Research in Science Education最新文献

In response to the growing emphasis on addressing global socio-scientific issues like climate change and viral pandemics in K-12 education, we designed three socio-scientific units for middle school science. We call this curriculum Grand Challenges (GC). The GC curriculum shifts from traditional methods to a focus on socio-scientific issues that resonate locally and globally and prepare students for future complexities. GC is a response to the evolving landscape of science education which emphasizes transformative, future-focused approaches that engage students with science content through contextualized, disciplinary practices. This study explores the implementation of the GC curriculum by two teachers, highlighting their choices and the impact on instruction. The findings reveal the crucial role of teachers in actualizing innovative curricula, the challenges of adopting new practices, and the need for robust support systems. This work contributes to understanding how to effectively integrate socio-scientific issues into science education, fostering critical thinking and global citizenship among students.

Identifying the mental models held by students has been widely emphasized as being a pivotal aspect of effective science education. In fact, it allows us to understand students’ conceptions, detect teaching-learning difficulties and tailor instruction accordingly. Hence, in this study, the plant nutrition mental models held by upper secondary students were investigated and empirically validated with the aim of detecting the most pressing learning demands and providing instructional guidelines to improve the teaching-learning of the topic. In order to unveil students’ mental models a 5-question open-ended questionnaire was administered to 122 Spanish upper secondary students. Their responses were analyzed through an innovative approach that merged phenomenography and Item Response Theory. Three distinct models emerge from the analysis investigating the sequential development of students’ reasoning. The first and most basic comprises students with heterotrophic explanatory ideas based on intuitive and naïve conceptions. The intermediate model consists of participants who incorporate photosynthesis and plants’ gas exchanges to their models without fully grasping some key underlying concepts probably due to previous misconception inducing instruction. The upper model encompasses the few students who have autotrophic mental models and ideas which resemble the consensus Scientific Model of Plant Nutrition. The findings also reveal that the overall conceptualization level of the participants is relatively low and that several teaching-learning difficulties are strictly linked to each of the different mental models. Finally, the learning demands of the topic are described, and the implications for the teaching-learning designs aimed at overcoming those difficulties are discussed.

The Australian science curriculum is intended to enable school students to develop an understanding and curiosity about the way that science can assist them in making sense of the physical and technological world. In addition to understanding and communicating scientific knowledge and using inquiry processes, students also need to develop the skills to make evidence-based decisions about socio-ecological challenges. Today’s school students will need to be able to use their scientific literacy to construct arguments and make decisions about multifaceted ill-structured scientific problems (called socioscientific issues (SSI)). The aim of this research was to examine whether Year 7 (aged 11–12 years) science students located in a rural region of Australia could improve their argumentation skills following instruction in the context of water-based SSI. An experienced science teacher and her two classes of Year 7 students (n = 39) participated in the research. Using an interpretive paradigm and a case study method, quantitative (pre- and post-instruction questionnaires) and qualitative (classroom observations, lesson plans, student work samples and teacher interview) data were collected. After two consecutive lessons on argumentation about water-based SSI, it was found that the complexity of students’ arguments improved significantly. Teacher strategies that contributed to the improvement included (1) creating a safe environment for students to take risks with their thinking; (2) providing multiple opportunities for students to learn and practice the language of argumentation; (3) constantly encouraging students to write down their arguments: (4) and differentiating instruction to cater for varying student abilities. It is concluded that, with extensive scaffolded teacher support, this group of students were able to understand the purpose and components of an argument and improve their written arguments.

Guiding students’ STEM problem solving entails dynamic processes driven by changes in real-world contexts. To understand these processes, we aimed to identify the formation and influence of ‘norms’ as shared behaviour patterns desirable in STEM problem-solving. To this end, 10 sessions of STEM lessons for secondary students were carried out, and we collected data comprising lesson observation videos, fieldnotes, interviews, and photographs of students’ artifacts. The data were analysed based on three features of norms: justifiability, sharing, and behaviours. The results report three epistemic norms in STEM problem-solving. First, the norm of ‘defining a real-world problem that is useful and accessible’ was found. While the students searched for useful problems in their everyday lives, they also needed to ensure that these problems were scoped such that they had the capacity to manage them. The second norm was ‘designing creative and concrete prototypes’. Students’ prototypes were expected to be creative in addressing the established problems and to be developed in a concrete manner. The last norm identified was ‘testing and revising in more iterative and feasible ways’. The students tested their models repeatedly in a manner aligning with their skills and the materials provided. Based on the findings, educational implications are discussed in terms of understanding and facilitating STEM problem-solving.

The use of multiple-choice (MC) instruments to assess pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has advantages in terms of test economy and objectivity, but it also poses challenges, for example, in terms of adequately capturing the intended construct. To help address these challenges, we developed and evaluated a new instrument to assess science teachers’ PCK of scientific reasoning in biology contexts (PCK_SR-bio), considering multiple sources of validity evidence. First, 12 MC items were developed to assess crucial PCK components for three scientific reasoning skills. Subsequently, the correlation of corresponding content knowledge (CK) with the PCK_SR-bio score was tested with 67 master’s students. In addition, the instrument was used in a cross-sectional study with 165 students (n = 29 bachelor, n = 115 master, n = 21 school-based preservice teachers), and the internal consistency as well as the correlation of the test score with the educational level was determined. An analysis of the response processes of 10 bachelor’s students showed that they more often referred to PCK when selecting an attractor and more often (rather intuitively) to other knowledge when selecting a distractor. In the cross-sectional study, the internal consistency was relatively low but increased with higher educational level. A correlation was found between the test score and CK but not between the test score and the educational level. Our results show that considering multiple sources of validity evidence can help to address common challenges in developing MC–PCK instruments. The results and limitations are discussed, and recommendations are made for the development of MC instruments to assess PCK in general.

Science education literature states that fostering students’ and teachers’ knowledge of NOS has shifted from being a desirable goal to an essential one. This article focuses on the development of NOS conceptions among MA Education students. To develop those conceptions, the researcher designed various learning activities in the context of ‘research of history on DNA’. Seven students were observed and audiotaped while working in groups in this classroom qualitative study. Before the intervention, pre-test on ‘views on science’- Chen (2006) and group discussions held with participants indicated that their NOS conceptions were basic. After 7 sessions, a post-test was administered to students asking to justify NOS conceptions. These conceptions: scientific knowledge is tentative, laws are generalizations or universal relationships, theories are inferred explanations of nature; and that science is empirically based, socio-culturally embedded, and creative. Classroom discourses and responses to a post-test indicated that participants justified some NOS conceptions very well and some not so very well. It also argues that HOS offers potential for improved learning of NOS.

Photosynthesis is a crucial topic in life sciences and is intimately connected to human life. In this study, photosynthesis served as the context to examine the effects of 6E-based STEM learning strategies on tenth-grade students’ academic achievement, higher-order thinking skills, and attitudes towards STEM. Throughout the intervention of six biological lessons, a pretest-posttest non-equivalent group design was implemented with 92 tenth-grade students. Data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively through tests, scales, and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that the 6E-based STEM learning strategies: (1) significantly improved students’ academic achievement; (2) had a substantial positive effect on students’ higher-order thinking skills; (3) greatly enhanced students’ STEM attitudes, particularly towards mathematics, engineering, and career aspirations. Certain challenges were also identified that necessitate further improvement in the design and implementation of 6E-based STEM learning in the future.

This meta-analysis examined whether learning outcomes differ (a) for STEM integration versus traditional instruction and (b) across STEM integration implementations. Based on 79 effect sizes from 40 studies of 15,577 students, those learning via STEM integration outperformed other students on academic achievement tests (g = 0.661; 95% CI [0.548, 0.774]). The effect sizes of STEM integration on achievement were largest for context integration, smaller for content integration, and smallest for tool integration. They were largest for inquiry-based learning, and progressively smaller for problem-based learning, designed-based learning, and project-based learning. They were largest for STEM subject achievement, and progressively smaller for science achievement, math achievement, and engineering achievement. They were larger for collectivist countries than for individualistic countries. Engineering design skills and grade level were not significant moderators. These results can inform integrated STEM instructional design and improve student learning.

A growing body of empirical studies in the field of early childhood science education suggests play as a dynamic means to engage young children with the natural world and create the conditions for children’s learning and development in science. Although our understanding of play in science as an activity deepens, we still do not know much about the dynamics of scientific toys in science teaching and learning in early childhood settings. Scientific toys are defined here as improvised, three-dimensional constructions with specific teaching and learning goals that seek to achieve a balance between play and learning in science. The study focuses on teaching and learning about optics in preschool settings and particularly about the concept of light and the phenomenon of shadow formation. The study aims to capture and understand the processes through which preschoolers develop their ideas about the concept and the phenomenon through the use of scientific toys. Empirical data were collected in one early childhood center in Greece for three weeks. Thirteen children participated in the study. Digital visual methods were used for data collection and analysis. The findings illustrate and substantiate that children managed to develop their thinking about light and shadows while playing with scientific toys within imaginary situations. The study concludes with new insights into conceptually- oriented play-based learning in science through children’s artifacts. Implications that inform practice about dialectically interrelating play and learning are discussed.

The prevalence of diseases stemming from poor nutrition emphasizes the importance of educating people about healthy eating habits. One approach to achieving this is through educational escape games, which embody the features of a situated learning environment. Utilized the situated learning theory as a theoretical and methodological framework, the goal of our study was to examine the role of science-based educational escape games in facilitating knowledge construction and awareness about healthy nutrition. The study was conducted in the setting of a science teacher preparation program, where 165 preservice science teachers were engaged in an escape game named Zombie Attack about proteins in food and the human body. The study applied the pretest-posttest design, in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently before and after game participation. The findings showed that the escape game experience had a positive effect on the participants’ knowledge gain associated with topics such as energy of macronutrients, protein percent daily value, and proteins in the body. With regards to awareness about healthy nutrition, the study identified five types: Health, Composition, Environment, Source, and Ethics, with a significant gain in all categories following the escape game experience. Overall, the study advocates the use of escape games as a method for fostering interactive learning of scientific concepts, encouraging collaborative problem-solving, and facilitating self-reflection activities.