Research in Science Education最新文献

The declining interest in STEM careers in the United Kingdom has raised concerns, prompting this study to explore the intricate relationship between social, cultural, and scientific identities and their impact on students’ inclination towards science and technology career pathways. Additionally, the study examines the associations between gender, gender-related job preferences, and career choices. Data were collected from 1,618 primary and secondary students in the UK. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including regression analysis and multivariate analysis, were employed for analysis. The key findings revealed a significant interaction effect between gender and gender-related job preferences. Social factors were identified as significant mediators, amplifying the influence of gender on career decisions and shaping gender-related job preferences. Cultural factors, particularly related to ethnicity, were found to shape job preferences, while religious affiliation did not exhibit a significant effect. Students’ perceptions of science, stereotypes associated with science professionals, and engagement in science extracurricular activities were positively correlated with a greater likelihood of expressing interest in STEM careers, demonstrating the influential impact of science factors on forming students’ STEM career choices. Interestingly, the type of education (primary or secondary) did not significantly impact job preferences, suggesting that preferences may become more refined or influenced by external factors as students progress in their education.

This study analyses the coherent integration of creativity into science education modules for eighth-grade students to enhance competence development. The learning modules’ content covered a basic ecological unit about forests, applied as digital or analog lesson. By utilizing the creativity subscales ‘Act’ and ‘Flow’ its analysis resulted in a clear factorial structure. Notably, higher levels of creativity were associated with increased cognitive learning achievements among students, irrespective of the instructional delivery method—be it analog or digital. Particularly, the ‘Act’ and ‘Flow’ dimensions exhibited a promising potential for augmenting learning outcomes in learner-centric, gamified modules. The mentoring role of teachers is supposed to promote a flow state and simultaneously to highlight the significance of autonomy in learning processes. Unexpectedly, there were no discernible gender differences. This research significantly contributes to our understanding of the interplay among creativity, learning success, and instructional modalities within the realm of science education.

With the critical nature of socio-ecological challenges, the need to empower young people to generatively grapple with these science-related issues is crucial for developing their agentic citizenship. This paper reports on a primary science project that adopted a Socratic Seminar pedagogical strategy to enable student voice and collaborative solutions to a local/global socio-ecological challenge. Exploring microorganisms in a COVID-19-affected world, student agency and investigative practices were prioritised. We report a semiotic analysis of the student-led investigations and discussions informing decision-making and action. Students enacted scientifically grounded reasoning, posed evidence-focused questions and engaged in collaborative argumentation towards solutions. The culminating ‘Scientists for Solutions’ Socratic Seminar closely emulated the practices of the science community in supporting the generation of evidence-informed solutions. This paper unpacks this pedagogical approach. The findings inform the nature and creation of epistemic space within the primary science classroom that fosters student scientific questioning, inquiry decisions and collaborative decision-making through a Socratic Seminar process.

This study explores the ontological perspective in analyzing students’ problem-solving related to mechanical energy conservation. The research involves 18 high school students whose explanations were qualitatively analyzed using an extended ontological framework. Initially, students predominantly employed matter-based predicates and formula-centered representations in the first-step problem-solving. However, in the second step, there was a transition towards process-based predicative expressions and representations, such as reformulating, proportional expressions, symbols, and tables, alongside continued use of matter-based expressions. This phase reflects the students’ conceptual shift toward including the “process” category in their understanding of energy concepts. In the third step, most students demonstrated process-based predicative expressions and representations, emphasizing concepts like “conversion” and “transfer.” This transition indicates a shift from the ontological category of “matter” to “process,” evident in both predicates and representation formats. The findings suggest that understanding students’ concepts through an ontological lens not only enhances teaching and learning physics but also contributes to the integration of ontological concepts into science education.

Multiple reform documents call for school-aged children to learn about engineering as a way of developing engineering-literate adults. Children’s attitudes towards and understandings of engineering are influenced by their conceptions of what engineering is. This multiple case study uses photo novellas to investigate primary-grade students’conceptualizations of engineering in their rural or reservation communities. Students from four schools completed similar photo novella assignments where they took pictures of what they considered engineering within their communities and further described those photos in writing or verbally. Photo novellas were analyzed using an a priori codebook to identify themes within and across cases. Every participant across all schools identified tangible engineering artifacts, while fewer students provided examples that represented engineering as systems or processes. Students from reservation schools were more likely to describe the purpose of their engineering examples and describe engineering as “helping.” Students in rural schools were more likely to include descriptions of math and science connections in their engineering examples. Rural students also used possessive language when identifying examples of engineering. This paper provides empirical data for a research-based activity to elicit young students’ ideas of engineering with attention to place-based learning. Findings indicate that photo novellas can be used as a tool for identifying children’s nuanced perspectives of engineering. As the engineering community continues to develop career pathways for students from rural places and Indigenous communities, it is important to recognize the nuanced perspectives different rural and Indigenous populations offer to the field.

As introductory physics courses increasingly focus on student engagement, the use of Learning Assistants (LAs) has increased. LAs and other instructors need to have sufficient PCK to effectively guide student learning. Our goal was to research LAs observed PCK in the classroom and to develop a set of questions to assess LAs’ PCK. Our research question was: Is it possible to assess LAs’ observed PCK with open-ended written questions? We video-recorded student-LA interactions in the introductory physics classrooms, developed rubrics to describe the interactions between LAs and students, and developed free-response questions based on the authentic interactions from the videos. Our results are (1) a rubric to assess LAs PCK in video recordings or free response written assessments and (2) a set of open-ended written questions that assess LAs PCK. The LAs were dominant in one or two categories in both the written and video coding, making it possible to draw conclusions about their PCK. We answered our research question by demonstrating the development and validation of a set of questions to assess LA’s PCK. Our rubric can be used to analyze both videos and written questions by supervisors who are interested in assessing their LAs’ PCK.

This exploratory study, framed by the Contextual Model of Learning, sought to define the personal context of autistic visitors and their families attending a sensory-friendly natural history museum event as a science learning experience. The study focused on the motivations and expectations for visiting the museum, as well as how the inclusion of a VR tour could promote inclusivity by better meeting the needs of these visitors and their social support groups. A single case study design encompassing five family participant groups that varied in age, family composition, and diagnoses was employed. Data collection involved a pre- and non-identical post-visit survey, complemented by a post-visit interview. Results indicate that important features of the user experience with the VR museum tour included clarity of exhibit text, lack of audio, the ability to measure exhibit features, easy navigation, and enhanced museum accessibility. Autistic family groups used the virtual tour in three main ways: (1) to prepare for specific exhibits, (2) to prepare for sensory experiences, and (3) to build anticipation and set expectations. Two key features of the virtual tour supported users’ preparation for their museum visit: the absence of crowds and noise and the ability to zoom in and see exhibit text and details. The results highlight the positive impact of a VR museum tour on autistic individuals and their families and offer crucial insights into the personal and sociocultural contexts of autistic museum visitors and the potential for promoting unique, inclusive, and collaborative forms of science learning.

The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields limits their development, their career opportunities, and societal progress. This study used social cognitive career theory to explore the relationship between informal STEM learning activities and STEM career intention in female high-school students. Using a mixed-methods approach, we surveyed 58 students participating in school–enterprise collaborative informal STEM activities and then conducted semistructured interviews with 11 randomly selected students. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between the frequency of participation in various informal STEM learning activities and the STEM career intention of the female high-school students. Informal learning experiences significantly positively affected the female students’ interest in STEM, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and fulfillment of social needs, thereby promoting their STEM career intention. This study enhances our understanding of the needs of female students in STEM and offers targeted recommendations for educators and policymakers.

Throughout the world scientific reasoning (SR) is a valuable and desirable ability to gain deeper understanding of science in all grade level. In the current study, we first adapted the SPR-I (7) which consists of seven items with three sub-dimensions as the experimentation, the understanding the nature of science (NOS) and the data interpretation, based on the guidelines of the International Testing Commission. Then, we explored several individual differences in SR scores. We gathered data from 533 elementary students in 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. The Rasch analysis results showed that the model-data fit was acceptable and was exactly the same reliability (EAP/PV = 0.48) as the original SPR-I (7). In addition, the test-retest reliability results (Cronbach’s α = 0.77) showed an acceptable reliability. Furthermore, the results regarding individual differences, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference in terms of gender and region. However, there was a significant difference in the total SR scores and sub-dimension of NOS between 4th and 6th, and 5th and 6th graders in favor of 6th. According to parental education levels, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of those with higher level in the total SPR-I (7) and the sub-dimension of experimentation. In conclusion, the current study shows that the Turkish version of the SPR-I (7) is a valid and reliable measurement instrument that can be used to measure SR in 4th, 5th, and 6th graders and contributes to the literature in terms of addressing the individual differences affecting SR at the elementary education level.

Students’ success in physics problem-solving extends beyond conceptual knowledge of physics, relying significantly on their mathematics skills. Understanding the specific contributions of different mathematics skills to physics problem-solving can offer valuable insights for enhancing physics education. Yet such studies are rare, particularly at the high school level. This study addresses the underexplored area of this topic in secondary education by investigating the associations between physics problem-solving performance using a robust methodological framework. We applied exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify latent sub-mathmetics skills relevant to physics problem-solving and employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the causal impact of these skills on students’ performance in physics. The study analyzed data from a municipal-wide assessment involving 1,878 grade 12 students in Southern China. The results demonstrate that mathematics skills impacting high school students’ physics problem-solving performance can be categorized into two sub skills, algebraic skills and geometric skills. It also indicates that algebraic skills have a stronger direct effect on physics problem-solving performance compared to geometric skills in high school setting. These findings suggest that integrating focused algebraic training within physics education can significantly improve student outcomes in STEM fields. We recommend that educators design curricula and instructional strategies that emphasize the development of algebraic skills necessary for solving complex physics problems. Additionally, these findings have important implications for policymakers, who should consider integrating targeted mathematics training within physics curricula to foster interdisciplinary learning and better prepare students for challenges in STEM education.