The construction of scientific explanations is recognised by science education researchers and curriculum developers as one of the core epistemic practices in which students should acquire proficiency. However, little is known about the knowledge and skills that teachers must and do put into practice to successfully engage their students in…

Chemistry and Chaos is a role-playing game that was developed to teach a wide variety of chemistry topics. The game uses the traditional role-playing framework to present material in an engaging and interactive format. The students take on the role of a particular type of chemist while the instructor guides them on an adventure to test their…

This study investigated student's knowledge and understanding of mechanical stress including strain, and the relation between mechanical stress and strain, using material created by the authors of this text. It also investigated what the students perceived helpful for learning. The material was a complete laboratory setup and was intended to be…

Utilizing an inquiry-learning space (ILS) via the Go-Lab platform, we investigated students' technology acceptance, knowledge integration [KI] process, and learning outcomes of both the high-achiever KI student and low-achiever KI student. This study aimed to understand how students engage in knowledge integration tasks using an inquiry-learning…

The purpose of this study was to delve into the interaction between pre-service chemistry teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and content knowledge (CK) while teaching electrochemistry. Two pre-service chemistry teachers enrolled in practice teaching course in chemistry education program participated in the study. All PCK components were…

Research in science education agrees that one of the key challenges of learners in the discipline is certainly connecting domain-specific representations to the underlying concepts. One way of supporting students to make applicable connections is using purposefully designed highlighting techniques in multimedia instructions. In order to examine…

Laboratory exercises are a crucial component for many science education courses. Hands-on activities provide valuable contextualized learning experiences and allow for increased engagement between students and technical knowledge. The present study examined the efficacy of a virtual-type laboratory activity compared to a traditional hands-on…

We investigated the instructional effectiveness of using an interactive and immersive virtual reality (IVR) simulation versus a video for teaching scientific knowledge in 2 between-subjects experiments. In Experiment 1, 131 high school students (84 females) used a science simulation that involved forensic analysis of a collected DNA sample in a…

This article examined the role of environmental interaction in interdisciplinary thinking and the use of different knowledge resource types. The case study was conducted with two classes (N = 40) of 8th-grade students, ages 13 to 14. The outdoor trail aimed to help students synthesize history, geography, and science knowledge. Two groups'…

Conceptions of ecological processes such as the flow of energy and cycling of matter in an ecosystem are increasingly important understandings in a rapidly changing world. This study utilizes a p-prims, or knowledge in pieces, lens to examine understandings and disconnections in students' conceptualizations of energy flow and matter cycling…

As collaborative learning is actualized through evolving dialogues, temporality inevitably matters for the analysis of collaborative learning. This study attempts to uncover sequential patterns that distinguish "productive" threads of knowledge-building discourse. A database of Grade 1-6 knowledge-building discourse was first coded for…

This research investigates the social learning affordances of a room-sized, immersive, and interactive augmented reality simulation environment designed to support children's understanding of basic physics concepts in a science center. Conversations between 97 parent-child pairs were analyzed in relation to categories of talk through which…

As a research field for studying the conditions of knowledge diffusion in teaching and learning, French-speaking "Didactiques" strongly rely upon the concept of knowledge transposition for characterizing the relationships between the knowledge built and used in "out of school" activities, the knowledge to be taught in the…

Students' misconceptions concerning colour phenomena and the apparent complexity of the underlying concepts--due to the different domains of knowledge involved--make its teaching very difficult. We have developed and tested a teaching device, the addition table of colours (ATC), that encompasses additive and subtractive mixtures in a single…

The aim of this study was to assess how the different aspects of nature of science (NOS) were represented in Finnish and Swedish upper secondary school chemistry textbooks. The dimensions of NOS were analyzed from five popular chemistry textbook series. The study provides a quantitative method for analysis of representations of NOS in chemistry…