Constructing scientific explanations of natural phenomena is an important aim of science education. Explanation oriented science teaching approaches encourage learners to engage in sense-making discussions and construct the causal accounts of the phenomena under study. This article demonstrates a lesson-design model that guides biology teachers on…

For the last three decades, moderate constructivism has become an increasingly prominent perspective in science education. Researchers have defined characteristics of constructivist-oriented science classrooms, but the implementation of such science teaching in daily classroom practice seems difficult. Against this background, we conducted a…

To help explain the differences in students' performance on internationally administered science assessments, cross-national, video-based observational studies have been advocated, but none have yet been conducted at the elementary level for science. The USA and Germany are two countries with large formal education systems whose students…

A hands-on instructional approach with medium-achieving 10th-grade students (N = 294) successfully demonstrated the achievement of a conceptual change. Two teaching variations were applied (I-1, I-2), both dealing with a hands-on gene technology lesson in an out-of-school laboratory. I-2 additionally confronted the participants with alternative…

This paper gives insights into the beliefs of 85 German first year chemistry student teachers about chemistry teaching and learning at the beginning of their teacher education. The study is based on student teachers' drawings of themselves in a typical classroom situation and four open questions. The approach evaluated: (I) Beliefs about Classroom…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 10th Annual Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, held in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, 12-15 June 2012. The overall goal of the 10th BCES conference is to facilitate discussion of different perspectives on international education providing a forum for scientific debate and constructive…

Interviews were conducted with grade 10 students (n=34) who had received 4 years of physics instruction. Interview's focus was to understand students' responses from their point of view. The results of the study confirm and deepen findings from other studies concerning students' severe difficulties in learning the energy concept, the particle…

Presents results from empirical studies of physics learning for different age groups using a situated cognition perspective to construct detailed understandings of how individual learning processes unfold. Contains 35 references. (PVD)