While the importance of explicit and reflective NOS instruction is clear in the literature, questions remain about how to enact such instruction. That is, literature is sometimes unclear in defining how to enact explicit and reflective NOS instruction. While some authors recommend using questions (e.g., Clough 2007) to enact effective NOS…

This research investigated the effect of modeling activities on grade 5 students' informal reasoning about a real-life issue. An instrumental case study was conducted with 17 students (7 female and 10 male) at a public middle school in Turkey. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and student worksheets. The students' informal…

There is growing evidence that science capital (science-related forms of social and cultural capital) and family habitus (dispositions for science) influence STEM career decisions by youth. This study presents reliability and validity evidence for a survey of factors that influence career aspirations in science. Psychometric properties of the…

In longitudinal studies, measurement invariance is required to conduct substantive comparisons over time or across groups. In this study, we examined measurement invariance on a recently developed instrument capturing student preferences for seven instructional strategies related to science learning and career interest. We have labeled these seven…

According to a report by the Turkish Industry and Business Association, Turkey will need approximately 1 million individuals to be employed in Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) fields by 2023, and 31% of this requirement will not be met. For continuous economic development, there is a need to integrate STEM into education in…

Energy is considered both as a disciplinary core idea and as a concept cutting across science disciplines. Most previous approaches studied progressing energy understanding in specific disciplinary contexts, while disregarding the relation of understanding across them. Hence, this study provides a systematic analysis of cross-disciplinary energy…

Background: Gamification is the use of game design elements, such as rules of play, point scoring and competition, in a non-game context, in learning activities. We designed a game, based on the famous augmented reality game "Pokémon GO," called Insects GO in which players should capture images of real insects with their mobile phones.…

Background: Museums have been paying an increasing attention to the design of experiences conducive to informal learning. While spontaneous inquiries in museums often pique visitors' intrinsic motivation to learn, certain structures or scaffolds are needed to facilitate sense making in museum learning. Two promising approaches are identified:…

A study is presented that explores how students' knowledge structures, as related to the scientific method, compare at different student ages. A word association test comprised of ten total stimulus words, among them "experiment," "science fair," and "hypothesis," is used to probe the students' knowledge structures.…

Background: Being able to think independently is a must for students to construct new knowledge in their minds. Self-explaining is a constructive learning strategy that encourages students to think for themselves and to make inferences that go beyond the given information. The Self-explain--Discuss--Re-explain (SDR) strategy adapted from…

Background: Uncertainty is a crucial element of scientific knowledge growth. Students should have some understanding of how science knowledge is developed and why scientific conclusions are considered more or less certain than others. A component of the nature of science, it is considered an important aspect of science education and allows…

Part of learning a new discipline is learning the language used in the discipline. For mathematics, emergent multilingual learners (EML) must learn English and mathematical symbols in order to make meaning and communicate. The mathematics community's understanding of communication is complex and includes the use of natural language, incorporation…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the influence of participating in a STEM Academy (STEMA) on girls' mathematics, science, engineering, and technology self-efficacy and STEM attitudes. Twenty-eight sixth grade girls participating in a STEMA were individually matched with sixth grade girls not participating in a STEMA. Both…