Problem-solving is, by nature, a creative process which, by teaching through the implementation of research and discovery activities, allows students to create their knowledge, revise it and link it to broader systems. The aim of the research was to describe and analyse the process of solving biological problems through activities that are…

Teachers lack effective curriculum-based instruments to assess their students' scientific competence that would provide information for modifying their inquiry instruction. The main purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Curriculum-Based Scientific Competence (CBSC) test to assess students' scientific competence in a 1-semester Grade…

Science teachers in many countries were required to shift from face-to-face (F2F) instruction to distance learning (DL) during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the aim of helping science teachers learn how to support their students in negotiating such shifts in the future, we used an online motivation survey based on achievement goal theory to…

Covariational reasoning (or the coordination of two dynamically changing quantities) is central to secondary STEM subjects, but research has yet to fully explore its applicability to elementary and middle-grade levels within various STEM fields. To address this need, we selected a globally referenced STEM assessment--the Trends in International…

Canonical coherence occurs when subject matter in school is organized to align with the logical structures of an academic discipline. Even though it is highly desired, this condition is an assumption that must be empirically tested, which was the rationale behind our examination of the coherence of topics from middle-school (grades 7-9) integrated…

Interactions in multilingual science classrooms involve local cognitive and sociocultural dimensions along with global contextual aspects such as language-in-education policies. The intersection of these has implications for providing quality science education and supporting diverse students. This study investigates interactions in Lebanese…

In many countries, integrating engineering into science education is regarded as the best means of improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. In Mainland China, some efforts have been made to integrate engineering into science, but problems regarding teacher factors hinder its effective implementation. To address…

Competitions are discussed as a measure to foster students' interest, especially for highly gifted and talented students. In the current study, participants of a cognitive school competition in science were compared to non-participants of the same age group (14-15) who either did not participate in any competition or who participated in a…

Students' attitudes and conceptions seem to be influenced by social/cultural contexts and interactions with other students from diverse backgrounds. Therefore, educators need to study attitudes, conceptions, and career choices in relation to diversity indicators. Such was one focus of the Science Education for Diversity project, which involved…

Common core standards, interdisciplinary education, and discipline-specific literacy are common international education reforms. The constructive-interpretative language arts pairs (speaking-listening, writing-reading, representing-viewing) and the communication, construction, and persuasion functions of language are central in these movements.…

Communication skills are one of the most important competencies for 21st century global citizens. Our guiding presupposition was that socioscientific issues (SSIs) could be used as an effective pedagogical tool for promoting students' communication skills by increasing peer interactions, stimulating students' reasoning, and in constructing shared…

The strong humanistic and ethics-oriented philosophy of Confucianism tends to lead people influenced by these principles to undervalue the importance of hands-on practice and creativity in education. GreenMech, a science and technology contest, was implemented to encourage real-world, hands-on problem solving in an attempt to mitigate this effect.…

The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-based measure of elementary students' science talk and to report students' benchmarks. The development procedure had three steps: defining the framework of the test, collecting and identifying key reference sets of science talk, and developing and verifying the science talk instrument. The…