The aim of science education is to enable children to become "science-literate." Science literacy is defined as taking responsibility for and making decisions about situations requiring scientific understanding and having sufficient knowledge, skills, attitudes and understanding of values to put their decisions into practice. Revealing…

Because the escalating loss of species is one of the most serious environmental crises we face, it is vital that students of biology comprehend and can communicate the roles that biodiversity plays in the functioning of ecosystems. Here, we report on a laboratory experiment that has been highly successful in our introductory biology courses at…

Background: Preschoolers' knowledge of the principle of static equilibrium is an important research focus for understanding children's science content knowledge. Hitherto studies have mainly used behavioural observation with small samples. Thus, extending these studies with a validated test instrument is desirable. Aims: The aim was to validate an…

In this study, students enrolled in a basic physics class participated in one of the online citizen science projects available on the Zooniverse website (www.zooniverse.org) as a homework assignment. They then wrote a 300-500-word reflection about their experience addressing several questions given as prompts. The analysis of the responses showed…

Computational thinking is a contemporary science and engineering practice that has been introduced to the US science classrooms due to its emphasis in the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS). However, including computational thinking into science instruction may be challenging. Therefore, for biological evolution (an essential…

This paper describes an alternative approach to teaching and learning practices in an undergraduate physics laboratory. The instructor plans and implements the 5E instructional model into the laboratory instruction. The article includes an example of the 5E lesson for the laboratory component of a physics course, which has separate lecture and…

Epistemological and philosophical issues have always been relevant for the foundations of physics, but usually do not find their way into secondary physics classrooms. As an exception to this, the strangeness of quantum physics (QP) naturally evokes philosophical questions, and learners might have to change their ideas about the nature of science…

Student cognition in response to intuitive and counterintuitive stimuli in the school science curriculum is not well understood. To address this issue, this study examines high school students' cognitive responses to three counterintuitive physics problems. Our analysis reveals that student success in arriving at counter-intuitive physical…

A safe, convenient, and environmentally benign laboratory experiment for the synthesis of biodiesel from six kinds of vegetable oils has been developed for the introductory organic chemistry laboratory. The experiment uses ultrasonic irradiation in the presence of a base catalyst at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Because of safer and…

Understanding undergraduate students' socioscientific reasoning (SSR) competencies and nature of science (NOS) conceptions are important for them to be informed citizens. Therefore, in this study, SSR competencies and NOS conceptions of 169 undergraduate students from five different faculties were investigated through survey research methodology.…

The convenience sample used in the study reported on here consisted of 91 students enrolled in the primary and middle school Postgraduate Certificate in Education course for 2 consecutive years at a South African university. We used the Student Understanding of Science and Science Inquiry instrument to answer questions about these students'…

In this article, we outline a demonstration that is relatively simple to perform but whose results require a quite subtle interpretation of Faraday's Law. When a very small magnet is dropped through a coil it can tumble as it falls leading to 'spikes' in the measured emf signal. The experiment, and demonstration, can be used in an introductory…

While computer simulations are a key element in understanding and doing science today, their nature and implications for science education have not been adequately explored in the relevant literature. In this article, (1) we provide an analysis of the methodology and epistemology of computer simulations, aiming to contribute to a sound and…

Many studies have examined the structure and properties of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI); however, far less research has investigated the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE). This study applied Multidimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) to a sample of N = 4528 FMCE post-test responses. Exploratory factor analysis showed that 5, 9,…

Students in chemistry often demonstrate difficulty with the principle of resonance. Despite many attempts to mitigate this difficulty, there have been few attempts to examine the root cause of these issues. In this study, students were assessed for their perception of Kekule structures based on perceptual learning theory, which is grounded in…