In primary and secondary schools, the disciplines encompassed in “STEM”—Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics—have usually been studied as separate subjects, with little effort directed towards non-anecdotal integration. “Integrated STEM education” is one of the most recent interdisciplinary proposals and, under its umbrella, school disciplines are beginning to be integrated in an educationally

The paper provides a theoretical synthesis that addresses the multiple calls to consider the existence of an integrated nature of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). The nature of STEM (NOSTEM) has been advocated for as a way to promote effective STEM instruction in K-16 education and has been challenged as being non-existent. We propose a theoretical conceptualization of the

Around the world, there is a growing interest in integrated STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. Many of the calls for integrated STEM emphasize the need for students to engage with complex STEM problems that cut across multiple fields. Yet there is a need to clarify the nature of those problems and differentiate STEM problems from those of different kinds. This conceptual

The Covid-19 pandemic is the reason why humanity is paying more attention to the importance of regular and rigorous handwashing. Interestingly, in the nineteenth century, regular and rigorous handwashing was a key (and controversial) solution proposed by the Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis to cut drastically cases of puerperal fever. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence

Quantum mechanics has proven to be a challenging subject for instructors to teach and conceptually difficult for students to understand. A major source of the difficulty is the lack of everyday experience that quantum mechanics can be related to and the change in thinking required in transitioning from deterministic classical mechanics to a probabilistic quantum theory. Philosophically, the transition

Michael Faraday is considered one of the greatest science lecturers in history. He popularized the Christmas Lectures as a format of science communication that has survived until today in the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Especially, his Chemical History of a Candle has become a classic of science communication that has inspired numerous approaches to science teaching. Science educators have

In comparison to teachers from Argentina and Uruguay, Brazilian teachers face greater difficulties in teaching biological evolution, due to religion. While Argentina has an official religion set in its constitution, Uruguay and Brazil are considered secular countries. Despite being a self-proclaimed secular country, Brazil tolerates and encourages religious teaching in public schools. Acceptance of

Increasingly, educators in the biological and social sciences teach about the concept of race from a social constructionist perspective. Scholarship on race pedagogy suggests that to fully appreciate the complexity of race, students must be able to both deconstruct multiple false beliefs about the fixed nature of race (i.e., racial essentialism) and be able to articulate the sociopolitical development

The excess of curriculum content is a well-known problem in high school biology. Some strategies to adjust the amount of content to the available classroom time have been proposed, but none has been widely accepted and applied. Furthermore, biology is frequently presented in high school not as an integrated science, but as a collection of unrelated sub-areas, say, zoology, botany, physiology, genetics

Nature of science (NOS) has become one of the major emphases in curriculum and assessment. This study explores what NOS is included and how this is achieved in the Hong Kong biology curriculum and 7-year high-stakes assessments. While conceptualizations of the official definition of NOS differ, this study employs the family resemblance approach (FRA) to analyze the inclusion of NOS in the curriculum

The paper reports a study that focussed on investigating the effectiveness of Toulmin’s argument pattern (TAP) within Think-Read-Group-Share-Reflect (TRGSR) scientific argumentation strategy on higher secondary students’ critical thinking. A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest-control group design was deployed. The subjects were 50 twelfth grade students. The experimental group was taught with TAP

Growing interest in integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (iSTEM) education has been promoted as one way to increase innovation capacity, support future employment, and enhance learning outcomes in K-12 education throughout the USA. Existing efforts to construct iSTEM curricula have largely focused on finding points of integration among commonly shared disciplinary practices

In the USA context of the Next Generation Science Standards, elementary teachers face challenges in implementing engineering practices in their teaching due their lack of experience and training in engineering design. The paper reports about a multiple case study that examined one professional development approach to improve teachers’ understanding and implementation of the STEM discipline of engineering

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)–based nature of science (NOS) teaching on pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) NOS views. The study is grounded by conceptual change and experiential learning theory. It is also framed by the teacher professional knowledge and skill (TPK&S) PCK model. This is an exploratory case study of PSTs’ developments

Education systems in once-colonised locations cannot escape the abiding legacy of colonisation. Science, in particular, has played a prominent role in the reasonings and rationalisations of the colonial process. When considered in the context of an education system established by imperial powers, it is difficult to reconcile processes of self-determination without examining perceptions of the past

The paper presents an empirical study on university students’ perceptions of nature of science (NOS). NOS is framed in terms of the cognitive, epistemic, and social-institutional systems of science based on the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) (Erduran and Dagher 2014; Irzik and Nola 2014; Irzik and Nola, SCED 20:591–607, 2011). FRA includes the following categories: aims and values of science, scientific

Scientific knowledge is advanced because scientists manage uncertainty. Although managing uncertainty is an essential practice of science, transferring it from expert settings to K–12 classrooms is problematic because, understandably, students are not familiar with the intentions of scientists. Few studies have explored learning science as an enterprise of uncertainty management. This longitudinal

The author deeply regrets, and apologizes to those affected as well as to the editors and readers of this journal, that the published version of this article contains the following errors:

A study was conducted on how scientific laboratory lessons contribute to building arguments, both cognitively and socially. The population consisted of 12 second-year pre-service teachers at a college of education specializing in the teaching of biology and chemistry in middle school. The study examines the nature of the arguments students raise when conducting a laboratory experiment and how conducting

Due to the controversies surrounding the topic of evolution among religious and non-religious people alike, the treatment of biological evolution in education—both teaching and learning—is a potential minefield. The goal of this study was to probe the insights of Israeli stakeholders in education regarding the revision of the Israeli science and technology and biology curricula with respect to evolution

For years, inquiry-based learning has been conceived of and promoted as one of the best approaches to learning science. However, there is currently a movement within the science education community that suggests promoting science learning based on scientific practices, instead of inquiry, because in this way, science learning would be more coherent with the enterprise that is science. But, are there

Lack of acceptance of biological evolution, despite the overwhelming evidence that supports it, can be very problematic in higher education courses that have a strong biological basis. We investigated acceptance of biological evolution in 344 first-year Life Sciences undergraduate students across five programmes at the University of Roehampton, UK. In line with previous findings in British universities

A thorough understanding of the concept of the nature of science (NOS) is essential to the development of scientific literacy among students, as it provides the students with the tools and capacity to interpret the scientific knowledge they will encounter. This study focuses on how social factors may influence 1010 Israeli 9th grade students’ understanding of NOS by exploring their perceptions of NOS

The goal of this study was to explore the influencing factors of pre-service science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for targeted aspects of nature of science (NOS) and nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) in a 13-month teacher development program, through multiple data sources. The program included a research experience, a course on NOS/NOSI, and a teaching practicum. This was an exploratory

The original article unfortunately contains incorrect figures 6 to 13.