Positioned in the Hong Kong education context, this article evaluates the effects of teaching science through home and second languages (i.e. Chinese and English) in Secondary 2 (or eighth grade) science classrooms. A total of 479 students, divided into two language instruction groups, participated in a teaching intervention comprising 16 lessons…

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…

Lebanese educators claim that middle and secondary school students exhibit poor understanding of genetics due to misconceptions and difficulties that hinder progression in conceptual understanding of major genetics concepts and phenomena across different grade levels. They attributed these problems to Lebanon's ill-structured genetics curriculum…

This study is part of a cross-national research entitled "In the past and now: Constructivist practices in teaching chemistry--Bulgaria, the Balkans and Europe." The purpose of the research is to explore science secondary classroom environments in terms of the constructivist approach. The study has been carried out at international…

Knowledge structure is an important aspect for defining students' competency in biology learning, but how knowledge structure is influenced by the teaching process in naturalistic biology classroom settings has scarcely been empirically investigated. In this study, 49 biology lessons in the teaching unit "blood and circulatory system" in…

The way in which students view science and its practitioners, particularly during their late elementary and early secondary grade levels, has been at the core of numerous studies dating back to research by Mead & Metraux (Science 126:384-390, "1957"). In this study, we used the Draw-a-Scientist Test Checklist developed by Finson,…

The purpose of the current study was to explore learners' evaluation of the credibility of scientific models that represent natural entities and phenomena. Participants were 845 students in grades 9-11 (aged 15-17 years) and 108 prospective science teachers in Oman, totaling 953 students. A survey called Epistemologies about the Credibility of…

Students find science relevant to society, but they do not find school science interesting. This survey study analyzes Finnish grade 9 students' actual experiences with science teaching methods and their preferences for how they would like to study science. The survey data were collected from 3,626 grade 9 students (1,772 girls and 1,832 boys)…

This study developed, validated, and utilized the Technology Integrated Classroom Inventory (TICI) to examine technology-integrated science learning environments as perceived by secondary school students and teachers. Using technology-oriented classroom climate instruments and considering the science classroom's characteristics, TICI was…

This study investigated the effects of using the cooperative concept mapping (CCM) teaching approach on secondary school students' motivation in biology. A non equivalent control group design under the quasi-experimental research was used in which a random sample of four co-educational secondary schools was used. The four schools were randomly…