Internationally, learning science through investigation is promoted as a preferred pedagogical approach. Research presented takes a view that such learning depends on how teachers understand science investigation. Teachers‘ understanding of science investigation was an aspect of an interpretive case study of the phenomenon of science investigation exploring the links between learning, motivation and assessment in year 11 science. Data were collected through a population survey of year 11 science teachers (n=165) in the greater Wellington region through a postal questionnaire (response rate 61%). In addition, all year 11 science teachers in a typical coeducational, middle size, urban secondary school were interviewed (n=10). Findings suggest that science investigation that best supported student learning was understood to include experiments, scientific method, and fair testing, and that few teachers demonstrated understanding of an open-ended science investigation. Teachers‘ responses indicated the influence of assessment requirements of a linear and sequential fair testing type of investigation. This has implications for teaching investigation as required by the curriculum, and student learning for assessment rather than an understanding of the nature of scientific investigation.
 

In the general activity of daily life, it is easy to miss our dependency on the Earth’s ecology. At the same time that people are living apparently separate from the environment, our impact on the Earth is increasing. This study seeks to understand how teachers can bridge this persistent disconnect of daily life from ecology and human impact. Specifically, this study addresses teachers’ use of a conceptual model for teaching ecology and human impact units that link daily life, human impact and ecological function. Thirty-six ninth grade biology teachers implemented curriculum that was grounded in an explicit conceptual model for teaching the relationship between ecological function, human impact, and daily life. Pre and post implementation, teachers completed detailed descriptions of their lesson plans for teaching ecology and human impact topics. Content analysis of teacher lesson plan descriptions shows that teachers have a greater difficulty integrating daily life and human impact into ecological topics than they do in integrating daily life and ecology into human impact topics. This study also documented the difficulty of applying a conceptual model that overtly connects daily life and human impact to ecological function. Despite this, the implementation of curriculum grounded in an explicit conceptual model for linking daily life, human environmental impact and ecology helped teachers articulate those connections in ways that could enable students to understand the unintended consequences of daily life activities on specific ecological function.

Informal science educators play a key role in promoting science literacy, safety, and health by teaching pesticide toxicology to the large, at-risk Latino farmworker population in the United States (US). To understand the experiences of informal science educators and the nature of farmworker education, we must have knowledge of farmworker educators‘ beliefs, yet little is known about these beliefs and how beliefs about teaching, pesticide risk, and self-efficacy might influence teaching environments and practices and potentially inform the field of informal science education. In this exploratory, descriptive case study, we used questionnaires and interviews to investigate the teaching, pesticide risk, and self-efficacy beliefs of 19 farmworker educators in one southeastern US state, identifying salient personal, behavioral, and environmental factors that influence beliefs using Bandura‘s (1986) model of reciprocal determinism. We found that two distinct groups of farmworker educators emerged based on work affiliation. Health care and advocacy educators typically had more learner-focused beliefs, greater concern about pesticide risks, and lower self-efficacy. In contrast, state agency and Cooperative Extension/university educators expressed more teacher-focused beliefs, less cautious pesticide risk beliefs, and higher self-efficacy. Three factors emerged as important influences on these informal educators‘ beliefs: quantity of lessons provided, shared language with learners, and experience with handling pesticides. Study implications include recommendations for future work in informal science education research to explore the role of educators‘ authentic experiences with science, the significance of educators‘ institutional affiliations, and the prevalence of low self-efficacy among educators. 

In this study, we investigated whether concept maps were used as often and as effectively in elementary science and technology classrooms as recommended by the National Ministry of Education (MEB) in the new curricula in Turkey. In the new elementary science and technology curricula, the MEB provides a general concept map for each unit. We used concept maps provided for the Light and Sound units for fourth, fifth, and sixth grades as content to determine whether students were able to use concept maps to gather information from them. Our analyses showed that most of the students did not use the concept maps to answer the questions. Rather they used their own knowledge and cognitive structures about light and sound to answer the questions. Therefore, we concluded that students do not know how to read the concept maps and gather knowledge from them. Also, we ran an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test to explore whether grade level has an effect on students‟ performance in reading the concept maps and gathering information from them. We found that grade level has a significant effect on students‟ performance in using concept maps.

One of the most important goals of discussing controversial issues in the classroom is to educate students to possess an inclination towards reason, open mindedness and fairness. However, research tends to show that teachers are not adequately trained to lead fruitful discussions about controversial issues and do not possess the necessary skills to perform such a task. This paper refers to one aspect of teaching controversial issues in environmental education, namely, the inclination of teachers towards ambivalence (agreeing to some extent with both favourable and unfavourable arguments concerning a proposition) and its potential consequences. The aim of the current study is to assess teacher college students' ambivalence concerning environmental issues, to explore their readiness to adopt a stance and when doing so to check their tendency to adopt a stance in favour of the environment. The findings showed that ambivalence was less common than non-ambivalence, although it varied across the issues. Most of the ambivalent students voted for a side. Furthermore, ambivalence did not prevent pro-environment decisions. The implications of the findings on environmental education are discussed.

Identifying alternative conceptions is a vital part of teaching and learning in science because it provides information about students’ ideas to both themselves and their teachers. In this context, the purpose of the current study is twofold. The first aim is to examine high school students’ alternative conceptions about general characteristics and classification of invertebrates. The second aim is to elicit high school students’ ability to classify invertebrates. A total of 127 grade 10 and 129 grade 11 students (aged 15-17 years) from four Turkish Anatolian high schools participated in the study. Data were collected using the Animal Classification Test (ACT) and through interviews. A wide range of alternative conceptions emerged and the origin of these alternative conceptions are discussed. Furthermore, the results indicated that although the students could correctly recognize the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates (Phyla), they had failed to recognize the corresponding sub-categories (Classes). As a consequence, it was asserted that when the students classified the animals, they took into consideration only the animals’ external views, habitats, nutrition and movement types and similarities in the functions of their organs. Thus the students used analogical approaches based on empirical classification criteria.