The Australian Curriculum (n.d.) describes chemistry as having three interrelated strands, Science Inquiry Skills, Science as a Human Endeavour and Science Understanding. It also states "... the three strands of the Australian Curriculum: Science should be taught in an integrated way". This article will explore a model for integrating…

Year 11 chemistry students from three schools in the Sunshine Coast Region of Education Queensland carried out a choice of five experiments aligned with their school curriculum on campus at the University of the Sunshine Coast and in their own school classrooms. Significant improvements in science learning were observed in student post-test quiz…

Is there a crisis in Australian science and mathematics education? Declining enrolments in upper secondary Science and Mathematics courses have gained much attention from the media, politicians and high-profile scientists over the last few years, yet there is no consensus amongst stakeholders about either the nature or the magnitude of the…

Scientific visualisations such as computer-based animations and simulations are increasingly a feature of high school Science instruction. Visualisations are adopted enthusiastically by teachers and embraced by students, and there is good evidence that they are popular and well received. There is limited evidence, however, of how effective they…

Nationally and internationally, context-based programs have been implemented in an attempt to engage students in chemistry through connecting the canonical science with the real world. In Queensland, a context-based approach to chemistry was trialled in selected schools from 2002 but there is little research that investigates how students learn in…

In May 2007 an issue of the "Australian Education Review" was released reporting on the state of science education in Australia. The report argued that we are in the advanced stages of a crisis in school science that threatens the future of Australia as a technologically advanced nation, and we need to change the way we think about the…

In this article I explain why I wrote the set of teaching notes on Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) and why they look the way they do. The notes were intended as a student reference to question, highlight and write over as much as they wish during an initial practical demonstration of the threshold concept being introduced, in this case…