Effective science education is crucial for developing a scientifically literate citizenry, and for many, foundational primary science education experiences play a significant role in defining their long-term science trajectories. However, primary science education has been limited by a dissonance between the poor science trajectories for…

The advanced visualisation and interactive capabilities make immersive virtual reality (IVR) attractive for educators to investigate its educational benefits. This research reviewed 64 studies published in 2016-2020 to understand how science educators designed, implemented, and evaluated IVR-based learning. The immersive design features (sensory,…

Science and drawing have been paired for hundreds of years, and this synergy is still prevalent in research investigating the role of drawing for developing and assessing understanding. However, despite research at the primary and secondary levels of education, there is limited research on whether drawing facilitates learning at the undergraduate…

This review study synthesises 28 empirical research articles emphasising the learning of morality aspects in the context of addressing socioscientific issues (SSI) in secondary science education. The key interrelated questions we seek to address in this study are how morality is conceptualised in the science classroom in the light of emerging…

In recent years, teacher noticing has emerged as a construct to capture the dynamic and situational aspects of teaching expertise that underlies teachers' in-the-moment teaching decisions and actions. In mathematics education research, in particular, teacher noticing has been studied to understand how teachers attend to, and make sense of,…

Students' questions have an important function in science learning, and in inquiry-based approaches. Inquiry teaching in which the students' own questions are used is promising, but a holistic view of the research and practice is lacking. A systematic review was conducted on 30 articles, both research report articles as well as descriptive and…

Instructional explanations have sometimes been described as an ineffective way to teach science, representing a transmissive view of learning. However, science teachers frequently provide instructional explanations, and students also offer them in cooperative learning. Contrary to the transmissive view regarding explanation, studies suggest that…

This review examines how natural history museums (NHMs) can enhance learning and engagement in science, particularly for school-age students. First, we describe the learning potential of informal science learning institutions in general, then we focus on NHMs. We review the possible benefits of interactions between schools and NHMs, and the…

Generations of students are graduating from secondary school disinterested in post-secondary study of science or pursuing careers in science-related fields beyond formal education. We propose that destabilising such disinterest among future students requires science educators to begin listening to secondary school students regarding their views of…

Research in genetics and genomics is advancing at a fast pace, and thus keeping up with the most recent findings and conclusions can be very challenging. At the same time these recent findings and conclusions have made necessary a reconceptualization of genes and heredity, both in science and in science education, beyond the mostly gene-centred…

This paper provides a systematic review of instruments that have the potential to measure the quality of project-based science and technology (S&T) learning environments in elementary school. To this end, a comprehensive literature search was undertaken for the large field of S&T learning environments. We conducted a horizontal bottom-up…

Curriculum materials serve as a key conceptual tool for science teachers, and better understanding how science teachers use these tools could help to improve both curriculum design and theory related to teacher learning and decision-making. The authors review the literature on teachers and science curriculum materials. The review is organised…

Despite the importance of scientific inquiry in science education, researchers and educators disagree considerably regarding what features define this instructional approach. While a large body of literature addresses theoretical considerations, numerous empirical studies investigate scientific inquiry on quite different levels of detail and also…

In this review, we explore the notion of teaching science to English language learners (ELLs) as a balancing act between simultaneously focusing on language and content development, on the one hand, and between structuring instruction and focusing on student learning processes, on the other hand. This exploration is conducted through the lens of a…

The big idea of "celestial motion", observational astronomy phenomena explained by the relative position and motion of objects in the solar system and beyond, is central to astronomy in primary and secondary education. In this paper, I argue that students' progress in developing productive, scientific explanations for this class of…