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Science in schooling has for the first time been recently considered as a verified whole for the 10 or 12 of its compulsory years, rather than for a limited sector of schooling or for a particular group of students. This has also been occurring as part of a wider review and plan for the whole curriculum of schooling. A framework has been provided consisting of a matrix of strands of intended content for learning across a number of levels approximating the years of schooling. There is a sense and expectation of continuous progression in the learning of science. Earlier notions of progression in science curricula are explored and compared with what has now appeared in the national curricula in England and Wales, New Zealand and Australia. The notions of curriculum opportunity and curriculum purpose for science education are introduced as factors that would lead to a shift in the sense of progression from a focus on Science itself to an emphasis on the learners' changing need of Science as they progress through the years of schooling.

In this article I will examine some of the issues raised by the following three articles in this special issue about Paulo Freire and science education: Jenny Tilsen’s “The freshness of irreverence”: learning from ACT UP towards socio-political action in science education”; Suzani Cassiani and Irlan von Linsingen’s “Freirean inspirations in solidary internationalism between East Timor and Brazil in science education”; and Gonzalo Peñalosa, Jairo Robles-Piñeros and Geilsa Costa Santos Baptista’s “Science Education and Cultural Diversity: Freire’s Concept of Dialogue as Theoretical Lens to Study the Classroom Discourse of Science Teachers”. Brought together within this special issue under the theme of Transnational collaborations and solidarities, these articles explore the possibilities and tensions that emerge from thinking and practicing a Freirean-inspired science education that enables socio-political action and transformation by marginalised communities across the world. In this review, I will focus on ideas raised (to different extents) across these articles around three interrelated areas—interculturality and decoloniality, socio-political transformation, and teacher education and work—with the aim of expanding on what transnational inspirations and collaborations such as the ones promoted by this special issue can mean to those of us across the world working against the grain of marginalisation and dehumanisation (of students and teachers) from within science education.

The main purpose of the living technology curriculum is to cultivate students' interest in learning science and technology, and further to utilize their experience of learning instructions and develop their ability to integrate interdisciplinary knowledge and skills. In recent years, as countries have begun to emphasize the concept of interdisciplinary integration in the school education, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, STEM) focuses on cultivating interdisciplinary talents. With this, STEAM highlights the role of ART because other dimensions of STEM are expected to be effectively integrated through the cultivation of aesthetics; the purpose of this study is to design a STEAM curriculum for elementary school children and to explore the impact of STEAM education on the creativity. The content of this course is based on the PBL (Project-Based Learning) with the teaching activities combining with “Chinese Paper-cutting” and “BBC micro: bit”. The teaching process is used the strategy of creative thinking instruction. The research method adopts a one-group pretest–posttest design based on a purposive sampling of 21 students from one class in an elementary school. The research tools included the records of learning feedback and the creativity assessment. The empirical findings show that the project-based learning incorporating STEAM activity has a positive significant influence on students’ development of creative recognition. Since the empirical results are constricted by the short-term STEAM course, the STEAM course with the art-oriented still benefits the STEAM education and Learning effectiveness of elementary school students. The implication of interdisciplinary interactive Lamp of Paper Carving with Micro:Bit is expected to contribute to further development of STEAM course. Since the curriculum is only last for few weeks, it is too short to affect the emotional facet of creativity. Future researches are suggested to extend the teaching period and evaluate the long-term influence of PBL STEAM on students' learning attitude.

In the last decades, secondary school students have indicated a low interest in science and a lack of awareness of authentic science careers that may impede their aspiration to work in science-related fields in future. To raise students’ aspirations, several studies used context-based approaches, but few integrated career aspects into the school curricula. Accordingly, this study aimed to promote lower secondary school students’ interest in and awareness of science careers by introducing science career-related scenarios reflected in a real-world context as embedded careers education in science lessons. In this study, we explored the effect of the interventions on students’ interest, awareness, and aspirations towards science careers using Estonian, Finnish, and German datasets. According to the results, the students participating in the project indicated a higher interest in science, aspiration towards science careers, and awareness of future careers than those who did not experience the embedded science career interventions. Also, the results showed that when students got more information about science careers at school, their interest in science was more easily transferred to their aspirations in science studies and careers. Thus, this result emphasizes the importance of fostering awareness of science careers at lower secondary schools in order to inspire young learners to engage in science studies and works in future.

Teaching and learning of quantum physics at secondary level is an active field of research. One important challenge is finding ways to promote understanding of quantum concepts without the mathematical formalism that is embedded in quantum mechanics but unavailable on the secondary level. We investigated Norwegian secondary students’ (N = 291) descriptions of the wave nature of quantum particles and the uncertainty principle, as expressed during work with learning resources using a sociocultural approach emphasizing history, philosophy, and nature of science aspects. Responses from university students (N = 40) given after a formalism-based course in quantum physics were included for comparison. Themes were identified using thematic analysis and analyzed from the perspective of pedagogical link-making, seeing different themes as representing different levels of explanations of the concepts (phenomenological, qualitative, mathematical). The most dominant theme in descriptions of particle wave nature was that particles exhibit wave behavior in experiments, while referring to the mathematical description of particles by wave functions was a less prominent theme, even among university students. Two uncertainty principle themes were found: uncertainty as inability to measure pairs of variables precisely, and uncertainty as innate blurriness in nature. Largely missing from descriptions of both concepts were meaningful links between different levels of explanations. Based on the results, we discuss ways forward for teaching particle wave nature and uncertainty in secondary education.

The discussion of social responsibility has expanded from ethical conduct of research to include a broader range of topics including participating in the policy-making process, engaging in public discourse related to science, and promoting projects serving societal common goods. Although such an expanded framework on social responsibility is increasingly popular, existing scales on social responsibilities are limited. The current study developed and validated a scale for measuring the “Views of Social Responsibility of Scientists and Engineers” (VSRoSE). The draft scale with 60 items, which were scrutinized through expert deliberation, was administered to 327 college students majoring in STEM fields. Exploratory factor analysis supported an eight-factor solution with 30 items, with acceptable Cronbach’s alphas for all eight scales. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with an independent set of data from 279 college students and the hypothesized factor structure fit the data with acceptable Cronbach’s alphas. The concurrent and criterion validity evidence was presented and the pedagogical implications of the VSRoSE in the STEM field and education were discussed.

Socio-scientific issues and socially acute questions enable moral judgement through rational, emotional, intuitive and imaginative thinkings. Our research focuses more specifically on the place of the myth in student discussions about controversial issues. We have analysed the mythemes expressed through online exchanges between students from England, France and New Zealand about three ‘pest’–animal issues, the ‘pests’ in question being the Badger (England), Wolf (France) and Possum (New Zealand). We observe the expression of recurrent mythemes by issue, one demonizing the animal and encouraging its destruction or control, one protecting its proper nature, one ambivalent proposing a dialogue between the two first ones. These expressions relate to the living socio-cultural contexts of the students. The mytheme expressed by each student remains stable during the discussion. The potential of myths to enable critical thinking in intercultural communication is discussed.

Project-based learning (PBL) is one of most common teaching strategies in design education. With the complexity in design projects, PBL is usually accomplished in groups. The final project success depend on both technical capabilities and individual personalities: personality types and communication styles. Although previous studies have investigated the relationship between personalities and project success, the relationship between the composition of personalities and project success among design students has yet to be examined. Student personalities were studied based on students’ response to the personality assessments, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the four-type communication model. Project success was recorded in both PBL and individual learning processes for comparisons. Results show that project success is positively correlated with group compositions that have a balanced proportion of Judging (J) and Perceiving (P) members, and negatively correlated with compositions that have an even proportion of Extrovert (E) and Introvert (I) members. Results also show that group compositions that have members with leadership qualities (the Rational temperament and the Director communication style) are more likely achieve success. Comparisons between project success in PBL and individual learning processes indicate that students with specific personalities (the Guardian and the Relator) perform significantly better in individual assignments than group assignments. The purpose of this study is therefore two-fold; first, to study how the different compositions of personalities could explain group dynamics and influence project success and second, to highlight that PBL might be more suitable for some students than others. This study concludes that with an understanding of students’ personalities, teachers can create groupings to maximize the potential of PBL and, at the same time, provide individual learning activities to enable equal opportunities for all students to achieve success.

Though we have advocated explicit argumentation instruction in science classes for decades, daily instructions are still found insufficient in improving students’ argumentation competence. It is therefore important to explore effective instructional strategies through classroom research. This paper compares instructional strategies for classroom argumentation. We report on a quasi-experiment conducted with tenth-grade students (n = 92) that compares adversarial and parallel argumentation designs for the topic genetic inheritance, an inquiry-based socio-scientific issue (SSI) unit. The instruction was conducted through the online platform, Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE). In the parallel design, student dyads were assigned to the same initial stances and were asked to change to multiple perspectives together, while in the adversarial design, students were assigned to opposite stances, and a debate was launched between the two sides. Students’ overall argumentation performance improved significantly in both cases, yet the progress was greater in terms of counterarguments for students in the parallel design. Such findings highlight the value of parallel thinking in developing students’ argumentation competence, especially in producing counterarguments. Suggestions on instructional design for scientific argumentation activities are proposed accordingly.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a fundamental skill to succeed in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), but many learners do not know how to self-regulate their learning. The need to support SRL in MOOCs led to the idea of social-psychological interventions that promise to improve course performance and decrease dropout rates. However, past research provides mixed evidence of the effectiveness of SRL interventions in MOOCs. In this randomized control trial (RCT), the heterogeneous effects of SRL intervention in three MOOCs were examined. The SRL intervention was embedded in a precourse survey, where learners were randomly assigned to experimental (N = 383) and control (N = 444) conditions. Both groups answered contextual questions, and then the experimental group was guided through a writing activity to boost SRL skills. The study aimed to assess how learner demographics may affect the results of the RCT. The results yielded no significant differences overall between the experimental and control conditions. However, the results of the binary logistic regression demonstrated that the heterogeneous effect is prevalent in SRL interventions in regard to learner demographics: males and older learners received advantages from the intervention. The current study adds to the field of SRL intervention in MOOCs and presents directions for future experiments. Based on the results of the paper, a number of methodological issues of SRL interventions in MOOCs were formulated, including self-selection bias and interventions that were not a part of the learning process, that focused on academic outcomes, and that had no follow-up analysis.

In English-medium instruction (EMI), English-as-a-second-language students will learn all/some subjects through English. Although there are a considerable number of studies which explore classroom interaction in Hong Kong (HK) secondary EMI schools, few studies have investigated EMI lessons which involve South Asian ethnic minorised students. These students share different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and they may not share a common first language with the teacher and other classmates. This study conducts a multimodal conversation analysis of science and mathematics lessons at a HK EMI secondary school, triangulated with interview data, in order to explore how the EMI teacher mobilises various resources to make discipline-specific knowledge accessible and cater for the different needs of all students in the classroom. This study argues that the process of enacting inclusive practices is a process of translanguaging which requires the EMI teacher to mobilise various available multilingual and semiotic resources and draw on what students know collectively for transcending cultural boundaries from the students’ everyday culture to cultures of school science and mathematics.

The identification and the evaluation of arguments are fundamental elements of critical thinking. However, the explicit promotion of these elements is virtually absent from university science courses. Much of the reason for this is that in most universities, across nearly all disciplines, instructors are required to see the conceptual content coverage of the syllabus as a priority. Moreover, lack of preparation and the fact that critical thinking activities are time-consuming rapidly reduce the interest of many instructors to include them in their courses. Here, we describe the use of a dialogue-based critical thinking classroom scenario (CTCS). The study used a mixed-methods approach with both quantitative and qualitative analyses of questionnaire responses. One hundred and seventeen undergraduates (73 females; 44 males; ages 16–24 years), enrolled in an introductory science course in Colombia, were asked to identify and evaluate arguments regarding a dialogue between two scientists who explore the controversial question of whether or not the concept of race is applicable to humans. It was found that the dialogue-based CTCS provided students with opportunities to identify and evaluate arguments both for and against the question and to make informed decisions about whether or not the concept of race in humans is biologically meaningful. Moreover, analyses of responses to closed-ended and open-ended questions revealed that more than half the participants were able to evaluate arguments in a fair-minded way. Practical implications for the cultivation of critical thinking skills in higher education and further research are discussed.

It has been shown that many people do not understand how scientific knowledge is built and accepted, even after scientific education. One way to deal with this problem is through teaching about the Nature of Science (NOS). NOS can be understood as a pedagogical construct aiming to foster the understanding of the main characteristics of scientific work. Recently, several researchers have advocated that we should consider pluralism within science when teaching about NOS. Accordingly, there have been efforts to develop ways of promoting instruction on NOS considering the specificity of distinct scientific fields. Aligned with this perspective, this paper aims to put forward a model for teaching NOS in the context of biological education. This model, named “Integrative Model for Teaching NOS in Biological Education” (IM-NOSBIO), is based on three pillars. The first is the Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science (FRA), developed by Erduran and Dagher. The second consists in the Conceptual Framework of Biology proposed by Scheiner. The third is the Pragmatic Conception of Models as Epistemic Artifacts put forward by Knuuttila. We propose that IM-NOSBIO has the potential to promote teaching and learning about different aspects of scientific knowledge and practice by taking advantage of how they present themselves in biological sciences teaching. To illustrate this potential, we offer an example of how this model can be used for teaching about certain aspects of NOS based on the history of the cell theory.

Research focusing on the integration of computational thinking (CT) into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education started to emerge. We conducted a semi-systematic literature review on 55 empirical studies on this topic. Our findings include: (a) the majority of the studies adopted domain-general definitions of CT and a few proposed domain-specific CT definitions in STEM education; (b) the most popular instructional model was problem-based instruction, and the most popular topic contexts included game design, robotics, and computational modelling; (c) while the assessments of student learning in integrated CT and STEM education targeted different objectives with different formats, about a third of them assessed integrated CT and STEM; (d) about a quarter of the studies reported differential learning processes and outcomes between groups, but very few of them investigated how pedagogical design could improve equity. Based on the findings, suggestions for future research and practice in this field are discussed in terms of operationalizing and assessing CT in STEM contexts, instructional strategies for integrating CT in STEM, and research for broadening participation in integrated CT and STEM education.

Despite efforts to help youth form better connections to the natural world, many recent science initiatives (such as the Next Generation Science Standards) privilege laboratory science over field science, thus reinforcing an image of science that is placeless and individual. To better understand the impact of field science on youth, we examined youths’ experiences and participation in field science across two separate research projects, one of which was associated with a school (the “moth project”) and one of which occurred in an informal setting (the “herpetology project”). We argue that field science, which is not given the same attention in NGSS as science derived from laboratory work, might disrupt and expand science teaching and learning. By expand, we mean that field science offers novel opportunities for youth and educators to develop and engage in practices that disrupt persistent sociohistorical narratives of how science work is accomplished, and that emphasize the cultural production of knowledge in a setting by making public the meaning making that is negotiated in a community. Such expanded moments differ from many experiences in which youth and educators expand typical ways of knowing and participating valued across many formal and informal settings.

Persistence in academic and career settings is a major issue for students enrolled in science and engineering programs, particularly those who identify as female or as members of certain underrepresented ethnic minorities (URM). This exploratory study determined the degree to which organizational justice has explanatory power in complimenting the Mediation Model of Research Experiences (MMRE) in a career-forward laboratory curriculum context. A career-forward approach to curriculum targets persistence by basing the student experience on the content, context, and practices of the targeted career field in developmentally appropriate ways. Participants were 157 undergraduate students taking General Chemistry Laboratory for Engineering Majors. Confirmatory factor analysis of survey responses indicated an acceptable fit for the established four-factor model of organizational justice (χ2(164, n = 157) = 378.447, p = 0.000, IFI = 0.935, CFI = 0.934, NFI = 0.891 RMSEA = 0.092). Bivariate correlations among variables from the two frameworks show that the experience of URM students is different than that of their non-URM peers. Notably, identity as an engineer was more strongly correlated to aspects of organizational justice, and justice played a role in students’ views on teamwork. This supports a prior hypothesis that the negative relationship between teamwork self-efficacy and commitment to an engineering career for URM participants may be related to issues of marginalization within their groups. Evaluation of a combined MMRE organizational justice model with future studies is merited, especially for contexts involving the use of teamwork and/or student collaboration.

There is a considerable gap between many of the findings from educational psychology research and educational practice. This gap is especially notable in the field of science education. In this article, the implications of three categories of research and their findings for science educational policy in the USA and other jurisdictions were reviewed. We indicate that a particular category of research that we call “Program-Based Studies,” has dominated the formulation of educational standards while a large number of critical findings from randomized, controlled studies and correlational studies that overwhelmingly show minimal support for the suggested policy have been marked as irrelevant and excluded. The current blanket-emphasis on program-based studies at the expense of the other types of research is misplaced. Educational standards should represent a balanced view of the available data including findings from controlled and correlational studies. Finally, we indicate how these different forms of research might inform each other and provide coherent and consistent implications for educational procedures.

This paper discusses how multimodal creative inquiry might be conceptualised and implemented for children’s meaning-making in science. We consider Halliday’s (1978) and Vygotsky’s (1987, 2016) theoretical ideas for showing how the most important characteristics of social semiotics are connected to imagination, play-based and creative inquiry for children’s science meaning-making. Qualitative data was analysed from two preschool classroom video observations of 40 children’s playful interactions with technologies, such as robotic toys, semiotic artefacts, two teachers’ reflective journal documentation and children’s artefacts. Findings show children participate and discuss elements of scientific concepts in inquiry-based dialogues and make sense of science concepts whilst becoming creators of multimodal representations arising from their interests and curiosity. The semiotic resources that operate through technologies such as apps provide a medium for creative inquiry affording communication spaces and multimodal (visual, haptic [digital touch], text) meaning-making around everyday science phenomena. Practical implications lie in upskilling educators’ integration of semiotic resources such as robotic toys and deploying a multimodal creative inquiry approach for reconfiguring children’s science learning opportunities in early childhood educational practices.

Olave and Bravo’s paper motivated us to reflect upon aspects that characterize the neoliberal turn in Brazilian education. Such reflections are grounded on a brief attempt to discuss central ideas of neoliberal ideology as presented by the cited authors, namely competitiveness, meritocracy, and individualism. The discussion is briefly contextualized in the light of Brazilian history, and a few examples of how such ideas have materialized in curriculum policy as well as practice are offered. We argue that the neoliberal ideas that have been assimilated in contemporary educational discourse hinder the deconstruction of, and the positioning against, policies that reinforce social inequality and prevent dialog.

Teachers’ spatial behaviours in the classroom can strongly influence students’ engagement, motivation and other behaviours that shape their learning. However, classroom teaching behaviour is ephemeral, and has largely remained opaque to computational analysis. Inspired by the notion of Spatial Pedagogy, this paper presents a system called ‘Moodoo’ that automatically tracks and models how teachers make use of the classroom space by analysing indoor positioning traces. We illustrate the potential of the system through an authentic study with seven teachers enacting three distinct learning designs with more than 200 undergraduate students in the context of science education. The system automatically extracts spatial metrics (e.g. teacher-student ratios, frequency of visits to students’ personal spaces, presence in classroom spaces of interest, index of dispersion and entropy), mapping from the teachers’ low-level positioning data to higher-order spatial constructs. We illustrate how these spatial metrics can be used to generate a deeper understanding of how the pedagogical commitments embedded in the learning design, and personal teaching strategies, are reflected in the ways teachers use the learning space to provide support to students.

There has been an ongoing discussion about the role and level of teacher scaffolding in developing student agency while also meeting intended learning outcomes in inquiry-based science classrooms. This study investigates how teachers practice classroom talk to scaffold students’ learning through the inquiry process and how teacher authority and student agency are embedded in a dialogical practice. A case study using an ethnographic approach was employed to understand the complexity of teachers’ and students’ interactions through classroom talk. Two elementary teachers and their students were involved in this study. Through classroom talk, the teachers demonstrated openness and flexibility in their dialogical turns to develop students’ agency in problem solving, while at the same time employed their authority to monitor and lead classroom talk toward students’ understanding of science concepts as part of the intended curriculum. They sought to emphasize scientific attitudes in the inquiry process by acknowledging the authority of science and scientists’ ways of problem solving. Accordingly, this study found that the teachers alternated between dialogical and authoritative voices in classroom talk to facilitate student learning with agency. Furthermore, this study suggests the importance of distinguishing teacher pedagogical authority from teacher authority as power dominance.

Drawing upon constructionism and neo-materialist approaches on the role of physical activity and the human body in teaching and learning mathematics, this paper investigates the meanings constructed by students while collaboratively carrying out tasks focusing on the dynamic aspects of the concept of angle in the educational context of a 6th grade class of a public primary school in Greece. Paying particular attention to the specific material configurations at play, we try to analyse the construction processes through which angle was used both as a measure represented by a number and as a directed turn in the simulated 3D space of a digital tool that combines 3D Turtle Geometry and dynamic manipulation. Following a design-based research method, mathematical meanings are analysed as contingent assemblages involving gestures, embodied metaphors, navigation in virtual spaces, viewpoints, figural representations of 2D and 3D geometrical objects and ways of verbal and symbolic expression.

Practical work is a distinctive feature of school science and has close associations with scientific experiment and scientific methods as well. In this study, the nature of practical work was examined in the view of the diversity of scientific methods. Based on an analytical framework derived from Brandon’s matrix consisting of four categories of scientific methods, this study was purported to understand how the diversity of scientific methods is represented in practical work in science textbooks. The targets of analysis were various kinds of practical work compiled in nine textbooks of biology, chemistry, and physics used in the stage of junior high school (Grades 7–9) in China. A major finding is that the four categories of scientific methods are distributed discrepantly within each of the three subject-based science textbooks. Another important finding is that non-manipulative parameter measurement (NPM) is the predominant scientific method, whether in physics, chemistry, or biology textbooks. Except for this shared feature, the percentages of the other three are varied across the three science subjects. The results of this study have provided implications for the design of practical work in science textbooks. It is suggested that further studies can be conducted to display the change of the nature of practical work over a period of time and compare the nature of practical work in science textbooks used in different regions and countries in the view of the diversity of scientific methods.

Research carried out as part of the research project, PID2019-105601GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/5011 00011033, with support from the FQM-126 Research Group (Junta de Andalucia, Spain)., In order to foster the learning of mathematics, the teacher must be able to analyse and assess the students’ mathematical activity. The explicit recognition of objects and processes involved in mathematical practices is a competence that the teacher should develop. This cognitive analysis competence allows the teacher to understand the processes of mathematical learning, to foresee conflicts of meanings and to establish different possibilities for institutionalising the mathematical knowledge involved. In this article we present the results of the evaluation phase of a training intervention with eighty-eight prospective primary school teachers, which aims to promote and assess the competence for the cognitive analysis of students’ solutions to proportionality tasks. To this end, we proposed the prospective teachers to interpret different students’ solution strategies for a problem, recognise the mathematical elements (languages, concepts, propositions, procedures and arguments) put at stake in each strategy, and to analyse the algebraic character of the mathematical practices involved in them. The results reveal the prospective teachers’ limitations for the analysis and assessment of non-usual resolution strategies, the identification of key mathematical objects and the discrimination of arithmetic and algebraic activity in the students’ solutions. The improvement of the results requires the following actions: to allow prospective teachers to become acquainted with different forms of reasoning that can be applied in proportionality situations, delve more deeply into the algebraic character of mathematical activity, and extend the number and variety of situation problems that prospective teachers can analyse and discuss., Um das Erlernen von Mathematik zu fördern, müssen Lehrkräfte in der Lage sein, die mathematischen Aktivitäten ihrer Schülerinnen und Schüler zu analysieren und zu bewerten. Das explizite Erkennen von Objekten und Prozessen, die an mathematischen Praktiken beteiligt sind, ist eine Kompetenz, die Lehrkräfte entwickeln sollten. Diese kognitive Analysekompetenz ermöglicht es Lehrkräften, Prozesse des mathematischen Lernens zu verstehen, Bedeutungskonflikte vorauszusehen und verschiedene Möglichkeiten zur Verfestigung mathematischen Wissens zu finden. In diesem Artikel stellen wir die Ergebnisse der Evaluationsphase einer Fortbildungsmaßnahme mit 88 angehenden Grundschullehrkräften vor, die darauf abzielt, die Kompetenz zur kognitiven Analyse von Schülerlösungen zu Proportionalitätsaufgaben zu fördern und zu bewerten. Zu diesem Zweck sollten angehende Lehrkräfte verschiedene Lösungsstrategien von Schülerinnen und Schülern für eine Aufgabe interpretieren, die mathematischen Elemente (Sprache, Konzepte, Sätze, Verfahren und Argumente) erkennen, die in den verwendeten Strategien zum Tragen kamen, und den algebraischen Charakter der beinhalteten mathematischen Praktiken analysieren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen die Grenzen der angehenden Lehrkräfte bei der Analyse und Bewertung unüblicher Lösungsstrategien, der Identifizierung wichtiger mathematischer Objekte und der Unterscheidung von arithmetischen und algebraischen Aktivitäten in den Schülerlösungen auf. Zur Verbesserung der Ergebnisse sind folgende Maßnahmen erforderlich: Die angehenden Lehrkräfte sollten verschiedene Formen der Argumentation kennenlernen, die in Proportionalitätssituationen angewandt werden können, den algebraischen Charakter der mathematischen Aktivität vertiefen und die Anzahl und Vielfalt der Situationsprobleme, die die angehenden Lehrkräfte analysieren und diskutieren können, erweitern., Junta de Andalucia PID2019-105601GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/5011 00011033

The widespread misperception of science as a deliverer of irrefutable facts, rather than a deliberative process, is undermining public trust in science. Science education therefore needs to better support students’ understanding of the central role that disputes play in the scientific process. Successfully incorporating scientific disputes into science education is, however, challenging. The aim of this paper is to identify course components and design features that develop undergraduate students’ abilities to write a logically coherent argument that is supported by evidence. First, we assessed student essays from a course that had gone through a major revision aimed at strengthening students’ reasoning skills. When comparing pre- and post-revision essays, we found substantial, and significant, improvements across the assessment criteria. We then elicited oral and written feedback from instructors who taught the course pre- and post-revision. We identified several changes that instructors felt most impacted students’ reasoning skills, most importantly: streamlining of learning outcomes and course content emphasizing argumentation skills; stronger scaffolding and better utilized peer review; and more detailed rubrics that specifically reference learning outcomes and course content. The study illustrates the power of iterative course revisions that incorporate findings from published research and instructors’ reflections on teaching practices as a way to strengthen student learning.

Design thinking has been propositioned to be interconnected to Dewey’s notion of pragmatist inquiry and aesthetic experience. To address the need for empirical studies on design thinking in the classroom and add to our understanding of its characteristics, this study explored middle years’ students’ discourse as they worked through a design challenge. Design thinking has been proposed to rely on inquiry as well as language in the form of specialised vocabulary and representations but how these intersect has not been studied. In this study, discourse analysis of inquiry and design behaviours during a design task and pre- post-testing of scientific language and representations is compared across two groups, one that engage in a design task embedded in an inquiry science unit, and one that also engage in a community of inquiry (CoI). The two groups are referred to as Non-CoI and CoI groups respectively. The hypothesis that CoI can enhance both the design process as well as accurate use of scientific language and representation in a design context was shown by contrasting CoI and non-CoI group test outcomes and small group design task discourse analysis. In this study, design and inquiry processes were synergistic, mutually reinforced each other, and were co-constituted through imbrication. The findings of this study have implications for science teaching using design thinking in a middle years’ classroom.

STEM education has emerged as an important educational goal in recent years. Argumentation-based STEM approach important discourse process in STEM education. The aim of this research was to examine the impact of argumentation-based STEM activities on students’ ongoing STEM motivations. The embedded mixed method has been used in this research. The research has been conducted for sixteen lesson hours at a public school with 45 students including experimental and control groups. STEM motivation scale has been used for the collection of quantitative data, and argumentation-based STEM activities have been used for the collection of qualitative data in the research. Averages, Wilcoxon test, and Mann–Whitney U test has been used in the analysis of quantitative data, and content analysis has been used in the analysis of qualitative data. According to the results obtained, it has been observed that there is a positive change in favor of the experimental group for STEM motivation with argument-based STEM activities. STEM motivations of the 11-year-old student groups have been found to be higher than the 12-year-old student groups. No significant difference was found in terms of gender in STEM motivation of argumentation-supported STEM activities. Within the scope of argument-based STEM activities, it is understood that students have a high level of STEM motivation. The main implication of this research is that the argument-based STEM activities have the potential to be used to understand students’ learning motivation in STEM.

Many researchers have reported that bridging analogies can productively support students’ scientific meaning-making. How this can be understood semiotically is, however, not well understood. This research followed an ethnographic case study approach to investigate Year 11 students meaning-making through a process of transduction (Kress, 2000; Volkwyn, 2020) across the submicroscopic and symbolic domains of Johnstone’s (1991) chemistry triangle. A “cross-and-portion” (CPO) model was devised as a bridging representation for learning the molar concentration and dilution concepts, informed by Peirce’s triadic model (1931) which relates the meaning of a concept to its representation in a sign, and its referent. The study drew on video capture of the classroom and small group activity, and interviews. The research findings indicated that the CPO model acted as a visualisation tool that facilitated students to link from the submicroscopic to symbolic domains of Johnstone’s triangle. A recursive model of meaning-making was formulated to describe how bridging representations are re-purposed to occupy shifting positions in Peirce’s triad to enable meaning through the system of interpretance. Students constructed, critiqued and transducted across multiple, multimodal representations to achieve discursive fluency across the dimensions of Johnstone’s triangle. The recursive model provides a fresh perspective on how students coordinate multimodal representations to learn science/chemistry.

Idealizations are omnipresent in science. However, to date, science education research has paid surprisingly little attention to the use of idealizations in fostering students’ model competence and understanding of the nature of science (NOS). The starting point for the theoretical reflection in this paper is that insufficient consideration of idealizations in the science classroom can lead to learning difficulties. The following discussions should help to clarify the terms idealization and model and their relationship to each other. An example is drawn from physics. At least two cases can apply when considering model usage in the classroom. In the first case, to understand an observed phenomenon, a model (as a representation) of the situation to be explained is constructed. At this point, it is necessary to perform idealization. Seemingly, this step is still neglected in much of the science education literature but is well addressed in the philosophy of science. In the second case, existing models to work with are introduced, perhaps alongside a real experimental situation. This approach is called working with models in science education. This paper focuses primarily on the first case. Against the background of model building, a positioning and conceptual approximation of idealizations take place. To organize the idealization process, a framework of several categories of idealization adopted from science philosophy is offered. The framework is intended to stimulate explicit reflection about how models are constructed. The construction of a model by idealization is illustrated through an example from geometrical optics. Finally, the considerations presented are discussed in the context of the literature, and suggested research topics are provided.

In this study, we compared students’ learning from two conditions in a unit on inclined planes: Virtual-then-Physical (V-t-P) (n = 50), where students conducted a virtual lab followed by a physical lab, or vice versa in the Physical-then-Virtual condition (P-t-V) (n = 60). We analyzed students’ written explanations after each lab focusing on connections they made between concepts and their use of evidence. We also analyzed students’ learning using an inclined planes test to understand their overall physics knowledge at the start and end of the unit. While we found no significant differences between students’ post-test scores based on condition using an analysis of covariance, findings from a repeated measures MANOVA of students’ explanations showed that performing a physical lab was less effective in helping students to explain the relationships between the science concepts they were exploring as well as use data to support their ideas. We further found that students who only conducted a virtual lab performed better than students performing both types of labs no matter the sequence. However, the findings from these analyses also indicate that if using both labs, then having students do a physical lab prior to a virtual one may be more beneficial for middle school students than having them participate in the opposite sequence. Limitations, implications, and future research are discussed.

Einstein’s derivation of special relativity theory (SRT), based on hypothetical reasoning and thought experiments, is regarded as a prime example of physics theory development. In secondary education, the introduction of SRT could provide a great opportunity for students to engage in physics theorizing, but this opportunity is largely being missed in current teaching practice. One reason could be that secondary students lack some knowledge of electromagnetism that was central to Einstein’s argument. Therefore, we conducted an educational reconstruction to develop a teaching approach that would not rely on advanced understanding of electromagnetism, yet retain the modes of reasoning that were characteristic of Einstein’s approach. In our reconstruction, we identified the light postulate, which is notoriously difficult for students to grasp, as a central concept. We developed a teaching and learning sequence in which students perform relativistic thought experiments and try different interpretations of the light postulate. Through these activities, students experienced how the new concepts meet the requirements for a good theory. Experimental evaluation of the teaching and learning sequence indicates that this can be a fruitful approach to introduce SRT to secondary students.

Ironically, flat-Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and climate change naysayers trust in science. Unfortunately, they trust thewrongscience. 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 not philosophically “why trust science?” (Oreskes 2019) but sociologically “who speaks for science?” Teachers can help students learn how to navigate the treacherous territory of inevitably mediated communication and the vulnerabilities of epistemic dependence. Students need to understand the role of science communication practices (media literacy) and the roles of credibility, expertise and honesty and the deceptive strategies used by imitators of science to seem like credible voices for science.

Teaching and learning in science disciplines are dependent on multimodal communication. Earlier research implies that students may be challenged when trying to interpret and use different semiotic resources. There have been calls for extensive frameworks that enable analysis of multimodal texts in science education. In this study, we combine analytical tools deriving from social semiotics, including systemic functional linguistics (SFL), where the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions are central. In regard to other modes than writing—and to analyse how textual resources are combined—we build on aspects highlighted in research on multimodality. The aim of this study is to uncover how such a framework can provide researchers and teachers with insights into the ways in which various aspects of the content in multimodal texts are communicated through different semiotic resources. Furthermore, we aim to explore how different text resources interact and, finally, how the students, or authors of teaching resources, position themselves in relation to the subject. Data consist of one student text and one teaching resource text, both comprising drawn and written elements in combination with symbols. Our analyses of the student text suggest that the proposed framework can provide insights into students’ content knowledge and, hence, how construction of multimodal texts may be a useful tool for formative assessment. When it comes to teaching resources, the framework may be a useful tool for teachers when choosing resources, particularly in relation to students’ possibilities of meaning making when engaging with such texts, but also, as a basis for classroom discussions.

This paper analyses how lower secondary pupils experience their participation in the Danish science and green entrepreneurship competition, called Edison. The study uses a qualitative research method to investigate pupils’ descriptions, in retrospect, on the process of their entrepreneurial work. We completed semi-structured interviews with two teachers and six groups of pupils from two schools. Independence and being able to determine their own product were motivating factors. Often the pupils included other actors, particularly family members, on their own initiative as part of their work. The pupils’ interest in STEM education did not appear to have been affected except for two pupils who broadened their educational perspective. However, the awareness of sustainability issues has for some of them been supported, one of them with a change of lifestyle. By including engineering design process models in the analyses, the concept of entrepreneurship in science and technology became more process oriented and operational, which may also help both the teachers’ facilitation and the pupils’ inventing process.

High school students learn the basic voltaic and electrolytic cell concepts during their last year prior to entering an undergraduate teacher-education science degree. During the 4 years of university, students complete a sequence of topics designed to build on conceptual understanding presented in previous years. At the end of their degrees, graduating students are expected to have developed a comprehensive understanding of the subject that they are required to teach. In this research, we designed and developed a 12-item diagnostic instrument which addressed 10 propositional content knowledge statements based on the grade 12 chemistry curriculum that will be taught. In this cross-section study, 50 grade 12 high school students and 216 preservice chemistry teacher education undergraduates in years 1–4 responded to the Electrochemistry Conceptual Test (ECT) consisting of 12 two-tier multiple-choice items. The instrument was content validated by authors and peers prior to administration and when implemented had a Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.64. Overall, the students across years possessed basic knowledge about electrochemical cells but frequently were unable to explain their knowledge. While the grand mean trend in understanding electrochemistry concepts from high school through university study did show some improvement, the mean scores remained relatively low, and the year group means per item showed no such trend exacerbated by items having varying levels of difficulty. Based on this research, the lack in understanding about electrochemical concepts suggests that instruction in high school and ongoing university chemistry education faces ongoing challenges.

Currently, the physics disciplines are represented by a significantly larger number of professional males, compared to females. Although the problem of underrepresentation of female physicists has several causes, one likely reason is the lower interest that female school students have in physics activities. Several instructional solutions have been proposed to spark girls’ interest in physics, including recent ones with mobile devices. However, mobile devices could be problematic technologies for school students and teachers, particularly if guidance in their use is not provided. In the present study, we investigated the effectiveness of a novel mobile application guided with laboratory reports to increase high school students’ interest in physics. We also investigated whether the intervention with mobile laboratory activities facilitated learning about an important physics topic, namely, understanding graphs. The study was conducted in eight eligible schools, totaling data from 268 high school students (57% females). Results showed that all seven measures of self-rated interest in physics received higher scores in the posttest than in the pretest. One of the items, which assessed changes in understanding physics, showed greater effects on females than on males. Hence, the instructional mobile application under consideration helped to spark students’ interest in physics, and the effect was somewhat greater in schoolgirls, but the intervention did not change the test scores about understanding graphs, failing to demonstrate an association between increased interest in physics and changes in physics educational outcomes. The instructional implications for these findings, as well as limitations and future research directions, are discussed.

This paper re-validates middle school students’ learning progression of the concept of buoyancy (Gao et al., 2020) by using two-time point data. The previous study developed a four-level learning progression based on data collected at a single time point using cross-sectional design. This single-time-point model of learning progression calls for a further validation through a longitudinal design focusing on changes in individual students as a result of targeted instruction. In this study, 91 eighth-grade students first learned buoyancy under a traditional pedagogy and took test A of buoyancy. Based on results of test A, the teacher provided a targeted remediation instruction to students. Students then took a second test B which was designed as a parallel instrument to test A. Latent class analysis was conducted to locate students’ levels in the learning progression, and a rule space model was employed to diagnose students’ concept mastery patterns at each level. The test A data provide evidence to support the original learning progression of buoyancy developed by Gao et al. (2020), but the test B data suggest two more additional progression sub-levels for the prior study. Together, our findings indicate that one-time point data under the current status quo of teaching might be insufficient to accurately depict pathways of scientific thinking for how students progress from the lower anchor to the upper anchor. We thus argue that it is essential to involve well-designed instruction and collect multi-time-point data that could portray alternative pathways in students’ learning progression.

The aim of this study is to examine whether students of a sport management undergraduate course can gain knowledge in the management of a professional soccer club, by participating in a commercial serious game. Serious is considered the cyber game that its purpose exceeds entertainment. For this case study, the serious sport club management game was “Top Eleven”. The theoretical model that this study was based on, is Misfeldt’s “scenarios based learning” for the transformation of a serious game into an educational means. It includes dimensions that cover part of the sport management class content in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Physical Education and Sport Science. The transformation consisted of educational scenarios vested to the serious game, in order to add educational parameters to its basic elements with the purpose to relate further to the sport management class. The application showed that Top Eleven covers adequately Misfeldt’s model dimensions; therefore it can be used as an educational tool. Furthermore, an evaluation of the class gamification was conducted by the participating students (n = 62). The data collected showed that the majority of the students (f = 61, 98.4%) agreed that the participation in the serious game was “helpful” to their sport management class education process. They further agreed that they gained “very” or “very much” knowledge related to the management of a professional soccer club (f = 41, 66.1%) and that 59.7% (f = 37) of them would choose to work in a position of “sport club manager” as a result of the experience they gained by participating in the serious game.

One of the most important problems of today’s science education is the misconceptions and lack of knowledge that arise due to the science concepts not being learned in depth and meaningfully. For this reason, in this study, misconceptions, lack of knowledge, and scientific knowledge levels of science teachers about liquid pressure, which is one of the most challenging issues for students, were aimed to reveal using a four-tier misconception diagnostic test. For this purpose, the KR-20 reliability coefficient of the four-tier misconception diagnostic test developed for liquid pressure was calculated as 0.805 according to the scientific knowledge score, and the KR-20 reliability coefficient according to the misconception score was calculated as 0.755. The research data were collected from 481 science teacher candidates studying at six different universities in Turkey. Through the developed misconception test, 24 different misconceptions were revealed, and it was determined that 9 of them existed in 10% or more of science teacher candidates. Research results showed that science teacher candidates’ scientific knowledge about liquid pressure was about 15%, lack of scientific knowledge was about 35%, and misconceptions were about 35%. In the light of this information, it can be suggested to the researchers who want to make descriptive studies that this study, which is carried out on science teacher candidates, can be applied to middle and high school students. Researchers who want to conduct experimental studies may be advised to design experimental studies to overcome the misconceptions that arose in this study.

The ability to do inquiry does not necessarily translate to understandings about scientific inquiry or the processes by which scientific knowledge is generated. The study reported in this paper focuses on what students know about scientific inquiry and what impact school science may have on this knowledge. We investigated grade 12 physical and life sciences students’ understandings about eight core aspects of the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) at a diversity of high schools in South Africa. Data were collected in two phases. In phase 1, the Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI) questionnaire was administered to 203 grade 12 students from six schools across different socio-economic spectra (township, former model c and independent schools). Phase 2 constituted follow-up semi-structured interviews with 20% of the questionnaire respondents (n = 41). The findings revealed that grade 12 students held mostly naive and mixed understandings about the NOSI. Though observed differences indicated that students at elite independent schools held more informed views than students at suburban and township schools, chi-square test of association (X2) for different school types showed a statistically significant difference in students’ understandings only for one NOSI aspect. This finding was regarded as being insignificant to make claims of differences in students’ NOSI understandings for the different school types. The implications of these findings and future directions for research are also discussed.

This study aims at characterizing elementary pre-service teachers’ conscious lack of knowledge about familiar technical artefacts and its relation to their knowledge about these artefacts. The participants were asked to state what they knew and also what they did not know about a sample of familiartechnical artefacts such as a fan or a lock. The results showed a difference between the structure of the student teachers’ lack of knowledge of these artefacts and the structure of their actual knowledge. These differences were analyzed in relation to Kroes’ (Camb J Econ 34:51–62, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bep019) model of technical artefacts. Firstly, the student teachers’ conscious lack of knowledge was mainly focused on the artefacts’ behavior rather than on their components and materials. Secondly, the participants found the function features of the artefacts unproblematic. Thirdly, unknown features about the origin of the artefacts were more frequently cited than the corresponding knowledge features. Finally, non-perceptual properties of the artefacts and the causal relations in which they or their parts are involved were important components both of the students’ knowledge and of the students’ unknowns.

Creativity is a significant element in design education, and frequently a significant competency during recruitment for design professions. Group work and individual work are widely employed in higher education. Many studies have highlighted the merits of employing group work in design education, cultivating collaborative design abilities and fostering sought-after employability skills. Although the benefits of group work in design practice and education are widely recognised, few studies have shown evidence that group work outperforms individual work regarding creative design activities in higher education contexts. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore whether group or individual work is more beneficial for fostering students in generating creative designs in STEM design education. A case study, involving two cohorts of second-year undergraduate students studying a UK Engineering degree Industrial Design programme, is reported. The case study compares the design outputs produced by the two cohorts tackling the same design challenge in a product design module but employing individual and group work, respectively. The case study results show that no significant differences have been found between the design outputs produced by group work and individual work, considering novelty, usefulness and overall creativity. Further analysis reveals that a student’s academic performance is not significantly related to the level of creativity of the design produced. This research indicates design educators should employ both group and individual work to complement each other in design education, and suggests potential solutions to enhance students’ design creativity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the structural relationship between technology teachers’ attitudes toward STEAM education and the cooperation of instructional resources collaboration, school educational change receptivity, and instructional expertise and instructional efficacy. The population comprised about 3500 technology teachers working in middle schools in Korea, and the sample size was set at 650. Data were collected in parallel with postal surveys and online surveys. A total of 650 copies were distributed, of which 409 were recovered, and 283 copies were used for analysis after data cleaning. The Mplus 7 program was used for data analysis, and the significance level was set at 5%. First, we found that the suitability of the structural model established to clarify technology teachers’ attitudes toward STEAM education, instructional resource collaboration, school educational change receptivity, instructional expertise, and instructional efficacy was generally good, so the relationship between the variables was reasonably confirmed. Second, school educational change receptivity and instructional efficacy were found to have a direct effect on attitudes toward STEAM education. Third, the teachers’ instructional resources collaboration was confirmed to influence their attitudes toward STEAM education by mediating the school educational change receptivity and instructional efficacy, and their instructional expertise mediated their instructional efficacy. Fourth, school educational change receptivity was confirmed to influence attitudes toward STEAM education through the dual media of instructional expertise and instructional efficacy. Finally, instructional resource collaboration was confirmed to influence attitudes toward STEAM education through school educational change receptivity, instructional expertise, and instructional efficacy.