook and popular science) and the assimilation of the academic language by adolescent age students. The writings 14- and…

If students are to acquire deep learning in science, they need to know about the nature of science (NOS), particularly not only the cognitive-epistemic but also the social-institutional aspects of NOS. In this paper, we investigate the content of the Norwegian science curriculum in order to establish how NOS is represented, in particular to the…