Education systems in once-colonised locations cannot escape the abiding legacy of colonisation. Science, in particular, has played a prominent role in the reasonings and rationalisations of the colonial process. When considered in the context of an education system established by imperial powers, it is difficult to reconcile processes of…

Thought experiments are personal and tacit processes of experimentation that scientists perform within their own imagery in formulating new theories or refuting existing theories. However, by viewing learning as a social process, this study aims to show that thought experiments can also be constructed collaboratively and to present a detailed…

The paper reports a study that focussed on investigating the effectiveness of Toulmin's argument pattern (TAP) within Think-Read-Group-Share-Reflect (TRGSR) scientific argumentation strategy on higher secondary students' critical thinking. A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest-control group design was deployed. The subjects were 50 twelfth grade…

Nature of science (NOS) has become one of the major emphases in curriculum and assessment. This study explores "what" NOS is included and how this is achieved in the Hong Kong biology curriculum and 7-year high-stakes assessments. While conceptualizations of the official definition of NOS differ, this study employs the family resemblance…

Indonesia is a religious country that values local wisdom and customs. Although the characteristics of the Indonesian people may provide novel insight into and distinguished views on the theory of evolution by natural selection, few studies have explored how Indonesians view the theory of biological evolution. Thus, this study aimed to examine the…

Following on earlier examinations of biology high school textbooks' handling of race, this study examines eleven biology textbooks, intended for US high school use and published between 2014 and 2019. It offers a close reading of these textbooks' treatment of four topics that have been associated with race: genetic disorders, human origins, skin…

Increasingly, educators in the biological and social sciences teach about the concept of race from a social constructionist perspective. Scholarship on race pedagogy suggests that to fully appreciate the complexity of race, students must be able to both deconstruct multiple false beliefs about the fixed nature of race (i.e., racial essentialism)…

Genetic essentialism of race is the belief that racial groups have different underlying genetic essences which cause them to differ physically, cognitively, or behaviorally. Apparently, no published studies have explored if belief in genetic essentialism of race among adolescents differs after many weeks of formal instruction about different…

The paper presents an experimental study that examines the conditions required for news about behavioral genetics to activate genetic essentialism beliefs. Nine hundred sixty-five adults living in the USA were randomly assigned to read either a control news article or one of the three versions of a news story about behavioral genetics. The…

Belief in genetic determinism (BGD) has been associated with increased social stereotyping and prejudicial views and consequently is of significant concern to science educators. The Public Understanding and Attitudes towards Genetics and Genomics (PUGGS) instrument was developed to measure relationships among BGD, genetics knowledge, and…

Conflation of sex and gender is implicated in the development of essentialist thinking, which has been linked to the justification of systems of prejudice in modern society. This exploratory study presents findings from a person randomized control trial conducted with 460 students in 8th-10th grade that investigated the extent to which students…

This study focuses the emerging need for young people to critically respond to alarming messages in contemporary media highlighting the potential benefits or harms of certain foods. Besides being technical, advancements in the field of nutrition reported in media are often of tentative and speculative character, primarily selected and constructed…

Scientific argumentation is a key practice in the construction, confirmation, and legalization of scientific knowledge. Although studies on scientific argumentation have been relatively plentiful, there are few quantitative studies on how students mentally perceive scientific argumentation, given that traditional quantitative tools such as Likert…

The aim of this research was to establish the effects of argumentation and the quality of arguments related to history of the development of organic chemistry: (i) on the level of the pupils' knowledge about the composition, structure and general properties of organic compounds; and (ii) on their perception of the key aspect of NOS that scientific…

Scientific knowledge is advanced because scientists manage uncertainty. Although managing uncertainty is an essential practice of science, transferring it from expert settings to K-12 classrooms is problematic because, understandably, students are not familiar with the intentions of scientists. Few studies have explored learning science as an…