Studies investigating chemistry students' understanding of intermolecular forces have listed alternative conceptions; however, there is a call to investigate why students might have these alternative conceptions. This study describes how second semester general chemistry students predict the location of dipole-dipole forces between two molecules…

Sensemaking is conceptualized as a trajectory to develop better understanding and is advocated as one of the fundamental practices in science education. However, the field is lacking of a framework to view the prolonged process of sensemaking that starts from a raise of uncertainty of a target phenomenon to a grasping of a better understanding of…

Embodied forms of representation like gesture have been shown to play an important role in how learners conceptualize phenomena in physics; however, we know little about how students use gesture to capture the idea of "instantaneity." Drawing on multimodal microanalysis of interaction, we examine how undergraduate physics students use…

Both professional and classroom-based scientific communities develop and test explanatory models of the natural world. For students to take up models as tools for sensemaking, practice must be agentive (where students use and revise models "for" specific purposes) and conceptually productive (where students make progress on their ideas).…

There is extensive literature focusing on students' misconceptions in various subject domains. Several conceptual change approaches have been trying to understand how conceptual change occurs to help learners handle these misconceptions. This meta-analysis aims to integrate studies investigating the effectiveness of three types of conceptual…

Chemical education practices in teaching and instruction have seen significant progress in recent decades. However, despite the advances in chemical education, challenges in providing connections and synchronicity between conceptual understanding and student appreciation remain at the forefront of the global drive for sustainability in science…

This paper provides a critical and detailed study of what researchers in the fields of contemporary cognition and neuroscience have revealed about the blurred boundary between perception and cognition. We set out the arguments with a view to what researchers and teachers should now consider regarding the subtleties of their interrelationship in…

This study aims to develop and validate a Constructivist Learning Environment Model to address secondary students' misconceptions in learning Science. Employing a Design and Development approach (Richey & Klein, 2007), the research is conducted in two phases. Phase 1 focuses on model design, drawing from an extensive literature review to…

The societal and industrial relevance of chemistry has established its status as a compulsory subject in numerous national curricula. However, previous research highlights significant challenges faced by students in learning chemistry, largely attributed to its abstract nature and the multiple ways chemical concepts are represented. These…

The paper reports on a case study addressing the question of how young children think about the living/non-living distinction before and after their engagement in a 'Philosophy for Children'-inspired learning environment. The aim of the learning environment was to help children come up with a better identification of living and non-living things…

In science education, students need to work with laboratory elements that create conditions for them to learn to do science and experience the value of making meaning in this process. However, students rarely get to carry out investigations that resemble actual scientific practices. More often, they are encouraged to follow an already given…

As students read scientific texts created in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, they need to draw on their epistemic knowledge of GenAI as well as that of science. However, only a few research discussed multimodality as a methodological approach in characterising students' ideas of GenAI-science epistemic reading. This study…

The study outlines the early-stage development of a free-response General Relativity Concept Inventory (GRCI), an educational instrument designed to test for conceptual understanding of General Relativity. Data were collected for the study by having 26 participants from General Relativity courses work through the questions on the GRCI. Interviews…

A central objective of science education is to foster a profound comprehension of fundamental scientific principles among students. Research has shown that a highly integrated knowledge structure is a key factor in achieving a deep understanding. This research has developed a friction force conceptual framework to model students' different…

Contemporary secondary science education is characterised by a greater inclination towards the constructivist paradigm of education and the development of inquiry-oriented teaching. The basic principle of this paradigm is the dynamic modification of preconceptions towards the desired level given by the school curriculum. This places particular…