This article presents an activity for early-in-the-year parents' night. The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time. The authors, as teachers, like to capture that excitement by engaging their 10th-grade biology students in an inquiry project demonstrating the nature of science and scientific inquiry. They developed the Next Step…

The desire to observe and understand the natural world is strong in young children, but high school students often consider science irrelevant to their daily lives. Therefore, as teachers of older age groups, the authors constantly struggle to engage students in scientific exploration so they can master concepts and appreciate the nature of…

Theme-based tests provide an assessment tool that instructs as well as provides a single general context for a broad set of biochemical concepts. A single story line connects the questions on the tests and models applications of scientific principles and biochemical knowledge in an extended scenario. Theme-based tests are based on a set of…

This paper reports the relationship between four English primary teachers' understanding of the nature of science and their practice. Action research was included as a major part of the research design in order to explore the dialectical interplay between various factors at work in the teachers' practice. The influences of both tacit and espoused…

This paper describes the author's experience of designing and teaching an interdisciplinary course titled "Light", in collaboration with a visual artist. The goals of the course, texts used, laboratory work, art studio work, and other course activities are discussed with an emphasis on how light was used as a theme to make connections between…

Ever since its formative years in the USA a century ago, the discipline of education has taken an uneasy stand on its own "scientific" status, not least with regard to the basic issue of the relationships between theory and practice. When a science of education was introduced as a panacea for rational planning in the fields of schooling…

This study investigates the potential of enhancing students' learning of difficult science concepts by exploring the interaction between teachers' four different instructional approaches and students' four different learning preference styles. Students' immediate performance and their retention for learning of buoyancy concepts serve to examine…

This paper provides an argument in favor of a specific pedagogical method of using the history of science to help students develop more informed views about nature of science (NOS) issues. The paper describes a series of lesson plans devoted to encouraging students to engage, "unbeknownst to them", in similar reasoning that led…

On April 25, 1953, three papers were published in "Nature," the prestigious scientific journal, which exposed the "fundamentally beautiful" structure of DNA to the public, and sounded the starting gun of the DNA Revolution. The authors of these papers revealed the now-famous double-helix structure of DNA, thereby unlocking the…

If the goals of science education reform are to be realized, science instruction must change across the academic spectrum, including at the collegiate level. This study examines the beliefs and teaching practices of three scientists as they designed and implemented an integrated science course for nonmajors that was designed to emphasize the…

This study examined and supported the efforts of Tina, an experienced elementary teacher, in helping her fourth graders internalize informed views of the inferential, tentative, and creative nature of science (NOS). Tina held informed views of, and was motivated to teach about, NOS. The study aimed to answer the following question: What specific…

Case study exercises, based on newsworthy current events, have been written for a biochemical audience that include elements of both "content" and "conflict." The cases have been written in such a way as to teach students basic biochemical principles. At the same time, a dilemma is posed to the students, who must use what they have learned about…

Undergraduate biology programs are currently undergoing reform to involve students in biomedical research. Engaging students in more active, hands-on experiments allows students to discover scientific principles for themselves, and to develop techniques of critical thinking and problem solving. This models the world of real scientific research,…

Nanotechnology is an area of significant interest and can be used as a motivator for students in subject areas including physics, chemistry, and life sciences. A 5X reducer system and associated lesson plan was used to provide students a hands-on exposure to the basic principles of photolithography and microscale circuit fabrication.

The purpose of this study was to examine Edward Lorenz's psychological processes and other environmental aspects in the discovery of chaos at that time. The general concept of chaos is discussed based on relations with previous scientific theories such as Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics. The constraints of discovery in terms of available…