Though research has shown that students do not have adequate understandings of nature of science (NOS) by the time they exit high school, there is also evidence that they have not received NOS instruction that would enable them to develop such understandings. How early is "too early" to teach and learn NOS? Are students, particularly young…

I profile here a prospective method for assessing nature of science (NOS) knowledge, as an alternative to VNOS and similar approaches. Questions about cases in contemporary news and from history probe scientific literacy in context. Scoring targets how "well informed" the analysis is, based on identifying relevant NOS information and interpreting…

This study is a comparative analysis of the environmental philosophies of college undergraduates enrolled in a Midwestern university. Two courses were used for the research, one from a recreation management curriculum and the other from environmental studies. The study utilized a survey instrument called the Environmental Action and Philosophy…

Vee diagrams have been a metacognitive tool to help in learning the nature and structure of knowledge by reflecting on the scientific process and making knowledge much more explicit to learners during the practical work. This study aimed to assess pre-service science teachers' understanding some aspects of NOS by analyzing their reflections on the…

Writing for an audience different from teachers motivates students to translate their existing knowledge into audience-appropriate language, in which students explain, elaborate, and integrate their understanding of science concepts using more than just the technical language of the subject. Several studies also have found that students can…

The focus of the current study is to understand which unique features of an immersive virtual reality environment have the potential to improve learning relative motion concepts. Thirty-seven undergraduate students learned relative motion concepts using computer simulation either in immersive virtual environment (IVE) or non-immersive desktop…

Teaching nature of science (NOS) is beginning to find its place in science education in China. This exploratory study interviewed twenty-four Chinese science teacher educators about their conceptions of teaching NOS to pre-service science teachers. Although five dimensions emerged, this paper mainly focuses on reporting the findings relevant to…

A WebQuest is an Internet-based and inquiry-oriented learning activity. The aim of this work is to outline the creation of a WebQuest entitled "Power Generation Plants: Steam and Gas Turbines." This is one of the topics covered in the course "Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer," which is offered in the second year of Mechanical…

Although inquiry is more engaging and results in more meaningful learning (Minner, Levy, and Century 2010) than traditional science classroom instruction, actually involving students in the process is difficult. Furthermore, many students have misconceptions about Earth's seasons, which are supported by students' prior knowledge of heat sources.…

This article presents a guided-inquiry (GI) hands-on determination of Fe in food samples including plantains, spinach, lima beans, oatmeal, Frosted Flakes cereal (generic), tilapia fish, and chicken using flame atomic absorption spectroscopy (FAAS). The utility of the GI experiment, which is part of an instrumental analysis laboratory course,…

The phenomenon of weightlessness is known to students thanks to videos of amazing things astronauts do in spaceships orbiting the Earth. In this article we propose two hands-on activities which give students opportunities to infer by themselves the absence of buoyant force in a gravity accelerated system. The system is a free-falling or vertically…

Two experiments are proposed to study Boyle's law and the pressure law in a school laboratory. The peculiar feature of the experiments is that the value of the pressure and of the volume are obtained respectively by means of a force and a position sensor, thus allowing students to connect, in an experimental context, mechanics variables, such as…

In any demonstration to students, producing light and sound usually ensures interest and can enhance understanding and retention of the concepts involved. A guided inquiry (Predict, Observe, Explain: POE) approach was used to involve the students actively in their learning about the explosive combustion of fine flour particles in air in the…

Our aim in this proposal is to use Faraday's law of induction as a simple lecture demonstration to measure the Earths magnetic field (B). This will also enable the students to learn about how electric power is generated from rotational motion. Obviously the idea is not original, yet it may be attractive in the sense that no sophisticated devices…

A piezoelectric material generates an electric potential across its surface when subjected to mechanical stress; conversely, the inverse piezoelectric effect describes the expansion or contraction of the material when subjected to some applied voltage. Piezoelectric materials are used in devices such as doorbell buzzers, barbeque igniters, and…