Publications

Modeling involves a set of scientific practices that pre-service science teachers struggle with. These practices involve constructing, predicting, testing, and revising models. Engaging meaningfully in modeling practices leads modelers to gain new insights about phenomena. Research suggests that this requires domain-general metamodeling knowledge and domain-specific content knowledge. However, research has not yet systematically investigated the role of metamodeling and content knowledge in the modeling practices, particularly regarding which practices benefit from either knowledge facet or their interplay. Addressing this gap, we interviewed 17 pre-service science teachers selected from a larger quantitative study based on their performance in metamodeling knowledge and modeling practice assessments. We showed participants their answers to the modeling practice assessments and asked them to recall their thinking. We analyzed their thinking processes, focusing on metamodeling and content knowledge application. By comparing high- and low-modeling-practice performers, we aimed to examine the role of these knowledge facets in modeling practices. Our study extends modeling literature with two main findings: First, both metamodeling and content knowledge supported the participants in engaging in modeling practices, but each practice had specific knowledge requirements. For instance, constructing models was driven by content knowledge, while an interplay between metamodeling and content knowledge supported revising models. Second, the metamodeling knowledge that participants demonstrated in the previous metamodeling knowledge assessment was not related to the metaknowledge they applied during modeling practices. This is best evidenced in testing models, for which participants frequently recalled metaknowledge they had not demonstrated in the previous metamodeling knowledge assessment. Our findings suggest that teaching modeling practices separately is probably beneficial, as this approach enables science educators to better scaffold practice-specific knowledge requirements. For future research, our results question the meaningfulness of metamodeling knowledge assessments, as the knowledge demonstrated in such assessments does not indicate the knowledge learners actually apply when engaging in modeling practices.

Innovative science curricula aim to transform classroom instruction by emphasizing socio-scientific issues (SSI), student-centered inquiry, and culturally relevant pedagogy. Engaging with new and innovative curricula has the potential to stretch teachers instructional practices when they fully commit to implementation, challenging them to navigate tensions between their existing approaches and reform-oriented teaching methods. The Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) and the Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (IMPG) provide a lens for understanding the motivations behind teacher decisions when implementing such curricula and whether these decisions lead to professional learning. This study applies these frameworks to examine how two middle school science teachers, Andrew and Abby, navigated the implementation of the Grand Challenges (GC) curriculum, balancing the perceived costs, values, and challenges of integrating SSI into their instruction. Findings illustrate that teachers engagement with innovative curricula is an iterative process influenced by institutional expectations, student outcomes, and evolving pedagogical commitments. This study highlights how sustained curriculum implementation, combined with teacher reflection on student responses, catalyzes professional growth. Their implementation, however, is mediated through their personal domain, as existing beliefs, experiences, and instructional priorities shape how they interpret and enact reform-based teaching. By examining how teachers weigh the utility, cost, and attainment value of new instructional approaches, this research offers insights into supporting educators in adopting innovative science teaching practices while navigating systemic constraints.

Grand Challenges (GCs) are complex, global, and multifaceted science and societal problems such as climate change, viral pandemics, loss of biodiversity, and quests for new energy sources. In this article, we advance a position, based on current research and theory, that GCs should be a prominent feature of the science curriculum. This move towards a GC-based curriculum challenges the positioning of canonical scientific concepts as the central organising feature of the curriculum, which is typically the default position of most science education programmes. A GC-based curriculum can create natural avenues for students to learn science, develop an interest in science, and build media and information literacy skills to become informed agents of change. Design principles, which help to define what a GC curriculum can look like and guide creation of GC materials, are introduced. These design principles call for the GC curriculum to be contextualised in global issues with local connections, culturally responsive, practice oriented, attentive to student voice, and coherent within and across units. Examples are provided to demonstrate how these design principles are implemented in a sample curriculum.

We describe the importance of constructing and using energy knowledge and the challenges traditional instructional approaches to teaching about energy and the learning progression underlying them pose for students. We then describe a new approach to energy instruction that appears to address many of these challenges. We end with the implications this new instructional approach has for the development of a revised energy learning progression is there a single learning progression, two independent learning progressions, or are they actually the same learning progression that bifurcates and perhaps re-joins itself?

Issues-based science education represents a suite of approaches for science teaching and learning that prioritizes contextualization of learning experiences in real-world issues that are societal problems. These approaches have grown in prominence in terms of research and classroom applications over the last decade, but issues-based teaching remains challenging and has not been fully realized in educational settings. The gap between the positive potential of issues-based science education and the reality of science learning spaces creates opportunities for innovation. The purpose of this special issue is to explore ways in which educational technologies can be used to promote innovations that narrow this gap. This introduction to the special issue offers a brief overview of how technologies could be used to enhance issues-based teaching and summarizes trends that emerge across the seven articles that make up the special issue.

While students tend to enjoy their science learning at a young age, as they mature, they tend to distance themselves from science, becoming less motivated to engage with science and holding negative attitudes towards science. In parallel, a career choice in science often begins to develop during early adolescence. To understand how the environment and students' inner worlds shape the development of their self-positioning in relation to science, this longitudinal study followed nine adolescents, aged 10-14, over 3 years, in and out of school, and created nine individual stories describing these participants' self-positioning in relation to science, and how these positions changed, from their perspective, over time and contexts. We found some common experiences that played a role in the participants' self-positioning in relation to science. In several of these experiences, the longitudinal nature of this study became apparent. This study highlights the complexity of adolescents' self-positioning in relation to science and how these positions change over time.

Triggered by the pilot of the \u201cGao-Kao\u201d reform, the avoidance of physics courses in senior high school has aroused the concern of society in China. The factors that influence the motivation to learn physics are an important research topic, especially for countries that have a disciplinary-based education tradition in secondary school. However, there is a lack of instruments for evaluating secondary school students physics learning motivation, as most motivational studies consider science learning motivation as a single construct and do not distinguish between the motivation to learn different science disciplines. Therefore, we developed an instrument for measuring physics learning motivation and used this instrument to investigate the trend of physics learning motivation from middle school to high school and how physics learning motivation was influenced by teachers, parents and peers. Adopting achievement goal theory as the theoretical foundation, we developed a survey for physics learning motivation by adapting previously validated instruments. After pilot testing, 502 middle school and senior high school students completed the survey. Statistical tests, such as factor analysis, were conducted to test the reliability and validity of the instrument. Descriptive statistics confirmed some of the findings from past research (such as an overall decline in motivation to learn science), but more detailed analysis also led to new findings. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) we investigated the relationships between students perceptions of the environments goal emphases, their personal goal orientations, and their engagement in physics learning in and out of school. The results showed that the students goal orientations were influenced by teachers and parents, but primarily by their peers. Finally, we discuss possible explanations of the findings and their implications for follow-up studies and policy adjustments.

Energy conservation is a fundamental concept in physics and across the sciences as it provides a lens for investigating a wide range of phenomena. Research into energy learning progressions has shown that a majority of students across K-12 struggle with energy conservation. These studies characterize students learning progressions as starting from energy being manifest in different forms. Research suggests that learning progressions that begin with the idea of forms only lead to an understanding of conservation for a minority of students. Thus, the question arises whether there are alternative, more productive pathways towards conservation than going through forms. We investigated to what extent students progress towards conservation if they are taught in a transfer-only approach to teaching energy that does not require forms. Drawing on interviews from N = 30 students across different time points in a 10 week transfer-only unit, we found that at the end of the unit, most students tracked energy successfully across systems, and did not violate energy conservations when explaining phenomena, that is, progressed towards a qualitative understanding of conservation. Our results imply that energy learning progressions do not have to go through forms and in fact a more productive pathway towards conservation may exist in the transfer-only approach.

While students tend to enjoy science at a young age, as they grow older, they tend to become less engaged with science. This decline in motivation for science has been documented in several studies and is evident in many countries, for both genders. On the other hand, studies have shown that a career choice in science often begins to develop at a young age. The goal of this longitudinal study was to accompany young adolescents over three years, in and out of school, and to try and understand how the environment and their inner world shape the development of their interests in, attitudes toward, aspirations, and motivation to engage with science. The study used a mixed-methods approach. This study reinforces the importance of the relations between the science teacher and her students. In addition, I identified indicators that can predict students' resilience to science studies in school, such as, a significant area of interest in life (not necessarily in science), the thought of future pursuit of science, and more. There appear to be certain conditions that increase or decrease the chances that a student may consider science positively.

In a rapidly changing world, the ability to transfer ones knowledge is critical. Using the conceptualization of transfer as preparation for future learning, we investigated how students from two approaches to teaching energy that conceptualize energy differently, perform in a transfer task. We present first results that suggest that emphasizing energy ideas that are relevant across disciplines prepares students better for future learning than emphasizing those valued by the disciplinary tradition of physics.

To deal with the environmental, scientific, and health challenges facing the world, individuals throughout the globe will need to experience science education that will allow them to develop usable STEM knowledge. Contextualization plays a crucial role in developing usable knowledge. Without appropriate contextualization, most knowledge remains inert. Although contextualization can provide meaning to an otherwise abstract science topic, inappropriate contextualization can also distract, confuse, and activate irrelevant knowledge. We review the prior chapters and identify four challenges in designing appropriately contextualized learning environments.

The important role of self-efficacy (SE) in students' motivation, engagement, persistence, and academic achievements has been reconfirmed by ample research, both in general and for STEM disciplines. As most studies focused on traditional school systems, additional research is needed on how science SE develops in different educational environments, which was the goal of this study. Data were collected from 1979 students in Grades 5-9 from 19 traditional, Waldorf, and democratic schools in Israel. Students completed a questionnaire that assessed their science self-efficacy (SSE), general and academic self-efficacy (GASE), and the sources of their SSE: teachers', parents', and peers' social persuasions, vicarious experiences and mastery experiences. Results revealed that SSE and GASE differed in their levels and in the way they changed with grade. These differences, and variations in the roles of the various sources of SSE, appeared to be influenced by the schools' cultures and curricula. Quantitative results are accompanied by verbal illustrative examples from interviews with students and teachers.

Scientific literacy is an important part of education. Students that demonstrate scientific literacy can organize and coordinate their science ideas to interpret and explain a diverse range of phenomena. However, the complex thinking connected to this ability is not captured by most assessments today. We address this issue by investigating how the little researched construct of knowledge integration which describes how students coordinate their ideas in explanations can be measured using network analysis.

Israeli students and their families can choose between state-funded secular, religious, orthodox, and other alternative schools (e.g., Waldorf, Montessori, democratic). Earlier studies showed that the motivation to engage with science differs greatly between Israeli students in secular schools and democratic schools, with these differences being attributed to differences in school culture rather than home influence (Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2011, 2012). In this study we extend earlier studies by looking at religious state-funded schools that serve 18% of Israel's Jewish population. These schools provide a unique research environment since from grade 6 they are gender-separated. We examined the science-related mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoid goal orientations, perceptions of the science teachers, parents, schools, and peers' goal emphases in relation to science of the students in these schools. We compared between students in religious schools (newly collected data) and secular schools (data reported in prior studies), and found that there is a distinct difference between these two populations that is associated with differing attitudes toward gender and science at these schools. This study provides additional evidence for the influence of culture on students' motivation to engage with science, suggests mechanisms by which this influence may occur.

In Israel, the TEMI team at the Weizmann Institute of Science led two types of training programs: One which was open to all chemistry and science teachers (four cohorts), and the other which was part of a chemistry teachers' course at the Weizmann Institute (two cohorts). Overall, 120 teachers underwent intensive TEMI training at the Weizmann institute. The teachers were recruited through: (1) personal communication (via teachers who have undergone a CPD course at the Weizmann Institute previously), (2) the National Center for Chemistry Teacher, and (3) advertising in appropriate local science education websites. [first paragraph]

For many science teachers the integration of technology and engineering into the science curriculum will mean a new way of teaching, new concepts and skills for their students to learn, and new assessments that will measure their students progress and their own capabilities as teachers. The source of this concern is a publication by the National Research Council of a new blueprint for science education standards, appropriately titled A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Core Ideas and Crosscutting Concepts (NRC 2012). The Framework is currently severing as the blueprint for Next Generation Science Standards, aimed at replacing the current patchwork of state science standards with a common core, as has already been done in mathematics and English language arts. Since these documents raise engineering design to the same level as science inquiry there is no question that science teachers will be required to teach technology and engineering alongside science. This book is intended to help middle school teachers by assembling, under a single cover, a comprehensive commentary on the readymade curriculum materials that are currently on the market for integrating Technology and Engineering into Science classes, and that are appropriate for different levels of the 6-8 spectrum. All of the curricula summarized in this book have been under development for several years, tested by teachers and their students from a wide range of communities, and revised based on feedback. In many cases they are also supported by research studies of effectiveness. Each chapter looks closely at a specific curriculum and describes one set of instructional materials from this curriculum. Chapter authors illustrate, as vividly as possible, what the curriculum looks like in the classroom, what learning goals it is intended to accomplish, and how it will help Middle school teachers address the Next Generation Science Standards. Also included is a helpful table, which lists each of the curriculum materials included in the book and grade level for which it is intended. Readers who are already familiar with the Framework and Next Generation Science Standards, and are mostly concerned with choosing curricula for a given grade or grade span can use the table to find the chapters that are most relevant to their needs. Readers who would like to know how technology and engineering are being integrated in the new standardsand why it will make a difference this time aroundwill find answers to these questions in the remainder of this introduction.

Continuing motivation for science learning may be manifested through engagement in extracurricular science-related activities, which are not the result of school or other external requirements. Very few articles have appeared in the last decade on this important aspect of science learning. This article presents a survey based on seven Likert-type items for measuring adolescents' continuing motivation for science. It describes how the survey was developed, tested, and used to explore the relations between school type, grade, and gender and adolescents' continuing motivation for science learning. Data on the continuing motivation of 2,958 Israeli 5th-8th grade students, from traditional and democratic schools, were collected and analyzed using polytomous Rasch techniques and hierarchical linear modeling. The results indicate that in both types of schools girls had lower continuing motivation for science than boys, and that while the continuing motivation of both boys and girls in traditional schools decreased between 5th and 8th grade, the continuing motivation of students in democratic schools remained constant during this period.

Energy is one of the most important ideas in all of science and is useful for predicting and explaining phenomena within every scientific discipline. Yet, there are substantive differences in how the energy concept is used across disciplines. While a particle physicist relies heavily on the idea that energy is conserved during interactions between subatomic particles, an ecologist is typically more concerned with the idea energy transfers across system boundaries.

Curriculum materials that support learners in building and linking ideas are essential in developing integrated understanding. We refer to such materials as coherent. There are several types of curricular coherence content standard, learning goal, intra-unit, and interunit coherence. Learning progressions, which are descriptions of successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about how learners develop understanding of key disciplinary concepts and practices within and across multiple grades, can help designers build coherent curriculum. Learning progressions can align standards, curriculum, and assessments across grades and grade bands. This chapter describes the different types of coherence and discusses the role that learning progressions play in the design and development of coherent curriculum materials, and why coherent materials are critical in supporting students in building integrated understanding.

IQWST a comprehensive and coherent middle school science curriculum in physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. The curriculums development was funded by NSF; it is now published and distributed by Sangari Science. The two main topics being studies are contributions of inter-unit coherence on students learning of cross-cutting ideas such as energy, and the impact the curriculum has on students interest in, attitudes toward, and motivation to learn more science.

There is a growing awareness that science education should center not just on knowledge acquisition but developing the foundation for lifelong learning. However, for intentional learning of science to occur in school, out of school, and after school, there needs to be a motivation to learn science. Prior research had shown that students' motivation to learn science tends to decrease during adolescence [Anderman and Young [1994] Journal of Research in Science Teaching 31: 811-831; Lee and Anderson [1993] American Educational Research Journal 30: 585-610; Simpson and Oliver [1990] Science Education 74: 1-18]. This study compared 5th through 8th grade students' self-reported goal orientations, engagement in science class, continuing motivation for science learning, and perceptions of their schools' and parents' goals emphases, in Israeli traditional and democratic schools. The results show that the aforementioned decline in adolescents' motivation for science learning in school and out of school is not an inevitable developmental trend, since it is apparent only in traditional schools but not in democratic ones. The results suggest that the non-declining motivation of adolescents in democratic schools is not a result of home influence but rather is related to the school culture.

פרויקט "מחר 98 "היה ניסיון ארצי רחב היקף לקדם את החינוך המדעי, המתמטי והטכנולוגי בארץ. הפרויקט כלל בעיקר שינויים פדגוגיים, אך גם שינויים מבניים שנראו חיוניים לתמיכה בשינויים הפדגוגיים. עשר שנים לאחר סיומו הרשמי של הפרויקט למדנו על תהליך יישומו, והערכנו את השפעתו בעיקר בחטיבות הביניים, אך לא רק בהן. מקורות המידע העיקריים שלנו היו מסמכים ודוחות שהונפקו על ידי יחידות ממשלתיות וראיונות עם מגוון רחב של אנשים שהיו מעורבים בפרויקט, החל בחברי הועדה שיזמה והגתה את הפרויקט (ועדת הררי), מנכ "לי משרד החינוך וחברי מינהלת הפרויקט , וכלה במורים, מנהלי בתי ספר, מובילי השתלמויות מורים, מנהלי מרכזי מורים, מפקחים, מפתחי תכניות לימודים וחוקרים. ממצאינו העיקריים הם אלה: (א) כל המרואיינים דברו על הפרויקט כעל תקופת צמיחה והתפתחות מקצועית; (ב) נותרו מעט תוצרים שפותחו או הוקמו במהלך הפרויקט שעדיין נמצאים בשימוש נרחב במסגרת לימוד והוראת מדע וטכנולוגיה בחטיבות הביניים; (ג) תחלופת שרים מהירה והיעדר קונצנזוס לגבי יעדי מערכת החינוך מולידים פרויקטים קצרי- מועד שממילא אינם מניבים תוצאות בנות-קיימא; (ד) משרד החינוך אינו ארגון שמפיק לקחים מנסיון העבר; (ה) מינהלת הפרויקט לא יצרה תכנית עבודה מסודרת וברורה עם יעדים ויעדי ביניים, דבר שהביא לחוסר קוהרנטיות בשילוב האגפים השונים במשרד ולהיעדר יכולת להעריך בזמן אמת את התקדמות הפרויקט; (ו) לא היתה הגדרה חד-משמעית ומוסכמת של מהות מקצוע הטכנולוגיה בחט"ב ושל האופן שבו אוה משתלב עם המדע; ו (- ז) כנראה שלפרויקט היה השפעה עקיפה על פרויקטים אחרים שאינם מזוהים כתוצרים של "מחר 98) "כמו "אופק חדש")

"מחר 98" הייתה רפורמה מרחיקת לכת , פרי עבודתה של ועדה בראשותו של פרופסור חיים הררי ,שמטרתה להעניק לבוגרי בתי הספר בישראל מידע בסיסי וחיוני במדעים וטכנולוגיה . עשור אחרי המועד שנקבע להשלמתה מנתחים שלושה חוקרים ממכון וייצמן למה כמעט לא נותר ממנה דבר. יש כמה תובנות המציינים החוקרים בסיכום שלהם : היעדר תכניות לטווח ארוך: למשרד החינוך לא היו ועדיין אין תכניות ארוכות טווח, מובנות ומחייבות.היעדר אורך רוח: אחד הדברים שמכשילים שינוי במערכת החינוך הישראלית הוא טלטלת ה"רפורמות" בכל כמה שנים והעובדה שרפורמה חדשה סותרת על פי רוב את קודמתה. מערכת החינוך בנויה באופן שאינו מאפשר לראות שינויים משמעותיים בני קיימה בפחות מעשר שנים. לכן שר חינוך המבקש לקדם את מצב החינוך המדעי בישראל יתקשה לראות את פרי עמלו בזמן כהונתו בתפקיד.משרד החינוך אינו ארגון לומד: משרד החינוך חייב לפתח תרבות של הפקת לקחים. מדוע לא יזם משרד החינוך בעצמו תחקיר דומה לזה כדי לברר מה קרה ל"מחר 98"?

Coherent curricula are needed to help students develop deep understanding of important ideas in science. Too often students experience curriculum that is piecemeal and lacks coordination and consistency across time, topics, and disciplines. Investigating and Questioning our World through Science and Technology (IQWST) is a middle school science curriculum project that attempts to address these problems. IQWST units are built on 5 key aspects of coherence: (1) learning goal coherence; (2) intraunit coherence between content learning goals, scientific practices, and curricular activities; (3) interunit coherence supporting multidisciplinary connections and dependencies; (4) coherence between professional development and curriculum materials to support classroom enactment; and (5) coherence between science literacy expectations and general literacy skills. Dealing with these aspects of coherence involves trade-offs and challenges. This article illustrates some of the challenges related to the first 3 aspects of coherence and the way we have chosen to deal with them. Preliminary results regarding the effectiveness of IQWST's approach to these challenges are presented.

It is often difficult to engage students, especially younger students, in authentic scientific inquiry. By authentic, the author means that the classroom activities are both good simulations of scientific inquiry as experienced by professional scientists and something that the students can relate to on an intuitive level. However, by engaging students in Design based Science, DBS does just that. Students can gain experience in DBS contexts that will support their forays into scientific inquiry, because they will already be knowledgeable and well-acquainted with many of the aspects of scientific inquiry. As examples of the DBS pedagogy, three ninth-grade units that were developed at the University of Michigan are described here.