Journal of Baltic Science Education

337-338

Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page, Vol. 20, No.3, 2021, JBSE

340-343

Authors: Markus Sebastian Feser

Forming a sense of belonging to others is a fundamental need of humans as social beings (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Meeting this fundamental need crucially influences individuals’ intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and identity development (Wenger, 1999). Given this, a growing number of studies have investigated the extent to which university students’ success and wellbeing in science education is related to their sense of belonging to science. This research has brought greater clarity to university students’ development in science education; however, numerous aspects of university students’ sense of belonging to science remain understudied. In particular, there has been insufficient research on how sense of belonging to science might moderate or influence initial science teacher education. Therefore, this editorial aims to provide an overview of the major research findings that address students’ and student teachers’ sense of belonging to science and to inspire future research in science (teacher) education.

360-372

Authors: Muammer Çalık, Antuni Wiyarsi

Although chemistry-focused socio-scientific issues support the ‘relevance’ model of chemistry education, the related literature has lacked any systematic review handling them together. For this reason, this research aimed to thematically synthesize the research papers on chemistry-focused socio scientific issues (SSI) from 2008 to 2020 and inferentially evaluate them in terms of the relevance model of chemistry education. After searching international and national well-known databases through relevant keyword patterns (e.g., Pattern 1: socio-scientific issues and chemistry education), 65 research papers were apparent for the systematic review. Then, the authors generated primary and secondary codes for the research papers and then inferentially marked their ‘relevance’ components. The systematic review indicated variation of research areas (e.g., relevance model of chemistry education) and dominant research foci for different themes (e.g., competencies and related variables for the theme ‘aims’; pollution, energy, industry and fabrication-based problems for the theme ‘SSI’; organic compounds for the theme ‘chemistry concepts’). Further, it revealed that the research papers on chemistry-focused SSI had some shortcomings at handling all components of the relevance model in a balanced way. The current research suggests professionally training teachers about how to integrate chemistry-focused SSI and the relevance model into school chemistry.

389-406

Authors: Jianqiang Ye, Shuaishuai Mi, Hualin Bi

Science teachers play a key role in successfully implementing science education reforms and providing all students with meaningful science learning opportunities. Therefore, what core teaching competencies do science teachers need to have in their practice? This study uses fuzzy Delphi technique and Analytic Hierarchy Process to approach the above problems. Experts from Chinese universities, secondary schools and educational research institutions were invited to participate in two rounds of Delphi process. The research results show that the four domains of core teaching competencies of science teachers and their 21 competencies have high content validity. Additionally, it can be concluded that the weights of core competencies of making learning objectives, raising pedagogical questions, stimulating learning motivation and analyzing course content ranked high, while the weights of core competencies of using information technology and multimedia, evaluating practical work, and presenting research results have received less attention. It is believed that the results of this study can enlighten the education reform of science teachers and promote the professional development of pre-service/in-service science teachers.

428-442

Authors: Marisol Lopera-Perez, Alexander Maz-Machado, María José Madrid, Astrid Cuida

Environmental Education has become over recent decades an emerging area of knowledge; its evolution has been conditioned not only by different regional dynamics, but also by international guidelines and trends. Therefore, the literature reports multiple and diverse pedagogical, curricular and transdisciplinary approaches to this topic. Likewise, studies on the dynamics and trends in the generation and production of knowledge are relevant to both teachers and researchers in every field of knowledge. In this sense, it is presented a bibliometric study that aims to analyse the international scientific production on Environmental Education on the Web of Science (WoS) within the categories Education and Educational Research and Education, Scientific Disciplines for the last two decades (2000-2019). The information obtained was analysed using different bibliometric techniques, like descriptive statistics, degree of collaboration and co-occurrence maps generated by VOSviewer (version 1.6.15) software. The results show the accelerated increase in the production of knowledge in this area, they present the main research contexts, as well as some educational and research perspectives. Also, the collaboration between authors and universities was identified.

456-470

Authors: Bob Maseko, Hlologelo Climant Khoza

Research indicates that teachers’ beliefs about goals or purposes of science teaching, as one dimension of science teaching orientations, influence what happens in the classroom. The purpose of this research was to explore the self-reported and enacted goals or purposes of science teaching of four in-service Malawian science teachers using the curriculum emphases concept as a theoretical lens. This research used qualitative case study research design. Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were used to explore teachers’ self-reported and enacted goals or purpose of science teaching, respectively. A deductive analysis approach was used to analyze interview and classroom observation transcripts, to understand the teacher’s goals or purposes. Results reveal that while teachers have multiple self-reported goals or purpose of science teaching, most of these are not enacted during teaching in the classrooms. This suggests the topic-specific nature of the goals or purposes. Results also show that all the teachers were not aware of the self-as-explainer goal or purpose of science teaching both during interviews and instruction. These findings are discussed, and implications are proposed for science in-service teacher professional development and pre-service teachers’ training programs.

495-506

Authors: Branka Radulović

Modern approaches in Physics classes which involve the game-based student response system (GSRS) have been in use for a while, but their educational efficiency and students’ involvement have not been examined. Therefore, this research’s main aim was to determine the educational efficiency and students’ involvement of GSRS and to assess their effect on scientific reasoning. The values of educational efficiency and students’ involvement were calculated based on students’ achievement and perceived mental effort. To determine these values, a pedagogical experiment with parallel groups was applied. The research was conducted on a sample of 172 secondary school students, and included material related to direct currents. The results point to positive and higher values of the educational efficiency and students’ involvement for GSRS approach than the conventional approach. It means that GSRS approach causes lower mental effort, letting more space generate in the working memory to perceive and process new information. The results also show a positive effect of GSRS on higher students’ engagement during the class and scientific reasoning. The obtained results undoubtedly indicate the positive effect of GSRS on the students’ performance. Therefore, GSRS approach should be used often in the classroom.

519-520

Authors: Editorial Board

End page, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2021, JBSE