This multiple case study elicited the voices of four 8th grade students, from a rural, low-income school district, who participated in STEM career explorations during their science class. Based on students' written reflections during career explorations, interviews, and from field notes, we analyzed the ways students talked about their lives and…

There has been a growing awareness that graphing is an essential part of the science curriculum. While much research has focused on student conceptions and abilities regarding graphical representations, only few studies have investigated what teachers think about them and how they use graphs in science class. The purpose of this study is to…

Chemistry, with its related technical applications, is of crucial importance for creating a sustainable future. Without chemistry, current challenges will be difficult to solve. Such problems include meeting most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) announced by the United Nations and adherence to planetary limits, for example, novel…

Inquiry-based science instruction has been advocated for decades. However, the implementation of inquiry teaching and learning in everyday classrooms is rather limited due to various factors. Previous research investigated implementations of inquiry-based teaching at the activity level with self-reported methods. However, little is known about how…

Peer assessment has been shown to advance learning, for example, by improving one's work, but the variance of learning benefits within or between studies has not been explained. The purpose of this case study was to examine what kinds of pathways students have through peer assessment and to study which factors affect them when peer assessment is…

STEM integration has often been recommended as a way to support students to develop twenty-first century skills needed to function in the complex modern world. In order for students to experience integration, however, their teachers need support in designing, developing and implementing integrated curricular instruction, which is often at odds…

In this article, the authors describe critical issues related to the pursuit of rigorous and innovative research in the fields of mathematics and science education. The paper is framed to help researchers consider aspects of both their research project and their research proposal. The authors describe features of high-quality and fundable research…

A learning format gaining attention that encourages language acquisition in science is the use of dynamic models as instructional tools. This grounded theory investigates the impact of the dynamic food chain model as an alternative lesson for teaching food chains. The researchers examined the impact of a paper-based activity and a dynamic model…

In this study, students enrolled in a basic physics class participated in one of the online citizen science projects available on the Zooniverse website (www.zooniverse.org) as a homework assignment. They then wrote a 300-500-word reflection about their experience addressing several questions given as prompts. The analysis of the responses showed…

In this article, we assume that discursive language aspects of science education are highly intertwined with students' knowledge-building and meaning-making in science. In an empirical case study, we investigate secondary students' (ages 15 to 16) discursive language use during group interactions. The focus is on how students define and explain…

The purpose of the current study was to explore and further elucidate secondary teachers' knowledge of students' conceptions (KOSC) on the topic of evolution by natural selection. Prior research has documented students' natural selection conceptions, but allowing the opportunity for teachers to describe their own students' conceptions can permit…

Formal teacher preparation programs are facing the challenge of ineffective instruction of educational theories. It is partly because educational theories are taught through direct instruction, which could lead to problems such as impersonality and low motivation of pre-service teachers. In addition, it is also an unwieldy task for teacher…

Literacy instruction in science and math in elementary education lays a critical foundation for later content literacy development and the learning of content subjects in middle and high school. However, limited research has investigated the theoretical basis of instructional practices for science and math literacy instruction at the elementary…

Practical work is widely seen as an important element of the science curriculum. However, there is a long-standing debate about the educational aims of practical work and about why it is important. Aims suggested include the contributions that practical work can make to understanding, to the acquisition of professional and personal skills, and to…

This study explored the teaching and learning beliefs of qualified (in-field) secondary science teachers who were teaching mathematics out-of-field that is, without qualification. The relationship between secondary teachers' beliefs about their in-field subject--science and their out-of-field subject--mathematics was examined. The theory of…