Research in Science Education最新文献

This study investigates preschool teachers’ considerations for including digital tools in science teaching to develop children’s learning of science content. Due to the ongoing digitalisation and demands in society, the utilisation of digital tools has increased significantly in educational settings. Recent research about digital tools in early childhood education focuses on various aspects of technology implementation. However, there is a research gap in which considerations underpin preschool teachers’ choices of what, why and how they integrate digital tools into science teaching. The data generation was conducted by different methods. The reflection tool Content Representations (CoRe) is used to make the preschool teachers’ considerations explicit when reflecting on planning science teaching regarding specific science content formulated as Big Ideas. Further, video stimulated recall interviews capture the preschool teachers’ considerations on their interactions with children in science activities and using digital tools. The Refined Consensus Model (RCM) of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) was employed as a theoretical framework for analysing and interpreting data around an entire teaching cycle. Some of the teachers’ considerations for including digital tools involve accessing children’s learning, making the abstract concrete and stimulating children’s engagement and learning. Further, the findings indicate that the considerations concerned knowledge about teachers’ personal PCK (pPCK) and enacted PCK (ePCK) aspects.

This study focuses on how science teachers’ Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) can be captured and developed with the support of Content representation (CoRe) in combination with video-based reflection when they plan, teach, and reflect on their teaching in sustainable development (SD). The theoretical framework is based on PCK, and the Refined consensus model (RCM) is used as a theoretical lens for conceptualising links between teaching practice and PCK development. Eleven upper-secondary school science teachers participated in the study. Data from two teachers were chosen to illustrate representative examples from the analysis. The findings indicate that the use of CoRe and video-based reflection provides opportunities for teachers to make their knowledge of practice explicit and help them begin to identify aspects within their own practice that are important for the further development of teaching SD. The use of RCM as an analytical tool also makes an important contribution to how RCM can be used to identify and capture teachers’ PCK.

This study aimed to examine the integration of four elementary science teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) components during emergency remote teaching. Data sources included teaching video recordings and stimulated interviews conducted after analyzing the teachers’ teaching videos. The data were analyzed by identifying the practical TPACK (TPACK-p) segments and by adopting the enumerative and constant-comparative approaches. Major findings of the analysis were (i) the integrations seen in the teachers’ maps become richer and more diverse as their TPACK-p proficiency increases; (ii) the learner and assessment components are the most prominent components when the teachers can integrate learners into the lesson; and (iii) the instructional management and curriculum-design components have limited integrations with other TPACK-p components. The results are discussed in light of related literature and implications are provided for science teacher education. Remote science teaching courses should be incorporated into preservice teacher education programs. Likewise, professional development programs should train in-service teacher for distance science teaching.

The likelihood that students pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) depends on the extent to which they identify with these fields (i.e., STEM identity). In order for students to develop a STEM identity, it is crucial that they receive social recognition from others (e.g., family members, teachers, friends, and professionals in STEM). Yet, research that explicitly compares whose recognition is meaningful to students in developing STEM is still scarce. This study examines to what extent 134 Thai secondary school students (47 males and 87 females) perceive meaningfulness of recognition in STEM if they gain from different persons. Data were collected using a Likert-scale questionnaire and analyzed using statistical methods. The results indicate that, regardless of the students’ gender and educational levels, students similarly appreciate social recognition from friends, family members, teachers, and unspecified others. Only recognition from professionals in STEM, however, is significantly lesser meaningful than that from other kinds of persons. Moreover, students with strong STEM identities are more likely than those with weak STEM identities to appreciate social recognition. These results highlight not only the importance of recognition from those with whom students are already intimate, rather than recognition from those who work in STEM fields, but also different scaffoldings for students with varying degrees of STEM identity to see themselves as STEM persons.

Sensemaking is conceptualized as a trajectory to develop better understanding and is advocated as one of the fundamental practices in science education. However, the field is lacking of a framework to view the prolonged process of sensemaking that starts from a raise of uncertainty of a target phenomenon to a grasping of a better understanding of a target phenomenon. The process requires teachers to recognize the role of scientific uncertainty in different phases of sensemaking and develop responsive instructional supports to help students navigate the uncertainties. With an attention on student scientific uncertainty as a potential driver of the trajectory of sensemaking, this study aims to identify different phases of sensemaking that can be developed with students’ scientific uncertainty. This study especially attends to two types of scientific uncertainty—conceptual and epistemic uncertainties. Conceptual uncertainty refers to student struggle of using conceptual understanding (e.g., mastery of content and everyday knowledge) to respond to an encountered phenomenon. Epistemic uncertainty emerges from struggles in using epistemic understanding to generate new ideas. Based on the multiple case study method, we examined sensemaking activities in two Korean science classrooms and one American science classroom and identified three phases of sensemaking: (a) focusing on a driving question related to a target phenomenon, (b) delving into multiple resources to develop plausible explanation(s), and (c) examining the successfulness of the new understanding and concretizing it. Based on the findings, we discuss two emerging themes. First, sensemaking progresses through three distinctive phases driven by students’ dynamically evolving scientific uncertainty. Second, attending to both epistemic and conceptual uncertainties can support developing sensemaking coherent with students’ view.

Science teachers crave instructional materials and an increasing number of them are going to online educational marketplaces to purchase them. This study reports on a content analysis of highly rated products marketed for middle level science (grades 6, 7, and/or 8) on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT), one of the most prominent online educational marketplaces. Thirty-three products were reviewed in this study and they contained a variety of student tasks (e.g., investigations & worksheets) and teacher resources (e.g., PowerPoint slides, lesson plans, & answer keys). Instructional materials obtained from these products yielded more than 1,500 pages for analysis. The first layer of the analysis focused on the alignment of these materials to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and results indicated that few materials included any key features of NGSS design (n = 2). The second layer of the analysis focused on the treatment and presentation of nature of science (NOS) ideas in these instructional materials. Of the 27 products that included any representation of NOS, the majority of these materials included empirical NOS (n = 22) and the myth of the “Scientific Method” (n = 21). Fewer representations were found for social NOS (n = 4), creative (n = 3), tentative (n = 3), theory-laden (n = 3), and along with social and cultural embeddedness (n = 1). Results revealed mixed messages among the instructional materials reviewed, examples are shared to frame a discussion about features that can foster the development of NOS understandings. Implications of this research regarding the preparation of teachers to evaluate instructional materials are discussed alongside research highlighting how educative features can support NOS instruction.

In recent years, limited research attention has been directed to what happens in science education before the age of 3 years. We present the findings of a study that followed 13 infant-toddlers aged 0.1–2.2 years (mean 1.8 years) and their educators from a childcare centre. Under the conditions of an educational experiment, the results of our study identified how scientific experiences build empirical knowledge in the context of an imaginary play problem, where infant-toddlers are resourced with content about the phenomenon and, in the drama of the play, build a relationship with a science concept. Early forms of scientific investigation processes were identified, problematising the current low expectations of what might be possible in science education for this age group. Our findings add to understandings about the earliest forms of learning in science in group care settings and introduce a model of practice called a Scientific Conceptual PlayWorld for infant-toddlers.

Outreach science labs aim to promote students’ interest. Previous research has often suggested that performing experiments in such labs has a positive effect on their interest. However, these studies often lack a comparison to the effects of performing them at school. This research gap was addressed in the present study. The sample consisted of 402 upper-secondary level students (age: M = 16.53 years, SD = 0.80 years) who performed three experiments on the topic of enzymology either in an outreach science lab (n = 203) or at school (n = 199). Contrary to the assumption, experimentation at the outreach science lab did not outperform experimentation at school in terms of students’ psychological state of interest in the comparison to the school setting. Surprisingly, differences in the value-related component of the psychological state of interest were even found in favor of the school treatment.

The growing trend of “escape games” in science education instigates debate over their pedagogical value, with researchers calling for more emphasis on theory-based design processes. Thus, the current study’s goal was to identify situated learning components that can be associated with educational escape games and to generate a methodology that integrates these components into the design of science-based educational escape games. Applying the deductive content analysis approach, data were collected through a survey and semi-structured interviews among 54 science teachers and seven game design experts. Four situated learning components, authentic situations, scientific contents, collaborative learning, and self-reflection, were associated with the design of educational escape games. In addition, planning and evaluation were identified as important attributes of game design methodology, with each stage including three iterative sequential inner stages associated with two or more situated learning components. The study contributes new insights to the domain of science-based educational escape games, providing guidelines and examples for science teachers and game developers.

This study explored the effects of explicit and implicit epistemologically enhanced instructions probing 9th-grade students’ personal epistemologies on their physics-related personal epistemology (PPE) and physics achievement in the heat and temperature unit. In the implicit epistemologically enhanced instruction (IEEI), different dimensions of personal epistemologies were implicitly embedded into the instructional design without an explicit reference to personal epistemologies. On the other hand, in explicitly enhanced epistemological instruction (EEEI), the same instructional design was used with an explicit reference to personal epistemologies through discussions, students’ reflections, and teacher talks. A conventional instruction (CI), which included neither implicit nor explicit reference to personal epistemologies, was also used as a control group. A quasi-experimental research design was adopted to explore the effects of IEEI and EEEI on the students’ physics-related personal epistemology and physics achievement, with 186 ninth graders participating in the study. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used to determine the differences between the groups exposed to three different instructional methods. The results showed that EEEI was the most effective method of instruction in improving students’ physics-related personal epistemologies and achievement. The findings indicated that implicit/explicit epistemological enhancement strengthens the achievement in physics.