Introducing original methods for integrating sociocultural and discourse studies into science and engineering education, this book provides a much-needed framework for how to conduct qualitative ...research in this field. The three dimensions of learning identified in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) create a need for research methods that examine the sociocultural components of science education. With cutting-edge studies and examples consistent with the NGSS, this book offers comprehensive research methods for integrating discourse and sociocultural practices in science and engineering education and provides key tools for applying this framework for students, pre-service teachers, scholars, and researchers.
The advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers transformative potential in the field of education. The study explores three main areas: (1) How did ChatGPT answer questions related to ...science education? (2) What are some ways educators could utilise ChatGPT in their science pedagogy? and (3) How has ChatGPT been utilised in this study, and what are my reflections about its use as a research tool? This exploratory research applies a self-study methodology to investigate the technology. Impressively, ChatGPT’s output often aligned with key themes in the research. However, as it currently stands, ChatGPT runs the risk of positioning itself as the ultimate epistemic authority, where a single truth is assumed without a proper grounding in evidence or presented with sufficient qualifications. Key ethical concerns associated with AI include its potential environmental impact, issues related to content moderation, and the risk of copyright infringement. It is important for educators to model responsible use of ChatGPT, prioritise critical thinking, and be clear about expectations. ChatGPT is likely to be a useful tool for educators designing science units, rubrics, and quizzes. Educators should critically evaluate any AI-generated resource and adapt it to their specific teaching contexts. ChatGPT was used as a research tool for assistance with editing and to experiment with making the research narrative clearer. The intention of the paper is to act as a catalyst for a broader conversation about the use of generative AI in science education.
Science and mathematics are becoming computational endeavors. This fact is reflected in the recently released Next Generation Science Standards and the decision to include "computational thinking" as ...a core scientific practice. With this addition, and the increased presence of computation in mathematics and scientific contexts, a new urgency has come to the challenge of defining computational thinking and providing a theoretical grounding for what form it should take in school science and mathematics classrooms. This paper presents a response to this challenge by proposing a definition of computational thinking for mathematics and science in the form of a taxonomy consisting of four main categories: data practices, modeling and simulation practices, computational problem solving practices, and systems thinking practices. In formulating this taxonomy, we draw on the existing computational thinking literature, interviews with mathematicians and scientists, and exemplary computational thinking instructional materials. This work was undertaken as part of a larger effort to infuse computational thinking into high school science and mathematics auricular materials. In this paper, we argue for the approach of embedding computational thinking in mathematics and science contexts, present the taxonomy, and discuss how we envision the taxonomy being used to bring current educational efforts in line with the increasingly computational nature of modern science and mathematics.
It has been widely accepted in the science education research community that scientific literacy as a concept and phrase was introduced by Paul deHart Hurd in 1958. Recent research into the origins ...of the phrase, however, has shown this to be incorrect. Its first published use can be traced back, in fact, to 1945, and the phrase was frequently invoked in popular and research publications throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Exploring the historical circumstances of the phrase's introduction into popular discourse, it is argued, reveals that despite the rhetorical power and widespread adoption of the idea, scientific literacy (as others have pointed out) has proven to be little more than an empty slogan that offers no substantive guidance for thinking about the goals of science education. This essay argues that rather than continue to cling to the idea, the field of science education can more productively consider the most relevant and appropriate goals of science teaching by dispensing with the concept altogether.
We set out to find the shortest closed curve that connects three objects — each of which is a point, a line or a circle — on a plane. The solution is sometimes trivial, sometimes easy, sometimes hard ...and sometimes impossible. We hope readers will be inspired to provide alternative justifications/answers.
The Frontiers in Reproduction (FIR) course has been held annually since 1998 at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, MA. The primary purpose of the course is to train young reproductive ...biologists in cutting-edge techniques that would strengthen their career opportunities. An initial evaluation of the FIR course was conducted by surveying the participants who took the course between 1998 and 2002. The findings of this survey were published in Biology of Reproduction in 2006, which highlighted the overall positive impact the course had on the training and upward career trajectory of the participants during the first 5 yr. The current study was designed to access the continued impact of FIR at the 10-yr mark by evaluating the participants who took the course between 1998 and 2008 using two different survey mechanisms. Based on these evaluations and feedback from the participants, it was evident that 1) FIR continues to have a significant positive impact on the careers of the participants, 2) the majority of the participants continue to be involved in research or administration related to the reproductive sciences, 3) nearly 90% of the attendees have been successful in obtaining funding for their research, and 4) most alumni have published at least five manuscripts in higher impact journals since they took the course. Therefore, it is evident that FIR participants are highly successful and continue to significantly impact the advances in the reproductive sciences worldwide.
For well over a century, the journal Science Education has been publishing articles about the teaching and learning of science. These articles represent more than just a repository of past work: they ...have the potential to offer insights into both the history of science education as well as well as the dynamics of field‐specific change. It can be difficult, however, for educators, researchers, reformers, and policymakers to grasp the nuances of over 100 years of scholarship given the overwhelming amount of textual material. To address this problem, we have used latent Dirichlet allocation, an automated machine‐learning algorithm from the field of natural language processing, to perform an automated literature review and classification of the corpus of work in Science Education. Using this technique, we have classified research in the journal into 21 distinct topics, falling into three thematic groups: science content topics, teaching‐focused topics, and student‐focused topics. We have also quantified the rise and fall of these topics and groups over time, and used them to begin to extract insight into the development of the field, including the effects of national policy changes on topics of interest to the research community, the interrelationships between different research topics, and the effects of intellectual cross‐pollination. Based on this analysis, we argue that this technique shows great promise for even larger‐scale analyses of educational literature and other textual data.
Although Americans generally hold science in high regard and respect its findings, for some contested issues, such as the existence of anthropogenic climate change, public opinion is polarized along ...religious and political lines. We ask whether individuals with more general education and greater science knowledge, measured in terms of science education and science literacy, display more (or less) polarized beliefs on several such issues. We report secondary analyses of a nationally representative dataset (the General Social Survey), examining the predictors of beliefs regarding six potentially controversial issues. We find that beliefs are correlated with both political and religious identity for stem cell research, the Big Bang, and human evolution, and with political identity alone on climate change. Individuals with greater education, science education, and science literacy display more polarized beliefs on these issues. We find little evidence of political or religious polarization regarding nanotechnology and genetically modified foods. On all six topics, people who trust the scientific enterprise more are also more likely to accept its findings. We discuss the causal mechanisms that might underlie the correlation between education and identity-based polarization.
Virtual reality (VR) is projected to play an important role in education by increasing student engagement and motivation. However, little is known about the impact and utility of immersive VR for ...administering e-learning tools, or the underlying mechanisms that impact learners' emotional processes while learning. This paper explores whether differences exist with regard to using either immersive or desktop VR to administer a virtual science learning simulation. We also investigate how the level of immersion impacts perceived learning outcomes using structural equation modeling. The sample consisted of 104 university students (39 females). Significantly higher scores were obtained on 11 of the 13 variables investigated using the immersive VR version of the simulation, with the largest differences occurring with regard to presence and motivation. Furthermore, we identified a model with two general paths by which immersion in VR impacts perceived learning outcomes. Specifically, we discovered an affective path in which immersion predicted presence and positive emotions, and a cognitive path in which immersion fostered a positive cognitive value of the task in line with the control value theory of achievement emotions.
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