The problem here dealt with concerns physics education, and specifically the concept of force. The idea behind this research is that a historical approach to the teaching of such a notion is of great help for the students to fully understand the meaning of this basic physical magnitude. For, most of scientific concepts can be better grasped by the…

This essay opens with a question about what science teaching would look like in a world where categorical seams of human diversity were not probabilistic determinants of science learning. After revisiting Hewson and Hewson's description of an "appropriate conception of science teaching," I detail the ways in which the field of science…

History of education reveals that the perimeter of a school subject as well as the manner of teaching it may vary according to the time period, the country, its political situation and its economic needs. Furthermore, if it clearly depends on the level of the learners and on the school itself, sometimes the teacher's preoccupations can adapt it.…

The term "histology" was coined a little over 200 years ago and the subject has always relied on microscopy as its defining technology. Microscopy was and still is an essential approach for the description of cellular components and their arrangements in living organisms. For more than a century and a half, histology or microanatomy has…

One agenda of science instruction in primary schools is to develop learners' scientific reasoning abilities and to equip them with the necessary twenty-first-century skills. Few studies have been conducted to develop measurement tools that aspire to assess primary school learners' scientific reasoning. Most of these studies lack a theoretical…

In this article we examine the book "El estudio de la naturaleza en la escuela" by the Danish pedagogue Vilhelm Rasmussen (1869-1939), published by Editorial Labor in Barcelona in 1933, and its influence on the pedagogical standpoint of Margarita Comas Camps (1892-1972). Comas, who translated the book into Spanish, was a member of the…

This paper is an overview of approaches to teaching physics courses delivered to students of engineering disciplines. It addresses, first, the history of teaching physics to engineering students starting in the early 20th century, then reviews the main issues presented and discussed over the last decade in a series of conferences on Physics…

Colonial education worldwide has relied on various concepts, from trying to mirror the content of the sovereign country to developing unique content pertaining to the colonies themselves. In this paper, we examined the nature of colonial education for the Japanese in northeast China ("Manchuria") during the colonial period from the…

The paper presents an analysis of engagement markers in the Lectures on Physics by eminent scientist and Nobel prizewinner R. P. Feynman, based on K. Hyland's model of interaction in academic discourse as stance and engagement. The Lectures were taught at the California Institute of Technology during 1961-63 and, having been turned into a…

Renewable energy is a trending topic due to its importance in today's society especially because of global warming. Because of its importance, this topic should be discussed at schools in an inclusive education environment. Experimental work is a very good activity to provide students effective conceptual discussions, but it is necessary to…

Martin Wagenschein's ideas of prioritising phenomena in making sense of science processes have influenced the German "Lehrkunstdidaktik" (art of teaching) approach. This article sketches a "Lehrkunstdidaktik" teaching unit inspired by Michael Faraday's "Chemical History of a Candle." It shows how primary and lower…

While important theoretical work has helped define the goals of teacher professional development in multicultural science education (MSE), less is known about how beginning elementary teachers' strengths may inform this work. The purpose of this case study is to examine potential starting points for professional development based on elementary…

The article focuses on the analysis of curriculum documents from Taiwan to investigate how benchmarks for learning nature of science (NOS) are positioned in different versions of the science curricula. Following a review of different approaches to the conceptualization of NOS and the role of NOS in promoting scientific literacy, an empirical study…

The domain of motion or kinematics is important because it forms the basis of mechanics, an important branch of physics. By studying kinematic phenomena in the laboratory, high school students are likely to develop a better understanding of kinematics concepts as well as elements of the scientific approach to study natural and constructed…

The term 'experiment' is used in different ways to mean different things in school science. This study examines the meanings of 'experiment' and how they have changed in the intended chemistry curriculum (ICC) in China since the early 1950s. A mixed methodology was adopted to analyse the 11 ICC documents from a socio-historical perspective. The…