Although there is a push to provide more student agency in science classrooms, teachers and students may become frustrated when inquiry activities and equipment do not work as planned--teachers because of the time crunch to "cover" topics and students because of the perceived lack of value in activities that are "off task." In…

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…

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…

This study aimed to investigate how argument-driven inquiry (ADI) activities impact pre-service teachers' views of the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI), with a specific focus on climate change. To this end, an ADI approach was used to teach climate change, where the aspects of NOSI were explicitly taught. A sample of 24 pre-service teachers…

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:…

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…