Research in Science Education最新文献

Literature has emphasised the need for SSI education to systematically address the risks produced by modern society. This study examines the quality of risk-focused, socio-scientific arguments generated by 22 elementary students in South Korea, concerning nuclear power. Participants read two articles with opposing views on the nuclear phase-out policy and constructed written arguments to justify their positions on this policy. To analyse the quality of arguments, a risk-benefit oriented model encompassing both positivist and constructivist perspectives on risk was developed and applied. The model comprises knowledge components and comparison components. The research results showed that participants generally tended to justify their claims without incorporating comparison components. Some included risk-benefit comparison components, justifying their claims by presenting specific knowledge components in more detail and with more diversity, or by emphasising safety values. Based on these results, educational strategies and implications for improving the quality of students’ risk-focused socio-scientific arguments were discussed.

Ongoing shortages of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers have prompted policy aimed at recruiting career change teachers as a solution. However, little is known about what deters career changers from becoming STEM teachers. This gap is explored through interviews with nine career changers who contemplated, but decided against a career change to STEM teaching. Inductive thematic analysis generated themes and subthemes which were then deductively categorised using Margaret Archer’s theories on emergent properties. Findings reveal that career changers are constrained from choosing STEM teaching when they perceive student behaviour as poor, the scope of teachers’ work as excessive, barriers to attaining a teaching qualification, or that the profession is not socially valued. Recommendations are presented to reduce barriers for potential STEM career change teachers.

Science education bears the broader objective of nurturing students today to be scientifically-literate citizens of tomorrow who are able to foresee challenges, invent solutions and make responsible decisions for global issues. As a prelude to the new focus of agency in the Anthropocene, this paper presents an intervention on climate change with upper secondary students in a museum of natural history in England. Instructional strategies such as infusing scenarios and arts into scientific discussions were adopted to induce imagination, future-oriented thinking and emotional responses. Statistical results showed that the intervention significantly enhanced participants’ futures literacy, environmental agency and positive emotions. However, it did not increase their interests in learning science in out-of-school context. Implications of this study will shed light on futurising science and climate education in research and practice.

In Lebanon, science is taught in an international language (French or English) based on a language-in-education policy rooted in Lebanon’s colonial history. Given the intersection among social/socioeconomic class, educational equity, and science performance, learning science in a language other than one’s own raises concerns around economically-marginalized students’ opportunities for quality science education and their development of science understandings and discourse. Bourdieu’s lens of cultural and linguistic capital was utilized to better understand the interplay among socioeconomic status and science performance. Specifically, we examined how different home context variables (including language) influence Lebanese learners’ science performance in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessment. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we looked at how students performed in science based on how often they spoke the language of the test at home and other home variables such as parents’ education level. The findings indicate that language and various economic and home variables were significantly associated with science performance. Language had a differing effect for English and French tracks, whereby parents’ education level and other home variables emerged more significantly for French track students. Our study underscores the importance of preparing and supporting science teachers for equitable, asset-oriented, and linguistically responsive teaching that enhances diverse learners’ equitable participation and opportunities in the science classroom.

Science teachers are increasingly using internet sources for lesson planning, science content, and designing classroom activities. With the prevalence of disinformation online, there is potential for school students to learn ineffective internet search strategies and integrate disinformation into their knowledge. Science education fit for the future requires teachers who can navigate online information effectively and develop these capabilities in their students. In this study, we address the ways in which Australian preservice science teachers engage their cognitions about knowledge and knowing when searching and evaluating online information. Using concurrent think-aloud protocols we studied preservice science teachers’ cognitions while completing internet search and evaluation tasks for science lesson content on socioscientific issues. Through subsequent interviews, we captured further dimensions of participants’ knowledge and understanding of search and evaluation processes. We contribute new knowledge by providing a novel conceptual framework used for data analysis and empirical evidence about the cognitions (aims, value, ideals, and relied upon processes) that preservice science teachers engage when searching and evaluating online information. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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.