Due to the frequent use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in daily life, it is thought that primary school students acquire information about this concept from various sources. The way these sources present AI may affect students' perceptions of AI. In the study, it was aimed to examine the perceptions of third and fourth grade primary…

Molecular biology can be challenging for undergraduate students because it requires visual literacy skills to interpret abstract representations of submicroscopic concepts, structures, and processes. The Conceptual-Reasoning-Mode framework suggests that visual literacy relies on applying conceptual knowledge to appropriately reason with the…

The purpose of the drawing method is to reveal the hidden beliefs, attitudes, knowledge and understanding of students without being dependent on words. It is more useful than other techniques in that it is easy to apply and a lot of data can be obtained with a drawing. Some misconceptions can be revealed by asking students to describe or…

The purpose of this study was to address issues of potential gender bias in pre-service elementary teachers' conceptions of engineers and engineering using Freire's (2018) "Critical Consciousness" perspective. By identifying the biasness as causal and structural attributions, the study also aimed to construct a critical pedagogy…

This collaborative self-study with pre-service teachers describes a process of examining the use of drawings as a pedagogical tool at a tertiary institution of learning. Hence, this research examines the question: What can I learn from my students to improve the use of drawings as a pedagogical tool and thus improve my work as a teacher educator?…

Especially in higher education -- but true for any setting -- what students do within a learning environment determines their learning outcomes. Given that they regulate their own learning, students do not always act in accordance with the instructions and intentions of the designed learning environment, which in turn has implications for their…

Insects form a highly diverse taxonomic group, which has fundamental ecological functions, but is currently in a process of mass extinction. Here, we present the first cycle of design, implementation, and assessment of a didactic sequence oriented towards improving pre-service teachers' knowledge and appreciation of insect diversity. A…

Energy is a concept frequently encountered both in daily life and in various disciplines. Despite such a wide range of scope, conceptualizing it might be challenging at times. This study aims to investigate high school students' views on the concept of energy through a set of various paper-and-pencil tests. For this purpose, 654 high school…

Bees play a pivotal role in maintaining ecosystems and securing food for humankind. As such, it is crucial to shape a scientific understanding of bees for school students at a young age so as to value and protect the little creatures. This study is intended to identify teenage students' knowledge and understandings of bees in relation to…

Several empirical studies reveal that students are poorly informed, and often hold stereotyped views of science and scientists. The present study aimed to investigate the Portuguese elementary school students' images of scientists and their work and the influence of gender and grade level on the development of these images. Two hundred and…

A cube is one of the most fundamental shapes we can draw and can observe from a drawing. The two visualization methods most commonly applied in mathematics textbooks and education are the axonometric and the perspective representations. However, what we see in the drawing is really a cube or only a general cuboid (i.e., a polyhedron with different…

Primary school students often do not have differentiated conceptions of human organs and organ systems. As understanding the inner structure of the human body is an elementary prerequisite for the development of health awareness, appropriate forms of teaching must be developed to modify students' fragmented preconceptions about the inside of their…

Being able to move between different representations levels (macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic) is important to understand a chemical phenomenon meaningfully. The current study investigated how pre-service science teachers moved from symbolic representation to sub-microscopic representation. A total of 205 pre-service science teachers,…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) education in primary schools has received a great deal of attention globally, and it is thus important to investigate primary school students' perceptions and understanding of AI learning. Therefore, in this study, 673 drawings of conceptions of AI learning by third to sixth grade students were collected. Firstly, a…

One type of active learning technique that instructors can incorporate is the use of various drawing activities. This study investigates the impact of drawing during biology lecture classes on student learning. Undergraduate students in two lecture sections of an introductory cellular and molecular biology course completed worksheets that either…