Trends in contemporary science education emphasise the benefits of out-of-school learning experiences to help schools link science with everyday life (Tho, Chan, & Yeung, 2015). With the help of state-of-the-art technology, mobile devices--particularly smartphones--have the ability to work as data-logging tools for students to perform…

Large gender gaps in performance on questions involving projectile motion have been observed at high school and university level, even amongst high-achieving students. This gap is particularly problematic because projectile motion is typically one of the first topics formally taught in physics, and this may give girls an inappropriately negative…

This article presents an instructional strategy called Premise-Reasoning- Outcome (PRO) designed to support students in the construction of scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, the PRO strategy involves identifying three components of a scientific explanation: (i) premise--an accepted…

The "burning candle" experiment is used in middle school education programs to prove that air contains a component that is essential to burning (i.e., oxygen). The accepted interpretation taught by teachers in middle school is this: when burning occurs, oxygen is used up, creating an underpressure that causes a rise in water level inside…

One of the important questions for any educator is, "How can I teach difficult and abstract concepts in a way that connects with students' real life?". This is especially true in the senior years, when students are often confronted with ideas that don't appear relevant to their lives, are primarily explainable using mathematics rather…

This article presents an instructional strategy called Premise-Reasoning-Outcome (PRO) designed to support students in the construction of scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, the PRO strategy involves identifying three components of a scientific explanation: (i) premise--an accepted…

Science education involves students learning explanations of natural phenomena which are neither obvious nor intuitive. Generally, they have been arrived at and refined by years of dedicated inquiry on the part of large scientific communities. At the same time, these phenomena often concern the objects of everyday experience regarding which…

This article is written for primary and high school students, and provides a way to introduce kids to science and the concept of gravity.

The ability to represent the world like a scientist is difficult to teach; it is more than simply knowing the representations (e.g., graphs, words, equations and diagrams). For meaningful science learning to take place, consideration needs to be given to explicitly integrating representations into instructional methods, linked to the content, and…

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…

A variety of factors are associated with students' achievement in secondary school physics, including cohort size--the total number of students studying Physics in the school--and socioeconomic status. Earlier studies also showed boys achieving better in Physics, while more recent research has shown better results for girls. Statistical analysis…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how WebQuests can be used in physics classes for teaching specific concepts. The study had three stages. The first stage was to develop a WebQuest on Newton's second law. The second stage involved developing a lesson plan to implement the WebQuest in class. In the final stage, the WebQuest was…

The emissions of various types of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from natural and industrial sources are undergoing a great deal of scrutiny around the world. The three main GHGs that are of most concern are carbon dioxide (CO[subscript 2]), nitrous oxide (N[subscript 2]O) and methane (CH[subscript 4]). CO[subscript 2], N[subscript 2]O and CH[subscript…

An instructional program using four simulation applets was used to facilitate understanding of gas and liquid pressure concepts among twenty-two students in a Year 9 class from an independent secondary school in Singapore. A comparison group consisting of twenty-two students was taught using traditional didactic, chalk-and-talk instruction.…

This paper reports on the nature of the conceptual understandings developed by Year 12 Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) physics students as they made the transition from the essentially deterministic notions of classical physics, to interpretations characteristic of quantum theory. The research findings revealed the fact that the…