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This study analyzed the impact of different analogical learning approaches (analogies or metaphors) integrated with different presentation modalities (pictures or texts) on middle school students’ learning performance of electricity with supporting evidence from their eye movement behaviors. Eighty ninth-grade middle school students were randomly assigned into four groups to receive four different versions of an online electricity learning program, including pictorial analogies, textual analogies, pictorial metaphors, and textual metaphors. Data regarding students’ eye movement behaviors were collected simultaneously during their online learning. All the students took a pre-test, post-test, and retention test covering their comprehension of electricity concepts. Our results revealed that the analogy group provided more mapping and integration behaviors between the analog and target concepts about electricity, resulting in gaining better performance than the metaphor group. Additionally, students receiving pictorial modality generated more mapping and integration behaviors between the analog and target concepts, resulting in a better understanding of electricity concepts than students learning with textual modality. The associated implications for analogical learning approaches and presentation modalities concerning science learning and eye movement behaviors are also discussed in the paper.

This study specifically focuses on examining whether the eye-tracking-supported metacognition would benefit science majors’ and nonscience majors’ scientific evidence-based reasoning performance. Thirty-nine science majors and forty-one nonscience majors were recruited to participate in an online scientific evidence-based reasoning task. Data regarding the students’ online learning process and eye movement behaviors were simultaneously collected. The results indicated that the science majors not only significantly outperformed the nonscience majors in terms of reasoning performance but also allocated significantly greater eye movements during their first time of processing scientific evidence-based reasoning task. Immediately after the task, the eye-tracking-supported metacognition provided each student with individualized feedback regarding their eye movement behaviors, such as their eye fixation sequence, durations, and locations. With such immediate feedback, the students were provided an opportunity to engage in self-monitoring, evaluating, and calibrating their approaches in order to revise their final answers. After the application of this eye-tracking-supported metacognition, both the science majors and the nonscience majors all made significant improvements in their scientific evidence-based reasoning performance. However, no statistically significant differences in the reasoning performance or visual attention of the science majors and nonscience majors were found. This study demonstrated that the use of eye-tracking-supported metacognition was not only able to maximize the performance of both the science majors and nonscience majors but that it also bridged the gap in performance between the two groups.

The 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has drawn a substantial amount of attention from science educators and educational policymakers because it marked the first time that PISA assessed students' ability to evaluate and design scientific inquiry using computer‐based simulations. We undertook a secondary analysis of the PISA 2015 Taiwan dataset of 7,973 students from 214 schools to identify critical issues of student learning and potentially reshape our educational system and policies. Thus, this study sought to identify potential latent clusters of students' scientific literacy performance according to a set of focus variables selected from the PISA student questionnaires. In addition, significant determinants of students' scientific literacy and resiliency were analyzed. Cluster analysis results demonstrated the presence of four clusters of high, medium, low, and inferior scientific literacy/epistemology/affective dispositions. Specifically, students in cluster 1 compared with other clusters showed that the higher the scientific literacy scores are, the more positive epistemic beliefs about science, achievement motivation, enjoyment of science, interests in broad science, science self‐efficacy, information and communications technology (ICT) interest, ICT autonomy, more learning time, more teacher supports and teacher‐directed instructions are. Regression results indicated that the most robust predictor of students' scientific literacy performance is epistemic beliefs about science, followed by learning time, interest in broad science topics, achievement motivation, inquiry‐based science teaching and learning practice, and science self‐efficacy. Decision tree model results showed that the descending order of the variables in terms of their importance in differentiating students as high‐ versus low‐performing were epistemic beliefs about science, learning time, self‐efficacy, interest in broad science, and scientific inquiry, respectively. A similar decision tree model to determine students as resilient versus non‐resilient also was found. Various interpretations of these results are discussed, as are their implications for science education research, science teaching, and science education policy.

Epilogue for the IJSME Special Issue: Metacognition for science and mathematics learning in technology-infused learning environments

Many studies have shown the positive impact of serious gaming on learning outcomes, but few have explored the relationships between game immersion and science learning. Accordingly, this study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of learning by playing, as well as the dynamic process of game immersion experiences, and to further identify whether, and to what extent, immersion affects science learning through serious gaming by using the techniques of cluster analysis. A total of 63 seventh-grade students participated in the study, and a quasi-experimental research design was employed. The results demonstrated that the students gained a holistic understanding of the relevant scientific concepts because their performances on the scenario-based science assessment were significantly improved across serious gameplaying occasions, and the effect of learning was retained long term. Moreover, serious gaming provided students with the experience of immersion insofar as the students indicated a greater degree of immersion in the game over time. Furthermore, two core clusters presenting meaningful patterns, high gaming performance/high immersion and high science learning/low immersion, were revealed. Finally, various interpretations and implications of the obtained data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of problem solving instruction on 126 middle school students’ learning of physical science in terms of their scientific knowledge, scientific concept dependent reasoning and problem solving ability. This study used a quasi-experiment with one factorial design of instructional approaches (problem solving and traditional hands-on learning). Sixty-one students participated in problem solving while sixty-five students participated in traditional hands-on learning. Results indicate that the problem solving group significantly outperformed the traditional hands-on learning group for both immediate and retaining effect, regardless of scientific knowledge, scientific concept dependent reasoning and scientific problem solving abilities. The regression results also indicated that the scientific concept dependent reasoning test is the best predictor for scientific problem solving ability, followed by scientific knowledge itself. Our study demonstrates that students’ scientific knowledge, reasoning and problem solving all are successfully improved after receiving six weeks scientific problem solving.

The present study investigated the effects of online argumentation scaffolding on students’ argumentation involving hypothetical and theoretical biological concepts. Two types of scaffolding were developed in order to improve student argumentation: continuous scaffolding and withdraw scaffolding. A quasi-experimental design was used with four 8th-grade classes comprising a total of 124 students. Two classes (63 students) were assigned into the continuous scaffolding group, while the other two (61 students) were assigned into the withdraw scaffolding group. All the students participated in online argumentation regarding four units, including two hypothetical concepts and two theoretical concepts. Both online learning process and scientific argumentation assessment results indicated that the continuous scaffolding group performed significantly better in terms of the quality and quantity of argumentation than the withdraw scaffolding group with regard to the hypothetical biology concepts, particularly in generating rebuttal arguments. In addition, the results also showed that both the continuous group and withdraw group students had better argumentation performance with regard to the hypothetical biology concepts than the theoretical biology concepts. Taken together, the study results suggest that learning argumentation through theoretical biology concepts is more difficult than doing so through hypothetical biology concepts.

This study uses the Taiwan Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 Main Survey and Taiwan PISA 2015 Field Trial survey datasets to investigate how self-evaluated values (i.e. personal and general) and cognitive factors (i.e. self-efficacy and self-concept) of two groups of Taiwanese 15-year-old students separated by 8 years of classroom-presented science instruction experience impact leisure engagement in science learning activities. To compare differences between these two groups, we verified the statistical fitness of a newly created five-factor model called the self-evaluated values and cognition, and engagement, which revealed a good model fit to both PISA datasets. Results from critical ratio for differences analyses showed a significant increase in pathway parameter strength for students’ personal value of science, and a significant decrease in pathway parameter strength for students’ science self-efficacy between the two PISA survey cycles. Examination of results and their importance for science educators, investigators, and policy-makers is also offered.

This article reports on reforms of the science education program for prospective physical science teachers in Taiwan and examines their impact on these teachers. The reforms include restructuring the courses in physical science methods, and requiring all prospective teachers to do action research during their one-year full-time teaching practice. The former aims to instil knowledge of constructivism and enable them to teach physical science by using constructivist approaches, and the latter provides them with an opportunity to apply what they have acquired to actual teaching. This study shows that exposure to constructivism affected the teachers' beliefs and initial choice of science teaching approach. Evidence further demonstrates that successful experience with action research reinforced their beliefs, and made them more willing to employ constructivist science teaching approaches in their teaching practice. Introducing these reforms in Taiwan has the potential of enhancing the competency of prospective science teachers. Key words action research constructivism educational change physical sciences science education teaching practice Introduction In 1995, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan put forward three major changes regarding the legislation of pre-service teacher education. They were: (a) all universities can offer teacher education programs; (b) prospective teachers are required to have one year of full-time teaching practice after graduation; and (c) the assessment system for teacher certificates is to be decided by professors of the universities offering such programs. Since then, more than 15 universities have begun to offer secondary school teacher education programs. In the meantime, the call for educational reforms has also become a nationwide issue in Taiwan. These changes not only imply a more competitive job market for teachers, but also reveal the urgency and need of future teachers to be more competent in implementing and realising the goals of educational reforms. With the enactment of the new legislation, university supervisors assume a key role in deciding whether the prospective teachers can be awarded a teacher certificate, judging according to the criteria laid down by them. Aiming to provide a better teacher education for physical science teachers, the author has begun to examine the existing problems and explore better ways for preparing more competent physical science teachers. In Taiwan, rarely do we encounter prospective teachers immediately putting into practice instructional strategies that they have acquired. With a similar opinion, Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981) expressed that the effects of teacher preparation experience are often lost during the first year of teaching as the teachers are socialised into their classroom environments. Leib, cited in Gold (1996), also noted that much of what teachers have learned disappears when they enter the classroom. Furthermore teachers appear to be 'imprinted' by their first-year experiences, which in turn influence future behaviour (Gold, 1996). These studies indicate that the school environment influences whether teachers would put training into practice. Another possible factor may be that our pre-service teacher education program does not require them to put training into practice. She's studies (2000a; She, Len, & Sue, 2000) have reported that, if required, prospective teachers will force themselves to apply their acquired training to actual practice despite difficulties abounding. Another common observation among prospective teachers is that they believe the traditional methods they experienced as students will lead to better test scores, which is of utmost importance to any Taiwanese wishing to achieve academic success. Others argue that they do not have the time either to experiment with other ways of teaching or to search for information on alternative teaching approaches. …