Anthropomorphisms are widespread at all levels of the educational system even among science experts. This has led to a shift in how anthropomorphisms are viewed in science education, from a discussion of whether they should be allowed or avoided towards an interest in their role in supporting students’ understanding of science. In this study we examine the role of anthropomorphisms in supporting students’ understanding of chemistry. We analyze examples from undergraduate students’ discussions during problem-solving classes through the use of practical epistemology analysis (PEA). Findings suggest that students invoked anthropomorphisms alongside technical relations which together produced more or less chemically appropriate explanations. Also, anthropomorphisms constitute potentially productive points of departure for rendering students’ explanations more chemically appropriate. The implications of this study refer to the need to deal with anthropomorphisms explicitly and repeatedly as well as to encourage explicit connections between different parts of the explanation - teleological as well as causal.

Numerous of sustainable development related challenges are emerging today, e.g. flooding problems. Our group has developed ’the flood walk’ project since 2010 to convey flood risk knowledge in an authentic context. Considering the limitation of time and space to educate people the flood risk knowledge, we tried to transform the physical flood walk field trip into a Web-based virtual trip. In this study, we aim to examine whether the Web-based flood-walk environment can help participants to achieve the same learning outcome as its authentic counterpart. A total of 65 upper secondary school pupils participated in this study. The results illustrate that a physical experience is irreplaceable, and the importance of providing physical experiences for learners in both formal and informal education needs to be emphasised.

Numerous of sustainable development related challenges are emerging today, e.g. flooding problems. Our group has developed ‘the flood walk’ project since 2010 to convey flood risk knowledge in an authentic context. Considering the limitation of time and space to educate people the flood risk knowledge, we tried to transform the physical flood walk field trip into a Web-based virtual trip. In this study, we aim to examine whether the Web-based flood-walk environment can help participants to achieve the same learning outcome as its authentic counterpart. A total of 65 upper secondary school pupils participated in this study. The results illustrate that a physical experience is irreplaceable, and the importance of providing physical experiences for learners in both formal and informal education needs to be emphasised.

The trend of socioscientific issues (SSIs) has been emergent in the science- and technology-dominated society of today. Accordingly, during the past 20 years, students’ skills of argumentation and informal reasoning about SSIs have achieved greater emphasis and profile in school education. Based upon the importance of SSIs, more and more researchers have investigated how students reason and make arguments about SSIs, and also explored the dimensions influencing students’ arguments and also involved in the various SSIs. This article has a threefold purpose. Firstly, we want to address the different roles of SSIs in science education nowadays, and secondly, after reviewing the divergent dimensions involved in SSIs from previous literature, we want to provide a holistic view to represent the essence of SSIs via the SEE-SEP model (connecting six subject areas of Sociology/culture, Environment, Economy, Science, Ethics/morality and Policy with three aspects of value, personal experience and knowledge) developed here. Thirdly, to support the SEE-SEP model, examples extracted from former studies are presented. The implications for research and for school science education are discussed.

The trend of socioscientific issues (SSIs) has been emergent in the science- and technology-dominated society of today. Accordingly, during the past 20 years, students’ skills of argumentation and informal reasoning about SSIs have achieved greater emphasis and profile in school education. Based upon the importance of SSIs, more and more researchers have investigated how students reason and make arguments about SSIs, and also explored the dimensions influencing students’ arguments and also involved in the various SSIs. This article has a threefold purpose. Firstly, we want to address the different roles of SSIs in science education nowadays, and secondly, after reviewing the divergent dimensions involved in SSIs from previous literature, we want to provide a holistic view to represent the essence of SSIs via the SEE-SEP model (connecting six subject areas of Sociology/culture, Environment, Economy, Science, Ethics/morality and Policy with three aspects of value, personal experience and knowledge) developed here. Thirdly, to support the SEE-SEP model, examples extracted from former studies are presented. The implications for research and for school science education are discussed.

Based on the importance and widely use of visualization in science, this article has a three-fold aim related to the terms of visualization, representation and model that in recent years have been introduced to the field of science education without clear differentiation. Firstly, the three terms are discussed with examples to provide a common ground for the following discussion. Secondly, the roles of visualization in science education are delineated to inform teachers how visualization can be used to enhance their teaching and students’ learning in science. Thirdly, based on visualization research in science education, there are a number of aspects that we need to consider while embedding the proposed visualization into the development of teachers’ professional knowledge. We hope to contribute to pre- and in-service science teachers’ professional development linked to the use of visualization in science education.

The purpose of this study is to introduce Taiwanese last curriculum standards and the development of authentic assessment to investigate 9^th-graders’ scientific literacy in Taiwan. From this study, it was revealed that authentic assessment provided another possibility to evaluate students’ scientific cognition better than the traditional achievement tests. Besides, the hands-on activity developed by this study offered an opportunity to make students enjoy the examination more and showed a higher consistency with lower-achievement students’ performance on the national entrance exam. The discussion and implementation are presented.

The purpose of this study is to introduce Taiwanese last curriculum standards and the development of authentic assessment to investigate 9^th-graders’ scientific literacy in Taiwan. From this study, it was revealed that authentic assessment provided another possibility to evaluate students’ scientific cognition better than the traditional achievement tests. Besides, the hands-on activity developed by this study offered an opportunity to make students enjoy the examination more and showed a higher consistency with lower-achievement students’ performance on the national entrance exam. The discussion and implementation are presented.

Scientific literacy is the ultimate goal in science education world-wide; especially in this modern society of science and technology. How to help individuals to make good judgments and promote their skills of argumentation becomes an important issue. Meanwhile, in the Information Age, visual image is an important medium for conveying information. The purpose of this study is to teach argumentation through visual models in a non-science major class and to investigate which visual models of argumentation students like to choose for constructing their arguments concerning genetically modified food in a resource-based learning environment. The results revealed that most of the participants chose Lakatos’ scientific research programmes as the model to construct their arguments most, and there were three kinds of reasons participants provided about why they chose this model. In addition, the questions concerning genetically modified food that students felt interested to explore were also investigated. The implications for teaching are discussed.

Scientific literacy is the ultimate goal in science education world-wide; especially in this modern society of science and technology. How to help individuals to make good judgments and promote their skills of argumentation becomes an important issue. Meanwhile, in the Information Age, visual image is an important medium for conveying information. The purpose of this study is to teach argumentation through visual models in a non-science major class and to investigate which visual models of argumentation students like to choose for constructing their arguments concerning genetically modified food in a resource-based learning environment. The results revealed that most of the participants chose Lakatos’ scientific research programmes as the model to construct their arguments most, and there were three kinds of reasons participants provided about why they chose this model. In addition, the questions concerning genetically modified food that students felt interested to explore were also investigated. The implications for teaching are discussed.

To achieve the goal of scientific literacy, besides conveying science and technology concepts, cultivating students' modeling ability has become important. However, in-service teachers face the difficulty that their teaching load increases while they are still bound by limited teaching hours. Teachers may know of modeling ability, life related content and hands-on activities which are all important and beneficial for science learning; however, they very often find it is hard to engage all these methods into their limited teaching hours. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an efficient method of instruction based upon the frameworks of cognitive apprenticeship and modeling ability to promote students' modeling ability and scientific concept regarding battery. A topic oriented instructional design has been adopted to develop a four-lesson instruction (200 minutes in total). There were 149 non-science majors from three classes invited to participate in this study. They were randomly assigned different instructions, and students' performances were evaluated by three kinds of tests: the general modeling ability test, concept tests and context-based modeling tests. The results indicate cognitive apprenticeship and modeling ability instruction could significantly improve students' modeling ability and also enhance their learning regarding the concept of the battery. However, it is remarkable to point out that, "modeling ability instruction" and the "video lab" provided in this study play the crucial roles. The implication of this study is also discussed.

To achieve the goal of scientific literacy, besides conveying science and technology concepts, cultivating students' modeling ability has become important. However, in-service teachers face the difficulty that their teaching load increases while they are still bound by limited teaching hours. Teachers may know of modeling ability, life related content and hands-on activities which are all important and beneficial for science learning; however, they very often find it is hard to engage all these methods into their limited teaching hours. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an efficient method of instruction based upon the frameworks of cognitive apprenticeship and modeling ability to promote students' modeling ability and scientific concept regarding battery. A topic oriented instructional design has been adopted to develop a four-lesson instruction (200 minutes in total). There were 149 non-science majors from three classes invited to participate in this study. They were randomly assigned different instructions, and students' performances were evaluated by three kinds of tests: the general modeling ability test, concept tests and context-based modeling tests. The results indicate cognitive apprenticeship and modeling ability instruction could significantly improve students' modeling ability and also enhance their learning regarding the concept of the battery. However, it is remarkable to point out that, "modeling ability instruction" and the "video lab" provided in this study play the crucial roles. The implication of this study is also discussed.

Based on the importance and widely use of visualization in science, this article has a three-fold aim related to the terms of visualization, representation and model that in recent years have been introduced to the field of science education without clear differentiation. Firstly, the three terms are discussed with examples to provide a common ground for the following discussion. Secondly, the roles of visualization in science education are delineated to inform teachers how visualization can be used to enhance their teaching and students’ learning in science. Thirdly, based on visualization research in science education, there are a number of aspects that we need to consider while embedding the proposed visualization into the development of teachers’ professional knowledge. We hope to contribute to pre-and in-service science teachers’ professional development linked to the use of visualization in science education. © 2014 HKIEd APFSLT.

This study connects to gender issues within the field of science and technology. Women who had started strongly male-dominated engineering educations at Karlstad University were interviewed to find out why they had chosen these programs. A very clear picture emerged about the professions of the women’s fathers. Almost all fathers were engineers or employed in positions that required skills in technology. The women described their fathers as the most important person who had introduced them into the traditionally masculine technology world during childhood. Also other male relatives had influenced the women often in the same way as fathers had done. Mothers had encouraged their daughters for further studies, but not necessarily in the field of science and technology. Mathematics had often been the gateway to studies in science and technology. Thus, these women started early on a trajectory into a technical career. It is discussed if only girls with this strong masculine models and influences can enjoy settings with male norms or if these norms ought to be changed. Results from this study show that it is important to early influence young girls to opportunities that will stimulate their interests in science and technology. © 2013 HKIEd APFSLT.

Abstract Teachers' pro-environmental behaviour, conceptions and attitudes towards nature and the environment were investigated using 47 questions from the BIOHEAD-Citizen questionnaire. The sample included 1,109 pre-and in-service teachers from Sweden and France. Analyses showed only few significant differences between female and male teachers. Forty-one questions were further analysed in terms of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism claims that women and men's conceptions and attitudes towards nature and the ...

Teachers’ pro-environmental behaviour, conceptions and attitudes towards nature and the environment were investigated using 47 questions from the BIOHEAD-Citizen questionnaire. The sample included 1,109 pre- and in-service teachers from Sweden and France. Analyses showed only few significant differences between female and male teachers. Forty-one questions were further analysed in terms of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism claims that women and men’s conceptions and attitudes towards nature and the environment differ, in the sense that women show higher awareness of environmental issues than men. Our study finds quite poor support for this claim and therefore challenges ecofeminism. This may have implications for environmental education and the perspectives of sustainable development at schools, as our results indicate that there is no reason to fear that male teachers are less engaged with environmental education than female teachers.

In order to achieve the goal of scientific literacy for responsible citizenship, the importance of developing students' socioscientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) has been recognised by an EU FP7 project, PARRISE, including the essential notions of responsible research and innovation (RRI), and citizenship education (CE). The study aims to investigate pre-service primary science teachers' confidence in and need for further education on teaching SSIBL as well as their reflections -in and -on a three-step model SSIBL activity. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied in the study. Quantitative methods were applied to collect data from the 76 participating pre-service primary science teachers in Sweden; participants' confidence and need for SSIBL teaching was investigated via a Likert scale questionnaire. The qualitative descriptive analysis method was used to explore participants' reflection-on-action regarding the three-step SSIBL activity and the SSIBL framework. Thematic analyses were applied to analyse the participants' reflection-in-action concerning the design of the three-step SSIBL activity with three aspects of PCK. The results showed that the pre-service teachers had confidence in SSIBL, but still needed further education on SSIBL teaching. The outcomes of the study suggest that developing teachers' SSIBL teaching competence is important and needed from both of the researchers' points of view and the participating teachers' feedback.

The study reported in this article investigated the use of metaphors by upper secondary and tertiary students while learning a specific content area in molecular life science, protein function. Terms and expressions in science can be used in such precise and general senses that they are totally dissociated from their metaphoric origins. Beginners in a scientific field, however, lack the experience of using a term of metaphorical origin in its domain-specific precise and general sense, and may therefore be more cognitively affected than the expert by the underlying metaphor. The study shows that beginners in the field of molecular life science use spontaneous metaphors and metaphors used in teaching in a way that demonstrates that they have difficulty using the proper scientific terminology. The results of this study indicate, among other things, that difficulties in science education may, to a large degree, be connected with problems of communicating the generality and precision of scientific terms and metaphors used in science. The article ends with a suggestion as how to enable students to move from general and vague metaphoric uses of scientific terms toward a more general and precise usage.