This paper describes an alternative approach to teaching and learning practices in an undergraduate physics laboratory. The instructor plans and implements the 5E instructional model into the laboratory instruction. The article includes an example of the 5E lesson for the laboratory component of a physics course, which has separate lecture and…

Understanding the nature of science has long been a focus of science education reform efforts, including the Next Generation of Science Standards. Students' views about the process of how scientific knowledge is acquired has been shown to affect their ability to learn scientific concepts. Integrating the nature of science into science lesson plans…

The Polymers and Cross-Linking experiment is presented via a new three phase learning cycle: CORE (Chemical Observations, Representations, Experimentation), which is designed to model productive chemical inquiry and to promote a deeper understanding about the chemistry operating at the submicroscopic level. The experiment is built on two familiar…

This standards-based science lesson introduces young learners to scientific inquiry and critical thinking by using activities to demonstrate three phases of matter (solid, liquid, and gas). By learning about the states of matter through a 5E instructional approach, students are encouraged to observe changes in the states of matter and to discuss…

A survey and analysis of four major research paradigms--positivism, postpositivism, critical theory and constructivism--reveal that all have been applied effectively in recent theological inquiry. Although these paradigms might resemble worldviews to some extent, they are not so all-encompassing. Rather, they are essentially matrices of deeply…

Consideration of a possible use of virtual reality technologies in school contexts requires gathering together the suggestions of many scientific domains aimed at "understanding" the features of these same tools that let them offer valid support to the teaching-learning processes in educational settings. Specifically, the present study is aimed at…

The association between the observable physical world and the mathematical models used in theoretical physics to describe this world is examined. Such models will frequently exhibit solutions that are "unexpected," in the sense that they describe physical situations which are different from that which the physicist may initially have had in mind…

Students--and just about everyone else--tend to have a wide range of misconceptions about microbes. This article is aimed at changing how students view microbes by engaging them in two hands-on activities that are fun and creative and align with both the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) and the Essential Principles of Ocean Literacy…

How teachers view the nature of scientific knowledge is crucial to their understanding of science content and how it can be taught. This book presents an overview of the dynamics of scientific progress and its relationship to the history and philosophy of science, and then explores their methodological and educational implications and develops…

The structure of David's Bloor argument for the Strong Programme (SP) in Science Studies is criticized from the philosophical perspective of anti-skeptical, scientific realism. The paper transforms the common criticism of SP--that the symmetry principle of SP implies an untenable form of cognitive relativism--into the clear philosophical issue of…

Although not all teachers can invite scientists into classrooms on a regular basis, they can invite them into their students' worlds through literature. Here the author shares how she used the nonfiction selection, "Science to the Rescue" (Markle 1994), as an opportunity for students to investigate socially significant problems and empower them to…

Bringing a greater number of students into science is one of, if not the most fundamental goals of science education for "all", especially for heretofore-neglected groups of society such as women and Aboriginal students. Providing students with opportunities to experience how science really is enacted--i.e., "authentic science"--has been advocated…

The purpose of this paper is to present the rationale and principles that guided the design and development of PARENTS, a multimedia case-based environment. Following a development research approach, the tenets of constructivist learning, and the advantages of case-based instruction, we developed a multimedia program in which we utilized and…

This paper is an general article about the influence of constructivism on nature of science. Constructivism has influenced research on the teaching and learning of nature of science, as well as actual teaching of the nature of science ideas. In the area of research, a constructivist learning theory perspective has influenced researchers to shift…

Determines that the philosophical basis for science education is likely to be an interesting field in the 21st century and that there is a need to provide the practicing teacher with some ideas for daily work such as local, national, and international student cooperation; using student lab reports to develop local scientific journals; and having…