A major concern in science education is how to help students form science identity to increase their aspiration for STEM careers. Given the key role of experiences in individual's science identity formation, STEM experiences related to project-based learning (PBL) have received increasing attention in recent years. The purpose of this study was to…

Ironically, flat-Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and climate change naysayers trust in science. Unfortunately, they trust the "wrong" science. That conundrum lies at the heart of scientific literacy in an age of well-funded commercial and ideological interests and overwhelming digital information. The core question for the citizen-consumer is…

This article focuses on "uncertainty"--ways in which scientists recognize and analyze limits in their studies and conclusions. We distinguish uncertainty from (un)trustworthiness--ways in which scientific reports can be affected by conscious deception or unconscious bias. Scientific journal articles typically include analyses and…

Many authors blame postmodernism and studies on Sociology and Anthropology of Science (Science Studies) for the rise of relativism and anti-science movements. Despite such criticism, Science Studies have always been concerned with the construction of the "common world" (a shared reality), while the anti-science movement goes in the…

Our purpose in this article is to discuss the roles for HPSS in Science Education considering the crisis of COVID-19, as well as to think what Science Education could look like beyond the pandemic. Considering the context of a pandemic as a starting point, we defend in this article the thesis that contours of public controversy involving COVID-19…

The move from respecting science to "scientism," i.e., the idealization of science and scientific method, is simple: We go from acknowledging the sciences as fruitful human activities to oversimplifying the ways they work, and accepting a fuzzy belief that "Science" and "Scientific Method," will give us a direct…

This paper discusses essential elements of the philosophical works of Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) and their potential interpretation for the teaching and learning of science. In the early twentieth century, Fleck made substantial contributions to understanding the sociological character of the nature of science and explaining the embedding of science…

Many of the major figures in the history of science have produced literary works, but the relationship between their poetic texts and their scientific work is often underestimated. This paper illuminates the poetry of Erwin Schrödinger--one of the premier figures in twentieth-century science, and an accomplished poet in both English and his native…

We argue that learning science requires children to move from perceptually based representations to more abstract conceptual representations and to understand that appearance may sometimes deceive us and that the same phenomenon in the world can have more than one representation when seen from different perspectives. We also argue that the…

Understanding how individuals view the relationship between science and religion shows promise for explaining a range of aspects of teaching and learning in science. Several taxonomies, consisting of different views by which people relate science and religion, can be found in the philosophical literature. However, most of the science education…

Personalized genomics companies (PG; also called "direct-to-consumer genetics") are businesses marketing genetic testing to consumers over the Internet. While much has been written about these new businesses, little attention has been given to their roles in science communication. This paper provides an analysis of the gene concept…

Science educators, historians of science and their students often share a curiosity about historical instruments as a tangible link between past and present practices in the sciences. We less often integrate instruments into our research and pedagogy, considering artefact study as the domain of museum specialists. We argue here that scholars and…

In this paper, I describe the strong and reciprocal relations between the emergence of the specialized expert in the natural sciences and the establishment of science education, in early Modern Greece. Accordingly, I show how science and public education interacted within the Greek state from its inception in the early 1830, to the first decade of…

According to a widespread philosophical opinion, science is strictly limited to investigating natural causes and putting forth natural explanations. Lacking the tools to evaluate supernatural claims, science must remain studiously neutral on questions of metaphysics. This (self-imposed) stricture, which goes under the name of "methodological…

This paper discusses the relationship between religion and science education in the light of the cognitive sciences. We challenge the popular view that science and religion are compatible, a view that suggests that learning and understanding evolutionary theory has no effect on students' religious beliefs and vice versa. We develop a cognitive…