Hawai‘i is a unique and special place to conduct environmental science inquiry through place based learning and scientific investigation. Here, we describe and evaluate a unique professional development program for science teachers in Hawai‘i that integrates the traditional approach of providing training to improve content knowledge, with the overarching theme of scientific inquiry and investigation through short duration research experiences. Ten middle and high school teachers primarily from Hawai‘i public high schools participated in the four week, full time professional development course, producing novel place-based lesson plans to execute in their home classrooms. Pre and post analyses of teacher reported confidence levels in teaching ten environmental and marine science topics showed significant improvements after the course. In addition, teachers continued professional relationships with scientists and instructors of the program through synergistic activities including partnering in grant proposal submissions, participating in related university offered programs for K-12 audiences, and facilitating student research internships with university scientists. Despite the overwhelming positive evaluations by teachers of the value and efficacy of the program, lack of funding and access to equipment were reported as anticipated limitations to implementing their newly gained knowledge in the classroom. Nonetheless, the program’s success demonstrates that both teachers and scientists can benefit from a course of this nature, and using this framework, other organizations might adapt elements of the course to provide a similar place-based program in their respective back yards.

The aim of this study was to investigate an adaptation of the Study Processes Questionnaire for the discipline of physics. A total of 2030 first year physics students at an Australian metropolitan university completed the questionnaire over three different year cohorts. The resultant data has been used to explore whether the adaptation of the questionnaire is justifiable and if meaningful interpretations can be drawn for teaching and learning in the discipline. In extracting scales for deep and surface approaches to learning, we have excised several items, retaining an adequate subset. Reflecting trends in literature, our deep scale is very reliable while the surface scale is not so reliable. Our results show that the behaviour of the mean scale scores for students in different streams in first year physics is in agreement with expectations. Furthermore, different year cohort performance on the scales reflects changes in senior high school syllabus. Our experiences in adaptation, validation and checking for reliability is of potential use for others engaged in contextualising the Study Processes Questionnaire, and adds value to the use of the questionnaire for improving student learning in specific discipline areas.

 In this paper, it is aimed to investigate the persistence of misconceptions in the topic of the human blood circulatory system among students in different grade levels. For this reason, after discussions with biology educators, two tests consisting of open-ended questions were developed by the researcher and administered to students in four different grade levels. The first test was administered to 319 5th and 7th grade students in elementary school and the second one was administered to 400 1st and 4th year university students studying in the departments of elementary school teaching, science education and biology education. Data were analyzed using qualitative methods and a number of misconceptions were detected in different grade levels. According to the results of the study, the distributions of the percentages of students’ misconceptions demonstrate a decreasing trend from elementary school students to university students without totally disappearing. The reason of this situation might be the persistence of misconceptions that are difficult to overcome. Due to their functionality, students continue to possess certain misconceptions. Hence, this characteristic of misconceptions should be considered while planning teaching activities in teacher education programs.

The present study aimed to explain elementary teacher candidates’ energy conservation behaviors by using Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory.  Participants in this study were 512 students at Faculty of Education from two public universities in Turkey. Of the 512 students, 35.5% were enrolled in the early childhood education program, 30.9% were in the elementary science education program, and 27.7% were in the elementary mathematics education program. The rest of the participants were pursuing a graduate program under the department of elementary education. The results of multiple linear regression analysis reflected that VBN Theory could successfully explain the participants’ energy conservation behaviors. The teacher candidates’ reduction in energy consumption could be accounted by personal norms, egoistic and biospheric value orientations. However, rather than personal norms, egoistic and biospheric value orientations made greater unique contribution to explain the criterion variable. Furthermore, each predictor variable in the causal model of VBN Theory was found to be significantly associated with the next variable, but value orientations deserved more attention than VBN Theory places on them within the study context.

The use of the web in teaching and learning and research studies on this issue are increasingly common in science education. In most of these studies, teachers’ and students’ perceptions of and their attitudes toward the specific web-assisted/based learning activities and the effects of these activities on their achievement and attitudes have been investigated. In the current study, the researcher placed emphasis on the perceptions about physics education related websites on the Internet among users of these sites using a causalcomparative research design. The purpose of the current study was to have detailed information on web users’ preferences and perceptions on the use of the web and to see if demographics are responsible for differences on web users’ perceptions on the use of web in physics education. In order to achieve this aim, an online instrument, Perceptions of the Internet and Education Scale, was developed by the author and the data collected using this instrument. The statistical analyses were carried out with the data from 340 web-users of a physics education related website. The results of the study showed that web users’ gender, occupation, and time spent on the Internet were factors that explained the changes in the perceptions of physics education web users. However, web users’ age and past experiences with the Internet were not causes of that difference.

Human negativity toward arthropods has been well documented but the factors that contribute to this negativity have been elusive. This study explored knowledge of arthropod carnivory and herbivory as possible casual factors that contribute to the negative tendencies preservice elementary teachers have toward most arthropods. Specifically, this study investigated the effect knowledge of arthropod carnivory and herbivory had on United States kindergarten through sixth grade preservice elementary teacher attitude toward that arthropod and belief concerning the likelihood of incorporating information about that specific arthropod into their future science classroom. A cluster randomized design with a control group was used for the study. The treatment group consisted of 147 preservice elementary teachers and the control group consisted of 151. Unique to this study is the finding that arthropod carnivory and herbivory are causal factors that strongly affect preservice elementary teacher attitude and belief toward arthropods. When the participants of the study were made aware that an arthropod they thought was a herbivore was actually a carnivore, their attitude and likelihood of incorporation significantly declined. When the participants of the study were made aware that an arthropod they thought was a carnivore was actually a herbivore, their attitude and likelihood of incorporation significantly increased. Implications and future research are discussed.

School is assumed to equip students with subject knowledge and contribute to their development as human beings and democratic citizens as well. In this article, the democratic dimension of the teaching assignment is brought to the fore, and an analysis tool for investigating students’ conversations on socioscientific issues that emphasises democratic aspects is presented. The DEQUAL-tool, where the acronyms stand for DEliberative QUALities, comprises both the content-related and formal aspects of the conversations, with a specific emphasis on the collective expressions of democratic qualities like questioning, consideration for others and conveying different dimensions and arguments. DEQUAL is based on an intersubjective and communicative understanding of democracy and meaning-making, and is theoretically inspired by John Dewey’s and Jürgen Habermas’ views on these matters. The development and function of DEQUAL is clarified using excerpts from upper secondary school students talking about how living in a certain place influences the greenhouse effect. By pointing out characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of students’ group-conversations, this methodological proposal can provide further guidance for an integrative understanding of the teacher’s assignment in science education.

In this study, we investigated the ways in which university students connected with science through the use of photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1994) as a pedagogical tool. Results indicated that students came to appreciate their connections to the science that operates in their lives as they reflected on and became empowered with regard to the science content behind environmental issues of interest to them on campus. Photovoice allowed students to authentically inquire about local science, as well as the potential to generate change in their own community. This understanding is significant to science educators because first, it empowers learners to connect with science and provides a way to deepen that connection with science; and second, it provides a pedagogical tool for science educators to use with their students to engage them in the science in their community. Finally, it has the potential to improve science teaching by creating students that are more connected to science and th3e world around them.

Increasingly, international and national statements are calling for the development of local sustainability scenarios within partnerships between schools and their communities. The present study addresses the question of reciprocity in such partnerships, by comparing the sustainability agendas underlying schools’ educational programs to the sustainability agendas of the students’ parents. The study was conducted among four urban school-community systems in Israel, implementing sustainability education. The results revealed a lack of reciprocity. Schools and parents belong to two different populations, with different sources of influence. Schools’ agenda seems to be mostly influenced by ministerial centralization. Schools’ and parents’ sustainability agendas were compared against the 15 perspectives of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development International Implementation Scheme. Parents’ agendas were highly compatible with the perspectives, whereas schools’ educational programs, focusing mainly on environmental science, lacked compatibility with the perspectives. The suitability of the perspectives to school settings is questioned.

This study examined the effects of Sharing the Environment (STE), a situated professional development pilot program that uses an inquiry-based approach to teaching Environmental Education (EE) to elementary students in the US and Trinidad. Inquiry is difficult to incorporate in both cultures because proficient performance on national tests is a priority. As a result, teachers must cover the curriculum via transmission of knowledge rather than its discovery.  In order to capture an early understanding of the effects of this program on its participants, focus groups and ethnographic interviews were conducted with ten participating teachers from both countries. Using a grounded theory approach on the data sets, three themes emerged that describe conditions required for replicating this program: structural, cross-curricular, and cultural disconnections, technological needs, and environmental and sociocultural knowledge gains. The findings indicate that cultural factors had a significant impact on how Trinidadian and American teachers and administrators perceived, valued, and reacted to the concrete experiences they had in the course of their participation in the STE situated professional development program.