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Microorganisms are ubiquitous in nature and are central to human, animal, environmental, and planetary health. They play a particularly important role in the food chain and the production of high-quality, safe, and health-promoting foods, especially fermented foods. This important role is not always apparent to members of the public. Here, we describe Kefir4All, a citizen science project designed to provide the general public with an opportunity to expand their awareness, knowledge, and practical skills relating to microbiology, introduced through the medium of producing fermented food, i.e., milk kefir or water kefir. During the course of Kefir4All, 123 citizen scientists, from second-level school and non-school settings, participated in a study to track changes in the microbial composition of kefirs, by performing and recording details of milk kefir or water kefir fermentations they performed in their homes or schools over the21-week project. At the start of the study, the citizen scientists were provided with milk or water kefir grains to initiate the fermentations. Both types of kefir grain are semi-solid, gelatinous-like substances, composed of exopolysaccharides and proteins, containing a symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast. The experimental component of the project was complemented by a number of education and outreach events, including career talks and a site visit to our research center (Kefir Day). At the end of the study, a report was provided to each citizen scientist, in which individualized results of their fermenting activities were detailed. A number of approaches were taken to obtain feedback and other insights from the citizen scientists. Evaluations took place before and after theKefir4All project to gauge the citizen scientist's self-reported awareness, knowledge, and interest in microbiology and fermented foods. Further insights into the level of citizen science participation were gained through assessing the number of samples returned for analysis and the level of participation of the citizen scientists throughout the project. Notably, the survey results revealed a self-reported, increased interest in, and general knowledge of, science among the Kefir4All citizen scientists after undertaking the project and a willingness to take part in further citizen science projects. Ultimately, Kefir4Allrepresents an example of the successful integration of citizen science into existing education and research systems.

Scientific literacy plays a crucial role for elementary teachers in developing the strategies of science learning and implementing them in the classroom. Nevertheless, the scientific literacy of college students in elementary education has not been optimal. Science encyclopedia-assisted project-based learning (PjBL) integrated into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) approach is hypothesized to enhance scientific literacy. The present study describes and examines the effectiveness of science encyclopedia-assisted STEM-PjBL in enhancing pre-service elementary teachers' scientific literacy. Quasi-experimental research using a pre- and post-tests control group design was applied to this study. 56 pre-service elementary teachers at the University of Halu Oleo were involved in this study whereby they were equally distributed to two groups. A test of scientific literacy was adapted and used to measure scientific literacy. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe and analyse the data of scientific literacy. Results revealed that science encyclopedia-assisted STEM-PjBL had a positive modest effect on the achievement of scientific literacy. The scientific literacy of college students in elementary education who received science encyclopedia-assisted STEM-PjBL had moderate enhancement. Additionally, a science encyclopedia-assisted STEM-PjBL significantly enhanced scientific literacy. Educational practitioners can implement a science encyclopedia-assisted PjBL integrated STEM approach to enhance scientific literacy resulting in high achievement in science education.

Waste, a byproduct of human activity, can cause environmental pollution if released without proper processing. It can accumulate in piles, disturbing natural beauty and emitting unpleasant odors. The aim of this research is to from the students to care about the environment by learning with the Bubble Wrap Recycling Project, Used Plastic and Patchwork. The method of this project is a structured experiment. Common waste includes bubble wrap, plastic, and rags from the convection industry. A student project in an environmental science course involved recycling these materials into sitting pillows. Three variants were tested: 10% bubble wrap, 10% plastic waste, 80% patchwork, 15% bubble wrap, 15% plastic waste, 70% rags, and 20% bubble wrap, 20% plastic waste, 60% rags. The pillow's comfort was measured using a Linkert scale of 1-5. The results showed that the pillow measures 40cm. Recycling is a way to promote environmental care and awareness. Cooperation from educational agents, such as supervisors, leaders, and lecturers, is needed to increase students' environmental awareness. This includes examples of good environmental actions in daily routines, such as disposing of waste and implementing 3R practices.

Research in STEM education has focussed on integrated STEM projects that combine knowledge and skills across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These integrated STEM projects are typically designed by teachers or researchers addressing a limited range of topics that do not always cater well to the diversity of interest among children and adolescents. By contrast, self-selected projects where students have more choices and autonomy in selecting their own projects are relatively rare. Consequently, there is a gap in the literature on students' learning experiences when they choose and develop their own STEM projects. This study aims to examine the classroom experience and enactment of a high school STEM course designed for Grade 9 and 10 students (14 to 16 years old) to carry out a project of their choice aligned with the theme of sustainability. A case study methodology was used to investigate eight students' lived experiences in making connections to STEM. The study reveals the nature of students' self-directed learning experiences as they chose their own topics of exploration and subsequently developed their respective STEM-related projects. It also illuminates the alignments and tensions between STEM integration and various aspects of students' self-directed learning, including intrinsic motivation, open-ended tasks, goal setting, design thinking, collaboration with external partners, curriculum constraint, and time management. The implications of the study encompass student autonomy and agency, the significance of authentic problems and themes in STEM education, and the role of curriculum in facilitating self-selected projects.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of the use of digital storytelling on academic achievement, critical thinking dispositions, co-regulation, and narrative skills of 10th grade students. To this end, the study was conducted using a semi-experimental design with a convenience sample. The participants consisted of 64 students (33 in experimental and 31 in control group) who were studying in a high school. After the groups were trained, a two-week pilot study was conducted by forming collaborative groups among the students. This was followed by eight weeks of main implementation, during which students presented their projects to the class every two weeks. Following the digital story presentations in the experimental group, feedback was provided by the course instructor and peers. In addition, rubric scores were generated by the researchers for each digital story. Academic achievement test, critical thinking disposition scale, co-regulatory skills scale, and digital story evaluation rubric were used as data collection tools at the end of the process. Independent samples t-test, repeated ANOVA, and regression analysis were performed on the collected data. According to the results, digital story activities had moderate positive effects on students' academic achievement and critical thinking, and high positive effects on co-regulation. In addition, the narrative skills of the students in the experimental group increased significantly over the weeks with a difference of 27.44 points. There was also evidence that storytelling ability was a significant predictor of academic achievement and that this ability increased significantly over the weeks. The results showed that the collaborative creation of a digital story by the students had a positive effect on their academic achievement and the development of their skills.

Previous studies have shown both benefits and challenges of group work and whole-class activities in educational settings. One overall finding in the existing literature is that it is challenging for teachers to facilitate whole-class conversations that realise the rich potential of student discussions and undertakings during group work. This article investigates how teachers can facilitate productive consolidating whole-class conversations building on students' group work experiences by enacting responsive teaching practices, implying foregrounding students' experiences and ideas, and pursuing the substance of the students' experiences and ideas in instructional work. Based on a sociocultural perspective, we analyse sequences of classroom interactions where students' experiences from their lifeworld are invoked in a) settings where student engage in small group activities and b) teacher facilitated whole-class conversations. The educational context is a science project about genetics involving lower secondary school students and their science teacher. Our analysis shows that in group work settings, students' everyday experiences are invoked but are seldom picked up on and pursued in group conversations as resources for engaging with science matters. In whole-class conversations facilitated by the teacher, especially in situations in which the teacher assumed a responsive teaching approach, students' everyday experiences were more often realised as resources for shared meaning making and engagement with scientific concepts and ideas. We discuss this study's implications for teachers designing productive learning activities that combine group work and whole-class activities.

In the years 2015-2018, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research and the Italian Ministry of Defense proposed the joint initiative "Space for Your Future. The ISS: Innovatio, Scientia, Sapientia" in partnership with the Italian Space Agency. It was a competition addressed to secondary school students and aimed at developing innovative experiments to be conducted on the International Space Station, whose acronym (ISS) is the same of the Latin words "Innovatio, Scientia, Sapientia". Regardless of the odds of winning, "Space for Your Future" became a successful STEM educational project implemented in numerous schools. We illustrate how that Astronomy contest fostered a valid constructivist learning, a fruitful participatory science, and vast scientific research. We discuss, in particular, the activities of two teams of pupils from the Scientific High School "Giovanni Battista Grassi" in Latina (seat of the Planetarium "Livio Gratton") who participated within the thematic area No. 3 "Test the Sciences in Space". They all worked on chemical tests, suitable for the ISS microgravity, under the tutoring of Francesco Giuliano (Province Manager of the IYA 2009 and the IYC 2011 in Latina). The key reference is a talk given in the 104th annual congress of the Italian Physical Society at the University of Calabria (September 17-21, 2018) together with an invited lecture held in the 13th European Researchers' Night by Frascati Scienza (September 28, 2018).

Over the past few years, we have worked together in a citizen science project called "Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet" (see also Goldin et al. 2021, Goldin et al., 2023). In this project we engaged with 420 young learners in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. We came to see participating schools as collaborative ecosystems where young citizens become entangled with water through experiential encounters that make science alive and relevant. Through our engagement with citizen science, we experienced the transformative power of affect and the relevance of emotions in education as a social and political project. In our pedagogy we depart from the idea that human beings are separate from the biosphere, thus recognising the interdependency of all life forms on earth. We believe that keeping science education in laboratories and libraries affirms what Bozalek and Zemblyas (2023) call "privileged irresponsibility". We propose that citizen science and its transformative potential can be one way to redress such irresponsibility. Through impactful encounters with human - nonhuman entanglement and the emotions which are evoked in this process, citizen science can create opportunities for response-ability (Bozalek & Zemblyas, 2023), through teaching and learning with the heart. Such entanglement also resonates with relationality as the currency of care theorists. In the context of our citizen science work, caring for unfamiliar others is a form of non-human-centred care with unfamiliar water bodies in which the binary of inside-outside learning becomes porous as the geographies of water penetrate the classroom walls. In "Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet," we noted how watery spaces and images move back and forth caring-with and through human bodies - waterbodies to school, school to waterbodies. The entanglement with the nonhuman resonates with Massumi's (2015) notion of becoming where there is an unrolling of an event that is a becoming of two together.

Integrating service learning with undergraduate research, the student biodiesel project converted all waste vegetable oil (WVO) from campus dining centers into a sustainable biofuel used by campus vehicles, allowing half of the campus diesel energy needs to be met by a material (WVO) that was formerly a waste. Biodiesel reduced air pollution from campus diesel vehicles, including the emission of greenhouse gases. This project connected students to their community and increased students' awareness of the "social/economic" aspects of environmental challenges in the world around them. Students felt a "great sense of responsibility to make a real product that would make a difference" in the real world. Students who participated in the research course became teaching assistants for another regular course in which biodiesel production was a component. This allowed biodiesel to be produced sustainably and provided additional students with hands-on bioenergy experience. Specific challenges and suggestions for future practices are also reported.

Citizen science's (CS) deployment and benefit over the last ten years have been remarkably substantial in their contributions to the massification of citizen participation in tech-based CS projects. Insights into how CS projects influence community changes through proposals of actions and public policies are essential to understanding how they facilitate citizens' advocacy in decision-making at various ecosystem levels. To this end, we conducted a systematic literature review of tech-based CS projects published between 2017 and 2022, in which the participation of the tertiary education sector played a central role. We used a guideline that education plays a fundamental role in developing technology-based CS projects. The more educational processes, such as incorporating activities that strengthen complex thinking in citizens, the greater their involvement in decision-making to propose public policies that address their current problems. Findings suggested that a) there is significant involvement of the educational system with CS; b) CS projects do not comply with the innovation helixes; c) tech-based CS projects usually indirectly develop competencies and sub-competencies of complex thinking, and d) social actions are clearly articulated through these competencies and sub-competencies that determine the complete cycle of tech-based CS projects, which result in organized actions or public policies. To sum up, this study serves as a call for long-term co-design projects that consider both the individual development of the participants and the integral impact on decision-making at all levels.

The aim of this study was to investigate the perspectives of science teachers who are pursuing postgraduate studies on their experiences in preparing a research project and to explore the effects of this experience on the participants. In this context, a qualitative research method was employed using an action research design. Seven science teachers who met the research criteria participated, and the research was conducted for 14 weeks during the fall semester. Semi-structured interviews, peer assessment forms, and project evaluation rubrics were used to collect data. The data collected from the interviews were analyzed using content analysis technique. The results indicated that the participants had insufficient knowledge about preparing a research project before the training, but they achieved a certain level of competency by the end of the training. The participants gained knowledge about the stages of the project, how to write the project, what originality means and its importance, and the criteria of a good project as a result of the training. The teachers gained an important understanding about the importance of originality and planning while preparing the project, and they had the most difficulty in determining the originality of the project. In addition, the participants agreed that teacher competency in preparing and conducting a qualitative research project is very important.

Colleges throughout the United States typically expect their students to take at least one course in the sciences to fulfill liberal studies curriculum requirements. For nonscience majors, the choice of science class can include introductory chemistry, introductory biology, and astronomy, among others. Based upon interactions both in and out of the classroom, a good number of students in nonscience fields have reservations about taking one of these science courses. By including different types of student-driven mentored scientific communication projects such as poster sessions, fact sheets, and online methods into these courses, science educators can serve to increase student interest in the sciences, decrease final grade dependency on exam scores, mitigate some student concerns regarding their progress in the class, meet the curriculum requirements, assess the students using methods outside of the standard graded exam, and mirror what scientists use every day to learn about and communicate in their own disciplines. In addition, these projects and their associated grading rubrics are adaptable to courses that are taught in a variety of formats and levels (for example, online versus hybrid or primary/secondary versus postsecondary) and allow for a student focus on presenting scientific information in a concise format with minimal time required for instructor assessment.

Within citizen science projects, learning about natural resources can encourage environmentally friendly behaviour. More empirical understanding is needed on how citizen science projects facilitate learning outcomes to support sustainable resource management, such as agrobiodiversity. Here we present the learning outcomes of a citizen science project where participants interacted with agrobiodiversity in landscape observatories in Flanders (Belgium). The observatories consisted of square-meter (m[superscript 2]) gardens planted with vegetable crops. Participants were asked to visit their m[superscript 2]-garden and to perform tasks according to a scientific protocol (e.g. harvesting). Most of the knowledge gained was practical, while some was more in-depth. More than half of the respondents changed their views on agrobiodiversity and about a third changed their actions related to agrobiodiversity. Transformative learning outcomes were more likely when participants reported having less prior knowledge. Participants cited the tactile tool of the m[superscript 2] gardens and frequent written and informal communication as key learning tools.

Through the Sediment, Ice, & Learning on the Tanana (SILT) project, a team of university scientists engaged two middle school student groups in testing innovative environmental research technologies to measure sediment flowing underneath river ice. The culturally responsive, place-based pilot program tests these technologies as a strategy to increase students' science interest and science self-efficacy. Over a series of three workshops, 39 students built and deployed low-cost turbidity sensors to measure sediment flowing underneath river ice and designed model payload attachment systems to attach the sensors to drones for measuring sediment fluxes during spring river ice breakup. Students' changes in science interest and self-efficacy were measured using both a true pre- and post-program survey and a retrospective pre-program survey.

Scientist-led K-12 outreach offers many benefits to scientists, teachers, and students; however, many of these programs are top down rather than collaborative. Our team facilitated a museum-based scientist-teacher partnership to co-design a lesson on shark biology for middle school students. Following the implementation of the lesson, we conducted interviews with the scientist and teacher participants. The participants described several benefits for the students including contextualizing science in the real world, providing exposure to new careers, and humanizing scientists. Teacher benefits included increased content knowledge and feeling reenergized to teach their subject. The scientist gained knowledge about science standards and classroom pedagogy. The challenges to the partnership included time constraints and restrictions enforced by the school districts. Using the findings from our study, we describe how other organizations can facilitate similar scientist-teacher partnerships to help improve science literacy and career aspirations. Scientist-teacher partnerships are highly effective for improving scientists' communication skills, increasing teachers' content knowledge, and contextualizing science for students.

Scientific reasoning, argumentation, and problem-solving are essential skills in 21st century. They help people solve problems in daily life. This study aimed to investigate the effect of local-based teaching materials on student's argumentation, scientific reasoning, and problemsolving skills using Science Project-based Learning (SPjBL). Argumentation skill is a social and dynamic process, involving individuals engaged in thinking, constructing, and critiquing knowledge in science. Scientific Reasoning skills require students to give reasons in the form of opinion or actions and conclusions by using appropriate language to explain what they think and making judgments or decisions based on the produced reasons or evidence. Problem-Solving skill is a process of designing, evaluating, and implementing a strategy to answer questions. In this study, the time series approach was used as a part of the quasi-experimental design with Science Projectbased Learning (SPjBL) as the learning model. A total of 29 Biology students of Universitas Negeri Malang participated in this study in August-November 2019 at the Department of Biology of the university. The data was collected using pre-test and post-test instruments which measured scientific argumentation, scientific reasoning, and Problem-solving skill variables. The data analysis was done using ANCOVA test in SPSS 16.0. The results of this study show that there is positive effects of local-based invertebrate and vertebrate materials on scientific argumentation, scientific reasoning, and problem-solving skills. These findings can be used as reference for educator to gain students' scientific reasoning, argumentation, and problem-solving skills in science classroom through Science Project-based Learning (SPjBL) with the help of local-based teaching materials.

Ensuring that learning is participatory and even further democratized seems particularly important at a time when people are kept apart because of a COVID-19 pandemic that thrives on proximity. Whilst learning is based on exchanges, it also benefits from the existence of a learning community, the access to which needs to be equal and taking account of learners' diversity. How is Higher Education equipping itself to adapt to new learning conditions? How can it ensure that it can meet new types of needs? To address these questions, a workshop was organized at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research on Education and Development (CeiED), Lisbon, on an emerging area of research called 'Citizen Science'. Citizen Science has been gaining popularity in many disciplines. Here, we are interested in how it could help to improve education and learning, as well as how current research in education might also help approaches in Citizen Science to move forward. Reflections on theory were carried out in parallel with a one-day practical online workshop on 'operationalizing Citizen Science', involving researchers in the center's three areas -- education, museology, and urbanism. This article explains the outcomes of this event.

This article explores the meaning of community-driven and owned science in the context of an Inuit-led land-based program, the Young Hunters Program. It is the foundational program of the Arviat Aqqiumavvik Society, situated in Nunavut, Canada, a community-led group dedicated to researching challenges to community wellness and designing and delivering programs to help address those challenges. We show how the program emerged locally and blends Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) with tools of western science in respectful ways given its core sits within and emerges from what Inuit have always known to be true. We offer a description of six dimensions inherent in Inuit cultural practices and beliefs and foundational to the program activities and show how they open up various learning trajectories and possibilities for the involved young people to engage in community science. We then discuss in what ways the revitalization of IKS and practices led to community science projects that were locally meaningful and empowering with important implications for scientific work that mattered in light of locally experienced and devastating climate change threats. The study speaks to the importance of rebuilding relations and decolonizing knowledge systems and science practices, two key tools to Inuit self-determination and social transformations, and essential to achieving more social justice and equity in and beyond community science.

School-based citizen science offers a way for students and teachers to collaborate with scientists and take part in multiple facets of research such as data collection and analysis, and sometimes research initiation, co-design, and reporting of findings. However, most citizen science projects offered to schools are of the contributory type, often regarded as a lesser form of participation since the role of nonscientific participants lies mostly in data collection. The current study set out to examine the potential of contributory projects to afford--despite their limitations--more equitable power relations between schools and scientists and a meaningful participation of schools in scientific research. We view meaningful participation as such that embodies students' and teachers' responsibility over scientific processes or outcomes. Nine pairs of teachers and scientists who collaborated in contributory-based projects were asked to think aloud as they answered a questionnaire regarding their experiences, resulting with rich commentary on how they perceived relationships between the schools and the scientists. Analysis of the think-aloud data, using a framework based on the notion of reciprocity in university-community partnerships, indicated that most teachers and scientists developed a sense of reciprocal relations where both sides are acknowledged contributors, some even deeply so. We discuss factors influencing the emergence of reciprocity and implications towards the premise of school-based citizen science to democratize science and change traditional power relations in school-based citizen science collaborations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a situation, the "anthropopause", of lockdowns and distancing among individuals to reduce the spread of the disease. One of the major problems to surface is the inequality of the educational process in schools. We present a study of high school students who conduct a year-long research project with an academic. We hypothesized that the projects would not be impacted because of the individual manner of study involved. We analyzed the number of research proposals submitted in the years 2015-2021. We compared the data of the pre-epidemic period with the two pandemic years, 2020 and 2021. Our data show that in the years of the pandemic, significantly less research proposals were submitted, and the number of research proposals rejected was lower, but the total number of research proposals approved, or the number of theses submitted, was not significantly different. The research areas in which Israeli high school students conducted research were mostly in the laboratory (63.2%) and agriculture (27.5%), while ecology was relatively insignificant--whether in captivity (3.1%) or the field (5.1%). A new field that is fast becoming of interest is bioinformatics. Research in agriculture was significantly lower during the pandemic period, while there were no differences in the other subjects between the two periods. We conclude that the fewer research proposals submitted suggest that those that did not take the subject seriously enough did not begin the process. This resulted in a lower number of rejections and is substantiated by the fact that an equal number of students that submitted their final theses did not differ from the years before the pandemic. We are optimistic that the truly motivated students will continue to make the effort to be involved in biology science projects over and above their regular school curriculum and in spite of the COVID-19 restrictions and limitations.

As the use of plastics expands, microplastic concentrations increase in aquatic environments and negatively impact water, soil, and animals inhabiting these areas. Microplastic research frequently incorporates citizen science to assist in data collection and environmental education. These projects provide opportunities for greater societal inclusion in science by involving volunteers and increasing the science capital in individuals with fewer science experiences. Integrating the goals of microplastic citizen science projects through a high school laboratory can increase students' knowledge of this critical issue while incorporating innovative science activities in classrooms. This paper describes three activities designed for high school students to extract, quantify, and observe microplastics from personal care products, water, and sediment samples. Relevant citizen science-inspired activities can increase environmental stewardship and students' science capital while creating a culture of engagement with science-related activities.

Values and how values are created in science education are an under-researched field, which is problematic given the importance of epistemic values to the nature of science. From a sociological perspective, values are experienced as emotionally infused ideas with the power to influence choices and actions in everyday situations such as learning through science inquiry. The present study explores the creation of value and values by building on links with entrepreneurial education that are previously explored, but not fully developed, in science education research. Using an entrepreneurial value creation pedagogy (VCP) model as a conceptual framing, this study is situated in a science inquiry project as part of a preservice teachers' course. The study focuses on the question: "How are values in science education created by learning through doing an entrepreneurially infused inquiry project?" The study illustrates how preservice science teachers create values for self to produce a sense of purpose, how they create value for agency to support action taking in a science investigation, and how they create value for others. Findings illustrate a synthesis of entrepreneurial value creation practices with science inquiry and possibilities for improving understandings about how social, cultural, and epistemic values may be created in science education. Future studies should explore the interdependence between social, cultural, and epistemic values experienced by learners in naturalistic science education contexts. This could involve analysis of epistemic emotions as a constituent of epistemic values.

In citizen science (CS) projects, citizens who are not professional scientists participate in scientific research. Besides serving research purposes, CS projects provide participants opportunities for inquiry-based learning to promote their topic-specific knowledge and scientific reasoning skills. Previous research suggests that participants need scientific reasoning skills to engage in scientific activities and to learn from inquiry in CS projects. Participants' scientific reasoning skills, therefore, might enhance the resulting topic-specific knowledge at the end of a CS project. On the other hand, scientific reasoning skills themselves are a learning outcome of CS projects. Hence, they might play a double role in CS projects: as a learning outcome and as a prerequisite for acquiring knowledge. In the informal education context of CS, it has not yet been investigated whether scientific reasoning skills predict topic-specific knowledge or vice versa. To address this question, the research presented here used a cross-lagged panel design in two longitudinal field studies of a CS project on urban wildlife ecology (N = 144 participants). The results indicated that participants' scientific reasoning skills positively influenced their topic-specific knowledge at the end of the project, but not vice versa. Extending previous research on individual learning outcomes of CS projects, the results showed that inquiry-based learning in CS projects depends on certain prerequisites, such as participants' proficiency in scientific reasoning. We discuss the implications for future research on inquiry-based learning in CS projects and for further training of CS participants in acquiring scientific reasoning skills.

Background: Creativity is an important skill for the future society and developing students' creativity is an important part of science education. Working on a creative science project may help developing students' creative abilities, and the interaction between teacher and students during the work on defining a problem and solving the problem, is an ideal forum for supporting students' creativity. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to get insight into how teachers respond to students' creative ideas during the works on a creative science project, and how the interaction between teacher and students may support or inhibit students' creative abilities. Design and methods: Data in this study consist of 49 videorecorded interactions between two teachers and student groups working on a science project with the aim of supporting students' creative abilities. The interactions were analyzed with the use of Conversation Analysis (CA). Results: Analysis shows that teachers play an important role in developing students' creative ideas. The analysis shows how teachers, after being told the students' creative ideas, evaluates the students' ideas as either preferred or dis-preferred according to the teacher's own preference. The teachers' evaluative stance towards the students' creative ideas determines how the conversations with the students unfold and make explicit which ideas the students should work further within the project. Conclusion: Controlling the conversation based on the teacher's own preference may lead to missed opportunities regarding converting students' mini-c creative ideas into little-c creative ideas. Being able to create time and opportunity to explore and develop students' ideas, there is a need for fewer students per teacher and more focus on the process aspect of creativity rather than the product aspect.

Citizen science, a field and practice that commonly involves 'non experts' engaging in scientific activities, is an avenue of science engagement that commonly results in increased scientific knowledge, literacy, and skills for the volunteers that participate. In recent years there have been increasing efforts to better understand the myriad outcomes for participants including how personal dimensions of these citizen science volunteers, such as their identities, background, cultures, and experiences, contribute to their relationships with citizen science as well as the broader field of STEM. While previous studies have acknowledged the lack of demographic diversity in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, education, and socioeconomic status, there remains little record of the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of citizen science volunteers. The aim of this study was to understand the personal dimensions of engaging LGBTQ+ volunteers in citizen science including the relationships between their queer and science identities. Based on the perspectives and experiences of 14 LGBTQ+ citizen science volunteers as shared in semi-structured interviews, this article suggests that citizen science practitioners have the potential to reduce barriers faced by queer citizen science volunteers by taking actions and enacting strategies that welcome, respect, involve, and retain LGBTQ+ participants.

Background: STEM education and research are increasingly emphasized by governments worldwide to foster national development and productivity, economic competitiveness and societal wellbeing. There is no exception in Hong Kong, with its desire to promote STEM education and to strengthen Innovation and Technology development in the future. Purpose: This study aimed to explore the STEM activities employed in primary students' STEM projects under the theme 'Living in a Smart City', and to identify what and how computation technologies were generally used and to examine the differences of computation technology used among project types and award levels. Sample: 168 project reports were collected from a STEM Fair with the following areas of content: the origins of the inquiry idea; scientific/STEM theories employed; inquiry process and testing methods implemented; findings and results obtained; difficulties encountered; and students' reflections. Design and methods: Content analysis on project reports and students' reflections was performed. The qualitative data were coded for statistical analysis, to explore the differences in the association of the STEM activities in the projects. Analyses were supported by students' reflections in the reports to explore students' computation experiences. Results: Most students worked on new device projects, and projects producing new devices were more likely to integrate technological activities. On the whole, science, engineering and mathematics activities complemented each other well, with less evidence of integration with respect to technology activities. Students gained valuable knowledge and got a sense of achievement from the STEM project work. Conclusion: It is encouraging to find that students were capable of integrating STEM activities to different extents into STEM projects. It is noticed that more emphasis should be laid on promoting the infusion of computation technological activities. More attention should also be paid on providing computation technique assistance or logical explanation to students.

Although participation in citizen science can improve cognitive and affective learning outcomes, many citizen science projects exhibit low retention rates. By gaining an understanding of forms of engagement, reasons for ongoing participation, and the impact of project design on participant motivation and engagement, we can help keep people involved in such projects. We address these issues by investigating motivational drivers and forms of engagement among volunteers in an ecological citizen science project. Our mixed-method approach involved interviews conducted with 26 core participants and questionnaires completed by 89 participants. Our analyses reveal an array of motivational drivers and various forms of engagement. While seeking to contribute to nature conservation was an important motivation for joining the project, the primary driver for ongoing participation was learning through social interactions. Moreover, the citizen science project design influenced participants' motivation and engagement.

Most of biodiversity is not considered charismatic and from human's perspective it can be indifferent, problematic, harmful, disgusting, or dangerous. Secondary school students' attitudes towards an unloved species and how it relates to their feelings of disgust in the context of a biology course were studied during a citizen science project where Finnish secondary school students surveyed the occurrence of urban rats. Questionnaire data were collected on four scales: attitude towards rats, interest in learning about environment, disgust, and liking biology as a school subject. It was modeled with an item response theory approach by including respondents' age and gender. Higher age correlated with a more positive attitude towards the environment and lower level of disgust. Surprisingly, the students with more positive attitude towards rats also not only had a higher liking biology as a school subject and positive attitude towards the environment, but also a higher level of general disgust. The results suggest that disgust in general is not detrimental in learning and appreciating unloved others as parts of biodiversity. The results also raise questions on how personal attitudes towards the individual species relate to attitudes toward more abstract concept of biodiversity or the environment.

High school science fairs provide an exceptional opportunity for students to gain experience with scientific research, and participation has positive outcomes with respect to chosen careers in the sciences. However, it can be challenging to engage high school students in university-level research outside of formal internship programs. Here, we describe an experimental pipeline for a computational structural biology project that engages high school students. Students are involved at every step of the investigation and utilize freely available software to dock inhibitors onto protein homologues, and then analyze the resulting complexes. Bacterial sortases are transpeptidases on the cell surface of Gram-positive bacteria and are a potential target for the development of antibiotics. Students modeled inhibitors bound to sortases from several organisms, asking questions about affinity and selectivity. Their project was ranked in the top 10% at both regional and state science fairs. This project design is easily adaptable to countless other protein systems and provides a pipeline for collaborative high school student/university professor inquiry.

Interest driven learning has the potential to enhance the inquiry based learning process by contextualizing curriculum as students investigate scientific questions, collecting and analyzing data, and construct reasonable conclusions relative to their interests. This paper presents a project and its findings that involved preservice elementary teachers developing science lessons from student career interest information gathered from a class of second graders. How might interest driven learning enhance preservice elementary teachers' ability to teach science through inquiry based learning? How might interest driven learning influence elementary students' perception of science in their future careers? The preservice teachers reported positive attitudes toward teaching science while connecting student career interests with science content. The project also reported having a positive impact on the second graders' perceptions of science associated with their chosen careers.

Providing individuals with environmental awareness from a young age is very important for a livable and sustainable world. In this context, this study aims to investigate the impacts of the environmental science project, the Water Explorer Program, on middle school students' water usage behaviors, and attitudes. A quasi-experimental research design was used. The participants were 87 (36 girls and 51 boys) eighth-grade students from four different classes in a public school. Whereas the textbook-based instructional approach was used in the control group, the Water Explorer Program was used in the experimental group. Water usage attitudes and water usage behavior scales were administered to the groups at the beginning and end of the study. In addition to pre-post tests, reflection papers were gathered from students in the experimental group. The findings of the study revealed that students in the experimental group developed significantly better water usage behaviors, and attitudes than their counterparts in the control group. Therefore, environmental projects should be involved in science curricula.

This research was carried out at the Science Volunteer Program 2018, which is run by Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology. The purpose of the research was to understand the effects of self-efficacy, satisfaction, and science trust on science volunteers' intention to continue volunteering. The research drew on the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) to test how social cognitive variables affect volunteers' intention to continue engaging in events and with organizations. A total of 156 volunteers taking part in the program completed a questionnaire measuring Self-efficacy, Satisfaction, Trust, and Intention. A structural equation model (SEM) was developed, and the proposed effects on the variables were tested using SEM procedures. The results of the SEM analysis found that there were positive effects between (a) Self-efficacy and Satisfaction, (b) Self-efficacy and Intention, (c) Satisfaction and Intention, and (d) Trust and Intention. The discussion highlights implications for science volunteer managers who are not only in a position to increase volunteers' behavioral intention to continue their engagement in volunteer work, but also to facilitate interventions to boost volunteering in Taiwan.

Hands-on projects have been widely used as alternative approaches for teaching and learning of science with direct practical experience on doing to promote students' development of 21st-century skills. Here, we present an implementation of hands-on projects into teaching and learning of magnetic field topic that corresponds with indicators and core content of the curriculum of Thailand Basic Education. Notably, we demonstrated the hands-on projects of magnetization and magnetic force using low-cost materials but strived toward an understanding of science through the active and prolonged engagement of students with experiments. For the magnetization, when a current flow through a solenoid coil, magnetic material inside the coil turns to be magnet: temporary (cutter/scissors/metal-rod) or permanent (screwdriver). For the magnetic force demonstration, when a current-carrying wire is in a magnetic field produced from horseshoe shape magnet such that the direction of current flow is perpendicular to the magnetic field lines, the magnetic force moves the wire with its direction determined from Fleming's right-hand rule. We envisage that this work would be useful for helping teachers to explain and visualize the magnetic field phenomena and might facilitate future work that encourages the students to pursue inquiry-based approaches.

This mixed methods research explored the autonomous experiences of South African school students when participating in a science fair. A prominent global goal for school science education is for students to partake in scientific inquiry in order to acquire understanding of science concepts, the processes and skills of science, and the nature of science. This places a demand on teachers as it requires a change in pedagogy from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach. Student autonomy, has been described as both a rationale for and a characteristic of students doing scientific inquiry. In this research, a quantitative survey questionnaire was administered to 50 students participating in a science fair. The questionnaire sought to establish the autonomy level of students when doing their investigative inquiry projects and the degree of support they received. Thereafter, 5 students were interviewed to elaborate upon their responses and to describe in detail their experiences of doing the projects. The findings of this study revealed that the students enjoyed optimal autonomy and perceived their experience as being empowering and stimulating. It is also suggested that science fairs can provide an opportunity for students to enjoy autonomy in choosing their own topic for inquiry, in designing the inquiry, in doing the inquiry, and arriving at their own conclusions. This autonomy can enable students to experience authentic inquiry, show their creativity and demonstrate critical thinking skills.

In the face of an increasingly severe global climate change situation, carbon neutrality initiatives have been included in the development action plans of many countries around the world. The carbon neutrality vision will also accelerate the revolution in the energy systems of countries around the world, injecting new vitality into the upgrading of industrial structures and high-quality economic growth. The theme of this study is a carbon dioxide capture project learning activity. Through the structured design and model construction of the teaching content, the students' learning style is transformed, and the students' scientific attitude, social responsibility, as well as their ability to use existing knowledge to solve practical problems are cultivated.

Simple, often artificial problems are normally preferred for introductory lab courses and are restricted to indoor participation. Microtitrations make it possible to leave the lab and study water chemistry directly in the natural environment. An exemplary outdoor challenge is presented here: travertine formation is context-rich, has to be examined on site, fits very well into a beginner's curriculum, and imparts multidisciplinary knowledge. The method is transferable to other water chemistry projects. Experiences with homemade water hardness kits during ten student fieldtrips to travertine forming Waterfall Dreimühlen (Eifel, Germany) are shared, along with a corresponding Bachelor's project.

This paper is a search for common ground between two natural scientists, two childhood studies and education scholars and two human-animal studies or critical animal studies scholars all working within a shared citizen science project. The search takes the form of a thematic mapping of existing literature on ecological citizen science, with two questions: "Participation on whose terms?", and "Participation for whose benefit?". First, we draw from the field of "childhood studies" to show how the concept of participation can be theorized further. Second, we recontextualize ecological citizen science research from a "multispecies" perspective, following the non-anthropocentric turn in human and social sciences which has so far drawn limited attention both in educational research and in citizen science projects. We proceed by critically treading the blurry line between predetermined or science-led participation and emergent or participant-led research, forming a fruitful space for examining and reconceptualizing the prevailing human/nature distinction in science and pedagogy. What we end up proposing is not so much a solution to the issues we have located, but rather an invitation to consider participation as a possibility for engaging with the ongoing tensions regarding the apparatuses of power that guide the research practices, researchers' thinking and ethics. For the democratic ethos of citizen science projects, these observations can result in an ongoing process of asking how would it be possible to make space for various knowledges to be regarded as such: How could different kinds of knowledge co-exist, potentially generating more just worlds?

Parents are considered as the most vital influence for the education of female students, there has been a vast area of research on how science education is perceived by parents and society in general. In Nigeria, the parents' mindset about the education of female students is not encouraging Thus, this paper presents the results of impact of carrying out science home projects by five female students on their parents' perception of their daughters' science learning. The home project is part of a science module in a bigger study. Data were collected from interviews with the female students and their parents and observation during the implementation of the home projects. The interview was done after the home project. The interview data was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. The data was triangulated with the observation field notes. The result reveals that the parents' mindsets are positively changed. We also point out the implication of the of this study and the future researches about the education of female students is suggested. The home projects were found to be helpful to makes parents to see the importance of learning science by their female daughters so that they can change their thought and enroll more of their daughters to secondary school to learn science and further their studies at higher institution.

Inquiry-based science education has become one of the most effective methodologies to learn science; however, proposals in preschool are scarce. Different factors are responsible for this situation, such as the low self-confidence of teachers to teach science and the belief that young children are unable to develop certain reasoning skills. This study reports the implementation of an inquiry-based science project in a preschool setting, in the context of a preservice teacher's school placement. The project aimed to promote the development of basic and integrated scientific skills, enhance acquisition of conceptual knowledge and make the students enjoy while learning science. The intervention is described thoroughly and illustrated with examples from the real implementation of the theoretical IBSE sequence. At the beginning of the proposal, the students received a hypothetical letter from the astronaut Pedro Duque, in which they were asked for help to plan his trip to living on Mars, a cold planet, with only frozen and saltwater. After some introductory POE (predict, observe, and explain) experiences on the perception of temperature and activities with fresh and saline water, the students performed a piece of research: growing lettuce in four different conditions, combining two variables: temperature and the salinity of water. As the project developed, the students progressively gave better descriptions and justifications, and also showed great interest in performing more "research experiments". For the preservice teacher, the project provided an excellent opportunity to implement academic knowledge in school practice.

Gender equity is a critical agenda for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education to increase women involvement in the STEM pathway. Our study is about the impact of a project in which all-girl teams participated to an educational robotics program. We used quantitative and qualitative data to determine the impact and understand the girls' program experiences. After the participation of the program, the mean scores have increased in interest in STEM, interest in STEM careers, STEM identity, and understanding of STEM scales. The groups underlined their problem solving and group work experiences, as well as their excitement and motivation related with the STEM activities.

The chirality of chemicals is a well-known concept among undergraduates. The examples of chiral molecules in daily life are introduced to high school students as well. However, the chirality of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) remains unpopular in these groups. In this paper, a simple visualization of SWCNTs was first performed via paper origami. Then, a cost-effective separation experiment was introduced to the students to achieve the actual chiral SWCNTs. The proposed visualization and separation of chiral SWCNTs were evaluated in students' science projects. Introducing the chirality concept to students would enhance the students' understanding of nanomaterials and the chirality of SWCNTs.

Makerspaces aim to revolutionize the current higher education by providing a means for students to be directly involved in many scientific projects and develop various kinds of skills. While researchers have made progress in understanding different makerspaces and the increase of making in education, the reality is that a specific makerspace may be rather different from many other contexts. As makerspace programs expand around universities in Tianjin, China, it needs a robust framework and a construct model to set the foundation for understanding key makerspace elements beyond curriculum, and to be used for research and verification of these experiences to advance work. Therefore, this paper provides the development and explanation of a construct model of influencing factors for makers in the universities applied beyond curriculum. Methods of questionnaire survey, descriptive statistics, multiple linear regression, and correlation analysis were used to explore the influencing factors of makerspace. The results are as follows: the innovation awareness of the maker subject is positively correlated with teamwork; the innovation awareness and teamwork are positively related to the effect feedback of the makerspace; Activating interest in maker activities is positively related to deep research, putting into practice, and precise creation; deep research has a positive correlation with putting into practice, and putting into practice has a direct correlation with precision creation. In maker resources, Internet resources positively correlate with the sharing of university resources, and Internet resources and university resources positively correlate with enterprise resources. In this paper, a novel theoretical framework and a construct model of makerspaces beyond curriculum offered enables us to analyze future practices and the resulting development of future-making.

Citizen science is a research collaboration between scientists and volunteers who provide data for education, conservation, and environmental protection. Volunteers, often the locals in the area, provide data on species occurrence while researchers perform distribution mapping or other data analysis. Social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr can be used as platforms for the public to share their photos of species and for scientists to aid in identification. In this article, we show how social media groups can be used to generate data on species distribution of myxomycetes.