Research in Science Education最新文献

The authentic research experience, which provides students with meaningful collaborative research opportunities designed to promote discovery and innovation under the guidance of mentors, is increasing as a way to attract and engage students in STEM fields. However, despite the increase in authentic research experiences offered to students, there has been little research, particularly at the high school level, investigating students’ attitudes about themselves as researchers. To address this need, we developed a theory (or construct) for how high school age students self-identify as researchers and a companion survey to measure their identity. After three iterative development cycles, 823 high school students from diverse backgrounds were administered the 12-item survey, the Researcher Identity Survey—Form G (RISG). The partial credit Rasch model (1960/1980) was used to analyze the survey data. The results indicate that the survey identifies and locates high school age students as researchers validly and reliably along an easy to use and interpret scale. The survey holds promise as an important element for use in programs designed to broaden the entryway for students into the STEM disciplines.

The integration of entrepreneurship education and STEM education has emerged as a crucial field of research, necessitating an immediate providing a comprehensive review of the field from diverse viewpoints, thereby supporting upcoming research projects. This systematic review aimed to address the following three research questions: What are the characteristics and trends of the current studies on integrating entrepreneurial education into STEM education? (RQ1); Based on the extent of integration, what are the types of integration of entrepreneurial education into STEM education? (RQ2); Following an in-depth analysis and overview of each type, what are the corresponding patterns for each type of integration of entrepreneurial education into STEM education? (RQ3). Utilizing the PRISMA procedure’s criteria, we pinpointed 31 eligible articles. Reacting to RQ1, a descriptive analysis has been conducted to provide a comprehensive description of the publication year, the first author’s nation, research methods, participants, and impact. Reacting to RQ2, we conducted an in-depth content analysis and categorized entrepreneurial STEM education into three distinct types: the entrepreneurial element-embedded design, the whole-process integration, and the project-driven entrepreneurial design. Reacting to RQ3, the flowcharts provided for each type offer a practical template for understanding the patterns of integration. The Type I pattern shows entrepreneurship as an additional component to the STEM curriculum, the Type II pattern illustrates a more integrated approach throughout the educational process, and the Type III pattern displays a project-driven, in-depth integration of entrepreneurship.

This study centers on designing a targeted professional development (TPD) model to enrich the Entrepreneurial-STEM (E-STEM) literacy of teachers within an integrative conceptual framework. The study is threefold in its purpose: firstly, to investigate the impact of a targeted E-STEM PD on teachers’ pedagogical growth (PG), emphasizing familiarity, interest, and confidence in E-STEM literacy principles; secondly, to assess teachers’ satisfaction with the TPD content and its delivery format; and thirdly, to explore their perceptions regarding the efficacy of this TPD in empowering them to implement E-STEM learning. A mixed-methods approach was employed through a quasi-experiment involving a single group of 220 teachers from different Communities of Practice (CoPs) across various educational stages. Results revealed a significant positive impact on enhancing the pedagogical principles of E-STEM literacy among teachers, indicating substantial improvements in their three PG components. Participants expressed high satisfaction with the E-SETM TPD content and various delivery formats, underscoring its effectiveness in meeting their needs. This research highlights the strategic importance of teacher professional learning in E-STEM, emphasizing its role in fostering innovation, research, and a skilled workforce.

The importance of enhancing entrepreneurial STEM education has become accentuated to foster sustainable, collegial, and innovative STEM practices. The study aimed to enhance high-school students’ entrepreneurial skills, namely resourcefulness and problem-solving skills, and investigate their experiences and feelings of entrepreneurial STEM education. Three entrepreneurial STEM activities were implemented with 30 students in a private high school in Turkey. The qualitative data were collected through pre- and post-interviews and group reflective journals and analysed with content analysis. The quantitative data were collected through the Self-Control Schedule (SCS) and the Problem-Solving Scale (PS) and analysed through SPSS. The quantitative data indicated that the participants’ average SCS results increased from 117.63 to 122.40 (no significant difference) and their average PS results increased from 130.00 to 135.55 (no significant difference) following an intervention. This may be because of participants’ prior experiences or the number of participants attending the study. However, there were significant changes in the subscales of SCS and PS, showing that participants’ approach-avoidance style (PS subscale) as well as planning of behaviour and control of emotions (SCS subscales) can be enhanced by implementing entrepreneurial STEM activities. The qualitative data showed that participants started to face their problems more and try to find them different solutions rather than avoiding them. The qualitative data also pointed to the changes in participants’ capability of making connections between the subject disciplines and everyday life. Moreover, students found entrepreneurial STEM activities entertaining and helpful for improving understanding of chemistry topics. The study contributes to the field by bringing authenticity to STEM education by incorporating social and green entrepreneurship, supporting students’ entrepreneurial skill development, and helping teachers and students make connections between STEM, real-world, and public.

Mechanistic explanations, aiming to disclose details of entities and their activities, employ the act of unpacking which, inherently and paradoxically, produces explanatory gaps—pieces of undisclosed, undetailed mechanistic information. These gaps, termed explanatory black boxes, are often perceived as counterproductive to the teaching of mechanisms, yet are integral to it, and their cognizant use is a nuanced skill. Amidst the discourse on mechanistic reasoning in science education, this paper focuses on biology teachers’ perception of explanatory black boxes and the explicit discussion of them in their classroom. Using interviews with 11 experienced high-school biology teachers, we unraveled perceived affordances and constraints in teachers’ use of black boxes in the context of challenges in teaching mechanisms. Utilizing the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) framework, we expose a nuanced interplay of considerations related to strategies, students, curriculum alignment, assessment, and orientation toward science teaching. A constant tension existed—with considerations supporting and opposing the use of both unpacking and black boxing as teaching strategies—both within and between PCK components. In contrast, contemplating the explication of black boxes led teachers to illustrate this strategy as an intermediate one, attenuating constraints of both unpacking and black-boxing strategies while also promoting teachers’ ability to align curricular items and endorse student agency. Implications for teacher training are discussed, emphasizing the need to make teachers aware of the involvement of black boxes in mechanistic reasoning, and familiarize them with black-box explication as an intermediate strategy that can enrich their pedagogy.

Motivated by the high socio-economic impact of innovations in science and technology, entrepreneurship in STEM disciplines is gaining increasing attention. As a result, entrepreneurship education programs (EEPs) have been introduced and designed to train STEM faculty and expose them to entrepreneurial practice. This study examines factors influencing women STEM faculty's perspectives on their participation in EEPs within the broader socio-cultural context of academia. The study addresses the under-researched and undertheorized area of women academics in STEM entrepreneurship by drawing on adult participation literature and key theoretical works in entrepreneurship education to formulate the conceptual grounding. Using qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with 32 women STEM faculty, the findings identify internal and external influences and unpacks their complex interactions across the programmatic and systemic dimensions. Internal factors include perceptions of entrepreneurship, STEM academic identity, entrepreneurial identity, and self-efficacy, while external factors included professional mentors, personal role models, socioemotional support, and financial resources. The study conceptually synthesizes these factors and elucidates a nuanced understanding of women STEM faculty’s perspectives on their participation in EEPs, offering insights for future research and program development to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusivity in STEM entrepreneurship education.

Every three years, the Organisation for European Cooperation and Development evaluates the scientific competence of European students. Recent results have demonstrated that scientific competence in Spain is somewhat underdeveloped, which underscores the need to apply educational methodologies that favour the development of said competence. This paper analysed the extent to which the implementation of the Spanish high school diploma of research favoured the development of the Scientific Competence of students. The students had to develop a research project, co-tutored by a secondary education teacher and a University teacher/researcher. Both professionals offered the guidance necessary to develop a project that concerned the resolution of a problem of interest. Audio and video data were collected during the 18 months of the high school programme. These data were transcribed and analysed using a rubric designed ad hoc. This assessment instrument is a relevant point of this work as long as it can be used as evaluating tool in the Scientific Competence assessment of future studies. The results revealed that the students had to make use of their knowledge of the research topic, strengthen this knowledge, substantiate the research using the scientific literature, design and develop the experimental methodology, collect, analyse and present data, and, finally, disclose these data. The results indicated high levels of development in the three sub-competences that were explored, which concluded in a high development of scientific competence.

Previous research suggests that the use of metaphors in science education have both possibilities and challenges. In this study, we analyse the role of metaphors in meaning-making in the upper primary science classroom. We investigate the potential of metaphors about nutrient uptake occurring in classrooms in which an animation was used. To identify metaphors in the classroom interaction, we have applied an analysis according to systemic-functional grammar (SFG), rooted in social semiotic theory. The present study indicates that the use of metaphors can play an important role in scientific meaning-making, since, in that way, students and teachers can make meaning about scientific processes and functions before having access to the scientific terminology. However, if metaphors are to be functional tools for meaning-making in science education, the teacher has an important role to play in, among other things, explicitly connecting the metaphors and everyday language to scientific concepts. We argue that metaphors based on functional similarity have a high affordance for making meaning about complex processes, such as nutrient uptake.

Organic chemistry is challenging for novices as it involves a large quantity of organic reactions. Effective learning requires not only profound theoretical knowledge but also the ability to reason about causal mechanisms. This study investigated pre-service chemistry teachers' mechanistic reasoning and the implicit cognitive process. Participants (N = 33) were asked to complete three tasks, which required them to explain chemical phenomena or analyze chemical reactions. This work analyzed the components involved in participants' explanations based on the discourse analysis framework and evaluated the mechanistic reasoning by identifying the causal relationship between different components. An eye-tracking method was employed to recognize the mental activity underlying participants' performance. Four parameters, percentage of dwell time, percentage of fixation count, heat maps, and average pupil size, were used to conduct quantitative analyses on the data collected from the eye-tracker. Each parameter on predefined areas of interest was compared to identify the information that participants paid more attention to and bore more cognitive load while reasoning. The results revealed that pre-service chemistry teachers demonstrate four different types of reasoning in organic chemistry tasks: descriptive, relational, simple causal, and mechanistic reasoning. Pre-service chemistry teachers were more concerned with key information and symbolic representations. It was symbolic representations that increased cognitive load.

Models and modelling play a critical role in science education to engage students more fully in science practices. Few studies have investigated the nature of models and modelling in integrated STEM teacher education. This study examines pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) understanding of the nature of models and modelling in a STEM methods course. Model and modelling for authentic STEM are used as a theoretical lens for conceptualising PSTs’ understanding of the nature of models and modelling. Interpretive research was used to analyse how this course contributed to PSTs’ understanding of the nature of models and modelling based on four dimensions: meanings, purposes, processes and the complexity of models and modelling. Data were collected through questionnaires. Inductive content analysis was used to reveal distinct patterns of PSTs’ understandings. The findings indicated that at the beginning of the course, PSTs understood that models were a replication of phenomena or a prototype. By the end of the course, they understood modelling as a practice to explain and predict phenomena in science to solve problems and improve the quality of life through engineering. By the end of the course, PSTs viewed modelling as a bridge between science and engineering within the context of an integrated STEM education. The PSTs showed marked shifts by the end of the course by demonstrating a deeper understanding of modelling as a dynamic process. PSTs saw the integration of science and engineering in STEM as a route for epistemic agency on behalf of their students and a greater appreciation of model complexity. This study suggests that introducing the nature of modelling in science and engineering assists the teaching of STEM. The model and modelling implications for STEM teacher education are discussed.