We know students learn science concepts better when their learning is embedded in real-world issues. But teachers are currently not well prepared to teach science in this way.
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Articles on Science teaching
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In trials teaching Einsteinian physics in schools, our most astonishing discovery was that children were not astonished: they just took the ideas in their stride.
Teachers are right in selecting age-appropriate scientific models and teaching these in age-appropriate ways – even though the science they present isn’t the whole story.
By improving trainee physics teachers’ content knowledge and skills, we make them better.
The way science is currently taught in southern African countries ignores the fact that the whole environment is a laboratory for learning.
To get more students interested in STEM subjects, teachers must break out of the traditional subject-matter silos and use an approach that helps kids understand how math is used in the real world.
For many learners science, and especially chemistry, remains a textbook phenomenon.
The combination of knowledge and communication, along with a few other fundamental conditions such as liberty and respect , leads to social, cultural and technological development.
Players in the climate science game ‘CO2peration’ become a particle of sunlight, and travel on a journey to find out why we have liquid water at Earth’s surface.
The affective domain - motivation, interest and values and their inter-relationships - forms an integral component in facilitating learners’ construction of physics knowledge.
Policies must seek to improve the manner in which the language of instruction is taught to learners who don’t speak that language at home.
Good quality education fuels an economy. South Africa needs to increase its supply of science and technology university graduates. But instead it’s lowering the bar, especially when it comes to maths.
Science that students learn in context - rather than science as isolated knowledge items - can deliver both scientific literacy and positive learner interest.
Many South African teachers don’t accept the theory of evolution. They feel deeply conflicted when they have to teach it to their pupils as part of the life sciences curriculum.
It’s a mistake to allow teenagers to drop maths – it should be made compulsory at A-Level.
With the current demands from industry for STEM graduates, how many are going to give up high paying jobs in industry for the short term sugar-hit of $15,000 and the stress of the classroom?
Scientists being wrong is not a bug or a glitch – it’s a feature of science and mistakes can actually lead to new, deeper discoveries.
Top contributors
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Professor & Head, School of Science & Mathematics, Mauritius Institute of Education
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Senior Lecturer, Mathematics Education Department, Mauritius Institute of Education
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Associate Professor, University of Cape Town
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Senior Research Associate in Science Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal
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Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
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Associate Dean Learning and Teaching, College of Science & Engineering, James Cook University
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Researcher , Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)
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Lecturer, Physics Education, University of Eswatini
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Professor, Director of DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Catalysis c*change, University of Cape Town
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Senior Lecturer in Science Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal
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Senior Research Manager in the Education and Skills Development Research Programme, Human Sciences Research Council
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Professor, Thompson Rivers University
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Senior Research Associate, University of KwaZulu-Natal
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Head: Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand
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South African Research Chair in Physical Cosmology, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town
