Science Education and Pedagogy
Science education research examines how people learn scientific concepts and practices, and how teaching methods shape that process across classrooms, grade levels, and cultural contexts. Rather than treating science as a body of facts to transmit, researchers in this area study how students develop the ability to reason with evidence, engage with contested scientific questions, and understand how scientific knowledge is actually constructed and revised. A central challenge is figuring out how to support what researchers call conceptual change—the often difficult process by which learners revise deeply held intuitions that conflict with scientific explanation. Active debates include how to design learning progressions that build coherent understanding over time, and how to prepare teachers to facilitate genuine argumentation rather than scripted inquiry.
- Works
- 85,551
- Total citations
- 1,035,608
- Keywords
- Inquiry-Based TeachingScientific LiteracyArgumentation DiscourseNature of ScienceConceptual ChangeSTEM Education
Top papers in Science Education and Pedagogy
Ordered by total citation count.
- Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning↗ 12,925OA
- The Use of Cronbach’s Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science Education↗ 9,901OA
- Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses↗ 5,847
- Categorization and Representation of Physics Problems by Experts and Novices*↗ 5,213
- Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change↗ 5,044
- Science and Human Behavior.↗ 4,909
- The Process of Education↗ 4,480
- Handbook of Research on Science Education↗ 4,450OA
- Aspects of Scientific Explanation.↗ 3,350
- Force concept inventory↗ 3,191
- Attitudes towards science: A review of the literature and its implications↗ 3,103
- The National Science Education Standards↗ 2,880
Active researchers
Top authors in this area, ranked by h-index.