Science & Education最新文献

Collaborative inquiry is an instructional approach that encourages student groups to engage in scientific inquiry processes, thereby enhancing their critical thinking and exploratory skills. The effective classroom implementation of this method requires ensuring student engagement in each inquiry stage, where technological tools and activity strategies play a crucial role in supporting their inquiry processes. However, the technological tools and activity strategies that contribute to designing classroom activities and fostering students’ engagement in collaborative inquiry remain unclear. This systematic review analyzed 58 empirical studies on technology-enhanced collaborative inquiry in K–12 classrooms. We examined the characteristics of these studies, the technological tools and activity strategies employed, and their reported outcomes and effects on student learning. The results indicate that most classroom practices featured diverse technological tools and activity strategies to support students in collaboratively performing stages of inquiry tasks. The findings highlight the need for further research into effectively integrating technological tools with activity strategies to provide adaptive support for specific inquiry processes, such as hypothesis generation and scientific argumentation. Our synthesis of previous outcome measurements revealed the positive impacts of technology-enhanced collaborative inquiry on students’ content knowledge, overall inquiry process, and scientific skills like argumentation. The implications of these findings are discussed for both researchers and practitioners, emphasizing the necessity of integrating appropriate technological tools and activity strategies to effectively facilitate collaborative inquiry in K–12 classrooms.

To provide a comprehensive picture of socioscientific issues (SSI) pedagogy in primary and secondary school contexts, we present a systematic review of research on how SSI in science education practice is characterized in studies of teaching and learning from 1997 to 2021. The review addresses the identified need for guidance on SSI teaching as experienced by practicing teachers. The aim of the study is to define and describe how SSI as a pedagogical approach is characterized in studies of teaching and learning in science education research. From a sample of 5183 peer-reviewed articles, 157 were selected for the data extraction and systematic review process. The result is structured around teaching objectives, teaching topics, and teaching methods. Our findings show that much of the research revolves around the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills and science content knowledge. The topics identified fall mainly within two themes: the environment and sustainable development, and health and technology. Group discussions stand out as the primary teaching method. The findings are discussed in the light of previous reviews, and recommendations for future research are suggested.

The focus on history of science (HOS) in physics education has been advocated for a long time. However, what are the actual implications of proposals with this focus and the recent advancements in this research field? What are the possible connections between HOS and emergent topics, such as decoloniality, social justice, and post-truth? With those inquiries in mind, a systematic review of empirical research on the use of HOS in physics classes was conducted for the period from 2012 to 2022. The goal was to investigate recent researches objectives in this area, their recurring research methods, the conceptions of nature of science (NOS) employed, the underlying theoretical frameworks of instructional approaches, the main methodologies used in implementations, and the key findings of these studies. The same selection and exclusion criteria as Teixeira et al. (Science & Education 21:771–796, 2012) were applied, resulting in a raw sample of 1296 articles and a final sample of 32 articles for the review. A reinterpretation of the categorization by Seroglou and Koumaras (2001) was also conducted to assess the research objectives and outcomes. It is concluded that research on the use of HOS in physics classes remains primarily theoretical, with limited studies on concrete implementations. Qualitative methods dominate empirical research in this context. We did not find articles empirically evaluating the use of HOS in physics classes related to emergent topics in Science Education, although there are arguments in the literature supporting the use of HOS, specifically focusing on historical episodes about silenced or omitted individuals and cultures in history, as an alternative to problematize a ‘white Eurocentric science’. Regarding teaching and learning, the following conclusions can be drawn: (1) there is consensus that HOS fosters students’ interest and the development of NOS-related knowledge; (2) there is a research gap regarding the connection between HOS and procedural knowledge; and (3) HOS promotes conceptual learning, although the specific elements that facilitate this learning are not investigated in the studies.

Contemporary sciences, including the didactics of science, employ computational simulations as tools in their academic endeavors. The construction and application of these simulations are of interest to didactics as they contribute to shaping new perspectives on scientific activity. Consequently, they warrant special attention in conceptualizations of the nature of science. This article presents a specific characterization of Computational Simulations of Science Education (CSSE) at both the didactic and metatheoretical levels. On the didactic front, we highlight the primary scopes and limitations that arise from its implementation in the classroom. Additionally, we explore the distinctions between CSSE and Computational Simulations of the Sciences (CSS) in terms of design and structure. At the metatheoretical level, we argue, drawing mainly from van Fraassen’s insights, that CSSE, capable of yielding quantitative data, are accompanied by data models derived from measurement procedures. These models are interconnected and, in turn, intricately linked to the phenomena under investigation. These structures are subsumed within the empirical substructures of theoretical models. We posit that CSSE serve as bridges facilitating the transition toward an understanding of theoretical models and real-world phenomena through their integration into educational activities. In conclusion, this contribution expands, and updates didactic and philosophical conceptions related to the production of contemporary scientific knowledge. This, in turn, offers novel insights into the nature of science for science education.

Throughout the past decades, challenges of socio-scientific nature such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate degradation and scientific racism have brought many relevant and pressing questions to the fore of the science education field, prompting science educators into (re)thinking the purposes and roles of science education within a landscape where the links between science and socio-political challenges, injustices, citizenship and democracy have become increasingly complex. In this theoretical paper, I seek to examine what Critical Pedagogies and Decolonial Studies can bring to science education in the face of these challenges and injustices of socio-scientific nature, with a focus on the area of Nature of Science (NOS). In particular, drawing on scholarship from across these fields and on some illustrative examples from common science education topics, I seek to propose ways in which an approach to NOS grounded on a critical-decolonial perspective may be used to support the learning of school students and science teachers’ own professional learning around science’s entanglements with social justice and socio-political issues.

The purpose of this study was to gauge the attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI) use in the science classroom by science teachers at the start of generative AI chatbot popularity (March 2023). The lens of distributed cognition afforded an opportunity to gather thoughts, opinions, and perceptions from 24 secondary science educators as well as three AI chatbots. Purposeful sampling was used to form the initial science educator focus groups, and both human and AI participants individually responded to an attitudes survey as well as an epistemic cognition questionnaire over a 2-week period. In addition to participating in the study, AI—specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT—was used to create two of the three survey instruments and served as an analysis tool for the qualitative results of this mixed-methods study. Results from the qualitative data suggest that secondary science educators are cautiously optimistic about the inclusion of AI in the classroom; however, there is a need to modify teacher preparation to incorporate AI training. Further, ethical concerns were identified about plagiarism, knowledge generation, and what constitutes original thinking with AI use. A one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a significant effect of subject taught on attitudes towards AI in the classroom p < 0.05 level for the four conditions: F(3, 23) = 6.743, p = .002. The partial eta squared of 0.47 indicates a large effect size with practical significance. This study serves as an artifact of knowledge about knowledge at the beginning of a technological revolution.