Science & Education最新文献

Nature of STEM (NoSTEM) encompasses epistemological, social, and ethical dimensions underlying STEM disciplines, emphasizing their interdependence rather than treating them as isolated domains. This perspective challenges reductionist and technocentric views, fostering a holistic understanding of science and technology in society. Nevertheless, currently, no validated instruments specifically evaluate NoSTEM, making the development of such instruments essential for advancing interdisciplinary STEM education. Thus, we present Evaluating Performance in STEM Integrated Knowledge (EPISTEMIK), a roadmap for developing instruments to assess NoSTEM in educational contexts grounded in a solid theoretical-philosophical framework. Based on this, we introduce a mixed-method instrument, combining statistical validation with qualitative analysis to ensure instrument robustness, focused on fire ecology (EPISTEMIK-Fire), consisting of 11 closed-ended and 2 open-ended items. EPISTEMIK-Fire uses fire ecology to explore interdisciplinary integration and critical reflection. However, while we introduce both EPISTEMIK and EPISTEMIK-Fire, the results primarily focus on validating the latter. Findings highlight EPISTEMIK-Fire’s potential to provide a comprehensive understanding of NoSTEM, addressing gaps in existing evaluation tools by capturing interdisciplinary knowledge and socio-ethical implications. Beyond this application, our study contributes to STEM education by offering a rigorous framework for assessing interdisciplinary integration. Future applications aim to extend this instrument to diverse STEM fields and educational levels, fostering critical scientific literacy.

We assume the existence of conceptual profiles as a manifestation of pluralism in science education. This means recognizing the heterogeneity of thinking and speaking, that is, the coexistence of two or more meanings of the same word or concept that are accessed and used by the individual in appropriate contexts. Science is not a homogeneous way of knowing and provides multiple ways of seeing the world, which can exist together within the same individual and be used in different contexts. Scholars of conceptual profiles are interested in investigating how science teaching could be designed to effectively address heterogeneity of thinking as teachers attempt to create conditions for students to understand and learn scientific concepts. In this work, we present a conceptual profile of the molecule consisting of six zones (first principles, substantialism, geometrically arranged atoms, compositionist, interactionist, and modern molecule), revealing the relationship between this conceptual profile and the pluralism of molecular representations. We also present the ontological and epistemological commitments that shape these zones as well as the ways of speaking that were identified in the empirical data and the relationships with the pluralism of molecule representations. We then explore an activity designed to make explicit the use of zones in this profile and applied at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, seeking to identify how students at different levels of education access the different zones.

Important everyday decisions warrant the integration of statistical, scientific, and Nature of Science (NOS) reasoning. While each of these three types of reasoning is distinct and has been mostly examined separately, they have many interrelations. A deeper appreciation of the interrelations between the three can greatly inform how to concurrently nurture all three, thus empowering today’s young learners with the necessary skills in our data-driven society. In this article, we introduce a framework we developed to describe some of the interrelations between the three types of reasoning in relation to the central statistical and scientific practice of formulating data-based claims. To illustrate its affordances, we then offer a case study of a pair of middle school students’ engagement with a learning sequence that accompanied the pair’s participation in a Citizen Science project, whose design was inspired by the framework. Our findings introduce four versions of the practice that the students expressed and the typical aspects of statistical, scientific, and NOS reasoning associated with each. A detailed account of how these emerged and progressed provides additional insight on the interrelations between the three types of reasoning. Particularly, while the students’ initial one-sided NOS views inhibit the expression of additional and more complex scientific and statistical reasoning, extending them through the engagement of the learning sequence we developed allowed the expression of more mature, rich and interrelated scientific, statistical, and NOS considerations.

This paper reports new data on the courses held in 1933 in Spain for the selection and training of secondary education teachers that constituted an alternative to the traditional format of competitive examinations. These courses took place during the Spanish Second Republic (1931–1939), a political period characterised by various initiatives directed towards modernising and internationalising education and science teaching in Spain. Here, we focus on the botany course held in Barcelona given by the prestigious professor of botany Pius Font i Quer (Lérida, 1888–Barcelona, 1964). The programme of the course and its teacher encouraged a methodology based on scientific research by means of observation, description, drawing, the creation of herbariums, laboratory practice and excursions. In addition, the course incorporated democratic values, dialogue and cooperation between the aspirants, all of which were in keeping with the educational ideas of the republicans. The courses for natural science teachers were thus a novel approach that clearly linked teacher training to the recruitment process and achieved pedagogical goals beyond those of the discipline itself.

Affect has long been of interest in early childhood education, where social and emotional dynamics are seen as critical dimensions of learning, intricately linked to embodied activity. As part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, this paper conceptualizes affect through children's bodily comfort. Data were collected in two Kindergarten classrooms participating in an integrated computer science-STEM curriculum that involved small groups of children engaging in floor-based activities. Focusing on body positioning, we use interaction analysis to explore how a focal child found a comfortable fit in her learning environment, highlighting the role of clothing in establishing a mundane sense of comfort. We found that fitting in the space and fitting in with others involved creating comfortable spaces, or comfort zones, in the classroom. For focal participant Theresa, a comfort zone involved physically positioning her body and negotiating norms of social comportment that govern how different bodies come to feel like some-body. We discuss ways in which some children perform extra physical and emotional labor to establish comfort zones in the classroom, and how this contributes to their felt sense of belonging and dignity, whereby all children are valued participants and feel that they fit. We conclude with pedagogical implications of creating spaces for embodied belonging, where children feel a goodness of fit in STEM.

In this study, we examined aspects of the Nature of Science (NOS) within the science section of the upper secondary level in the Brazilian Common Core Curriculum. Employing the reconceptualised family resemblance approach to the NOS (RFN) analytical framework, a content analysis was conducted to identify the NOS aspects. Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) was also applied to indicate the connection strength between categories. The findings revealed that the analysed benchmarks highly represent the cognitive–epistemic (66 codes) and social–institutional systems (50 codes). However, ENA results show that the benchmarks have a stronger connection among the cognitive–epistemic system categories with centrality in the scientific practices and cognitive practice categories. The content subject, a non-RFN category, was found to be frequent, establishing strong connections with the social values of science in the network. A more satisfactory representativeness and connectedness of the social–institutional elements are desired. This study contributes to the applicability of RFN as an analytical framework in an unexplored context. The limitations of the study were also discussed.

In this paper, we present findings from an exploratory qualitative study that investigated perceptions of science and scientists, which can shape how learners participate in narrative-based socioscientific digital media and hands-on activities. We examine how middle school learners conceptualize science and scientists’ roles through their possible selves and the way in which they express their interests. We present findings of interviews with middle school students who took part in digital media and hands-on science activities in a school science classroom. Our findings show that while there are variations in the ways that students perceive science and scientists, many students in our study are influenced by formal learning environments (e.g., school), and some students have difficulty making connections between informal and formal science activities. By examining learners’ heterogeneous perceptions of science and scientists, we identified students’ perceptions of the qualities of scientists, science responsibility, and science in daily life, along with ideas inspired by the activities we presented. In our discussion, we consider how the constructs of possible self and interest in science can enable students to engage in science and to think about science and scientists in more expansive ways. Lessons from this study can support middle school students in developing a positive scientist possible self and increase their interest in science.

The Nature of Science (NOS) has long been a central focus in science education, with scholars examining its processes and structures from diverse perspectives. One influential approach builds on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s family resemblance concept, which conceptualises NOS as an interplay between cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional systems. While this framework offers valuable insights into the fluid boundaries between these domains, it overlooks critical aspects such as power dynamics, cultural influences and institutional structures that shape scientific practice. To address these gaps, this paper integrates Wittgenstein’s ideas with Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, particularly his concepts of habitus, field and capital. Bourdieu’s framework complements Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the fluidity and variability of practices by highlighting how cultural norms, power relations and institutional structures influence both the cognitive and social dimensions of science. The philosophical alignment between these perspectives is explored, alongside counterarguments to critiques, demonstrating their compatibility in analysing scientific practices. Building on this synthesis, the paper expands the family resemblance approach to NOS framework, emphasising the dynamic interactions between scientific practices and their broader social contexts. It advocates for a more inclusive and reflexive model of NOS that acknowledges the role of power and cultural influences in shaping scientific knowledge and supports reflexive pedagogy for a more equitable and dynamic science education framework.