In this study, we report the results of the content analysis of preservice middle school science teachers' own written science storybooks and middle school female students' reflections of five of the books. The participants of this study were 50 preservice middle school science teachers taking a history and nature of science course and 13…

The obstacles and difficulties that science teachers face when teaching the nature of science (NOS) are well-known. Nonetheless, little is known of what science teacher educators (STEs) know, do, and think about this issue. Thus, a study with 142 Spanish STEs was conducted. This was aimed at analysing (i) what preparation the STEs have to teach…

Students' understanding of forces in circular motion is often incomplete. The problems are not limited to confusions about centripetal acceleration and centrifugal forces. This paper considers possible effects of different interventions by a teacher who has discovered the many types of free-body diagrams drawn by students for circular motion in a…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the flipped learning model (Staker & Horn, 2012), which is one of the types of rotation model in the sub-level of blended learning models, on students' understanding of the nature of science and their achievements. In the study, the mixed research method, which allows the quantitative and…

The nature of science (NOS) has been recognised as an essential component for engagement with socioscientific issues (SSI). However, the findings on the link between the two have been inconclusive. This calls for a shift from students merely knowing about NOS, to using their understanding of it as a tool for decision-making and participation in…

Besides being a necessity for science education, understanding the nature of science and its concept also facilitates individuals' daily lives and affects their decisions as conscious citizens. This study aims to determine the pre-service science teachers' perceptions of science and their views on the nature of science and their relationship. The…

As implementation of green chemistry into university-level courses increases, it is vital that educators have a tool to rapidly measure student knowledge of green chemistry principles. We report the development of the Assessment of Student Knowledge of Green Chemistry Principles (ASK-GCP) and evaluation of its sensitivity and effectiveness for…

This study aims to draw attention to data literacy, which is considered an important skill of the 21st century, and to provide an example activity that would incorporate it into chemistry education. The activity was designed using real data of Robert Boyle's experiment. The activity aims to examine Boyle's data in such a way to support data…

The purpose of this mixed-method study is to determine the effect of integrating Engineering design on high school students' scientific reasoning and science achievement. Thirteen eleventh-grade students participated in this eight-week long study. The intervention engaged students in the Engineering design of a functional Dialysis model. Students…

Quantitative reasoning (QR) competencies are increasingly called for in the data rich and complex environment of STEM disciplines, including biology. Curricular reform efforts in QR have been directed at disseminating course design and pedagogy but less work has been directed at understanding what faculty at large view as crucial for student…

Authentic assessment is often narrowly framed as tasks that mirror workplace tasks, resulting in on overemphasis on generic workplace skills at the expense of disciplinary knowledge. We place disciplinary knowledge at the heart of authentic assessment and explore how authentic assessment across a programme can contribute to an authentic view of…

Using the layout described here (which could be photocopied or handwritten), students can see how the periodic table was first envisaged after finding similarities in the properties of common elements. Then, with more discoveries some gaps were filled and, when additional elements did not fit, new groups had to be included.

There is an increasing demand in the field of science education for the incorporation of philosophical and sociological aspects that are related to the scientific enterprise in school curricula, to the extent that the incorporation of these aspects is now considered a necessity. Several of these aspects can be categorised within the framework of…

The past decade has seen multiple debates and discussions over the appropriate framing of Nature of Science (NOS) for science education. These debates have stemmed from a diversity of philosophical views on what science fundamentally is. In post-secondary STEM education, the goals of a science education rest in having students socialize into…

Contrary to the situation at primary, middle, and secondary school levels, university science courses provide students with very few opportunities to reflect upon the nature of science (NOS). The first goal of this study was to provide evidence that the co-construction of evolutionary trees, an important component of university biology education,…