Characterizing engineering faculty's teaching approaches

In this paper, we identify several approaches engineering faculty use to teach engineering topics. We report results from an exploratory study, consisting of 16 faculty interviews from five diverse institutions of higher education. We focus specifically on engineering faculty because the engineering faculty teaching culture is not well explored, even though there are many ongoing projects to reform engineering education. The results from this study contribute to efforts currently underway to improve teaching and learning in engineering education, as well as in higher education. Results from this study highlight the disciplinary nature of teaching in the engineering domain. Furthermore, our results can serve as a foundation to compare teaching approaches in other disciplines, or to potential changes in engineering teaching practices.     

Exploring the Relationship Between High School Students’ Physics-Related Personal Epistemologies and Self-regulated Learning in Turkey

This article reports on an empirical exploration of the relations and strengths among Turkish grades 9–11 students’ (n = 209) personal epistemologies (justification of knowledge, certainty of knowledge, source of knowledge, development of knowledge), self-regulated learning (extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, metacognitive self-regulation), and achievement in physics (course grades). Established instruments were used to collect data on these students’ beliefs about knowledge and components of self-regulated learning (SRL) such as goal orientations (extrinsic and intrinsic motivation) and learning strategies, critical thinking, and metacognitive regulation. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that students’ personal epistemologies directly influenced their motivation (extrinsic and intrinsic goal orientations), rehearsal and organization strategies, and metacognitive self-regulation to learn physics. Furthermore, students’ personal epistemologies indirectly (mediated through motivation beliefs) influenced rehearsal, elaboration and organization strategies, critical thinking, and metacognitive self-regulation to learn physics. Students’ ideas about knowledge and knowing about the source and development of knowledge significantly contributed to students’ self-regulatory skills and physics course grade. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Turkish Pre‐Service Science Teachers’ Views on Science–Technology–Society Issues

The international science education community recognises the role of pre‐service science teachers’ views about the interdependence of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) in achieving scientific literacy for all. To this end, pre‐service science teachers’ STS views signal the strengths and the weaknesses of science education reform movements. Turkey, a country that follows the international reform movement, aims at improving citizen’s understanding of the STS interdependence to enable them to fully participate in an industrialised, democratic society. This study explores the Turkish pre‐service science teachers’ views (n = 176) on STS issues and discusses the ongoing reform efforts’ strengths and weaknesses within the context of the study findings. Data were collected through an adopted “Views on Science–Technology–Society” instrument. Analysis revealed that many participants held realistic views on science, technology, and society interdependence, while their views on technology and the nature of science were differed. Some viewed technology as an application of science, and some viewed science as explanatory and an interpretation of nature. Most agreed that the scientific knowledge is tentative but they did not present a thorough understanding of the differences between hypotheses, laws, and theories.