Understanding the nature of science and scientific inquiry constitute foundation stones in scientific education in general and in scientific literacy in particular. Therefore, students must develop informed perceptions regarding science inquiry in order to be scientifically literate. The current study's purpose was to examine students' perceptions…

The aim of the present research was to explore the use of concept maps as an assessment tool. The research question posed was: can concept maps be used to quantitatively assess the learning of a physics topic in an engineering course? This paper describes a new approach to quantifying concept maps. The research was preceded by a pilot project that…

Student questioning is an important self-regulative strategy and has multiple benefits for teaching and learning science. Teachers, however, need support to align student questioning to curricular goals. This study tests a prototype of a principle-based scenario that supports teachers in guiding effective student questioning. In the scenario, mind…

Teachers need an understanding of the nature of science (NOS) to enable them to incorporate NOS into their teaching of science. The current study examines the usefulness of a strategy for challenging or changing teachers' understandings of NOS. The teachers who participated in this study were 10 initial teacher education chemistry students and six…

Climate change is one of the most challenging problems facing today's global society (e.g., IPCC 2013). While climate change is a widely covered topic in the media, and abundant information is made available through the internet, the causes and consequences of climate change in its full complexity are difficult for individuals, especially…