While there has been much interest in the power of student-generated multiple representations to promote student reasoning and conceptual understanding, most studies of student explanations have been of written artefacts or only included diagrams as an adjunct to written explanations. This approach may be because teachers do not have an accessible…

This paper describes the development, final design and validation of an instrument that measures a range of student interactions and satisfaction in undergraduate chemistry laboratories. Student surveys or conceptual and attitudinal instruments are widely used techniques for collecting relevant information on student learning. However, there is a…

Educational reforms in Qatar have seen the implementation of inquiry-based learning and other student-centred pedagogies. However, there have been few efforts to investigate how these adopted western pedagogies are aligned with the high context culture of Qatar. The study presented in this article highlights the implementation of a student-centred…

This study investigated the understanding of science process skills (SPS) of 329 science teachers from 52 primary schools selected by random sampling. The understanding of SPS was measured in terms of conceptual and operational aspects of SPS using an instrument called the "Science Process Skills Questionnaire" (SPSQ) with a Cronbach's…

This study explored factors of students' mental states, including emotion, intention, internal mental representation, and external mental representation, which can affect their learning performance. In evaluating students' mental states during the science learning process and the relationship between mental states and learning…

Students are generally known to memorise and regurgitate chemical equations without sufficient understanding of the changes that occur at the particulate level. In addition, they often fail to recognise the significance of the symbols and formulas that are used to represent chemical reactions. This article describes an evaluation of the ability of…

This research involved naive physics learners who were interested in majoring in science or engineering. In a semester-long quasi-experimental study, open-ended pretests and weekly interviews were used to analyse the progressive development of students' conceptions relating to sound and wave motion. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted…

Explores a case study of a class of 10th grade students whose learning of genetics involved activities using BioLogica, a computer program that features multiple external representations (MERs). Findings indicate that the MERs in BioLogica contributed to students' development of genetics reasoning by engendering their motivation and interest but…

Examines the role of practical activities in secondary science from an international perspective and contrasts this with a developing country perspective. In classroom studies of biology practical work, practical activities were found to be more effective in enhancing student achievement and skills than traditional didactic classroom approaches.…

Examines how chemistry/science textbooks from different countries and written at different levels of education deal with physical and chemical change. Results indicate that the ideas concerning the teaching and learning of physical and chemical change evident in textbooks are not complete and textbooks seldom justify the content they cover in…

Reports on a study involving two each year-12, undergraduate and postgraduate Australian students. Elicits learners' mental models for chemical bonding using semi-structured interviews comprising a three-phase interview protocol. Concludes that learners across all three academic levels preferred simple, realistic mental models for chemical…

Discusses student and teacher perceptions of a new development in the use of the predict-observe-explain (POE) strategy. This development involves the incorporation of POE tasks into a multimedia computer program that uses real-life, digital video clips of difficult, expensive, time consuming, or dangerous scenarios as stimuli for these tasks.…

The purpose of the study was to investigate secondary students' understanding of the descriptive and predictive nature of teaching models used in representing compounds in introductory organic chemistry. Of interest were the relationships between teaching models, scientific models, and students' mental models and expressed models. The results from…

This study reports on teaching practices in science classrooms of Indonesian lower secondary schools in rural areas. Using six schools from three districts in the province of Kalimantan Selatan as the sample, this study found that most teaching practices in science classrooms in rural schools were teacher-centred with students copying notes.…