The importance of Vygotsky’s thinking is reflected in how—despite being condemned and censured under Stalin in the CCCP where he worked—he is so often cited in educational work today. Vygotsky was something of a polymath, and appropriately his thinking has influenced a number of key areas of educational work. This chapter will explore some of Vygotsky’s most influential ideas, and in particular consider how they can inform the study and practice of education. Vygotsky posited a notion of conceptual development which highlighted the importance of the interaction between spontaneous conceptions and scientific or academic conceptions—the latter reflecting the formalised knowledge adopted within a culture, such as the formal concepts developed in the sciences. This kind of learning is therefore situated in a social context and mediated by cultural tools, such as language. From this perspective, the potential of a learner is best judged in terms of their capability within a supported teaching context (the so-called zone of proximal development), and effective teaching can be seen as a form of scaffolding of learning. Some of Vygotsky’s once-radical ideas have over time come to seem obvious to teachers (as his theory of cultural mediation might lead us to expect), but his work continues to drive thinking in areas such as social constructivism, cultural–historical activity theory and learning communities.

William Perry developed a theory of intellectual and ethical development based on interviews with college students. The later positions in his scheme relate to thinking that is typical of what has been termed 'post-formal operations' or 'a fifth stage of cognitive development', indicating that it could be considered to extend the stage theory developed by Jean Piaget. Piaget's ideas were highly relevant to two key features of many school science curricula—the logic of experimental testing and the abstract nature of many science concepts. Perry's work included students engaged in what could be considered more sophisticated thinking—such as working with multiple perspectives on a topic proposed by different theorists or reaching judgements when the available information is incomplete or inconsistent. This type of intellectual work is relevant to the school science curriculum in many national contexts where students are often expected to appreciate both the provisional nature of scientific knowledge and something of the interactions of science with wider society. School students may be asked to discuss socio-scientific issues where scientific knowledge informs, but is not sufficient for, decision-making. Rather, scientific considerations must be coordinated with those deriving from broader value systems, whilst taking into account the perspectives of different interest groups. Deanna Kuhn explored the development of children's scientific thinking and critical thinking more generally. She identified a pattern that has strong parallels with Perry's scheme.

George Kelly's professional focus was on supporting people who were struggling with the stresses of their lives. Finding that the Freudian ideas he had been offered as tools in his own professional training offered little in working towards change with many of his clients, Kelly developed his own approach based upon a constructivist perspective of learning (which he called constructive alternativism) centred on the core metaphor of person-as-scientist. People, like good scientists, should always be open to exploring new data and considering alternative explanations and conceptions, rather than becoming fixed in established ways of thinking. Kelly's work developed into a recognised approach in psychology, and became very influential in at least one school of thought in science education. Kelly did not only offer a theory that could support clinical practice for therapists, but also offered a methodology for exploring a learner's developing thinking. In his own educational work, he found that his approach offered insights into teachers' classroom difficulties. This chapter considers the core ideas of Kelly's theory in comparison with other constructivist perspectives employed in science education. The chapter also discusses how Kelly's personal construct theory can inform classroom teaching and reflects on an approach that explicitly expects people to behave scientifically as a perspective on science teaching and learning.

Chemistry education research is a well-established field that has the potential to inform chemistry teaching at all levels. But to the uninitiated, much of the work can seem descriptive while quantitative studies often suffer from a lack of reproducibility. Here I delve into these characteristics and explain why this should not deter chemistry teachers from engaging.

A perspective on learning and teaching that considers knowledge must be constructed by the individual learner using available interpretive resources, and where learners are likely to misconstrue instruction without well-designed teaching that is informed by knowledge of learners’ ideas.

Some descriptions of learning represent the process as the development of organisations of elements. Various organisations have been proposed, for example, schemata and conceptual structures. Such representations assume that mental entities, such as concepts, are sufficiently stable and differentiated to be treated as units. We discuss these assumptions and propose a new term, assemblages, to refer to a person's activation of two or more conceptual resources in a context. Methodological challenges have resulted in a lack of research that examines how assemblages are formed. This study presents data from a microgenetic, multiple case study of four 16-17-year-old students. The participants were interviewed weekly, using various probes related to forces and motion over six months. We focus on two aspects of the assembly process in our analysis. First, we report data that indicate that participants perceived the units they assembled differently from expert conceptualisations and reflect on the stability of their assemblages. Second, we discuss how participants' expectations about the coherence of knowledge impact their assembly. We propose that future research investigates the stability and boundaries of conceptual resources and suggest teachers and researchers are cautious in assuming that data indicate a conceptual resource is stable or unitary.

This chapter provides a brief survey of key areas of work in educational psychology that are relevant to science and technology education. The chapter offers an introduction, accessible to general professional readers such as teachers, which seeks to: highlight the relevance and value of educational psychology for those working in education; indicate the breadth of the field and some of the key concepts and theoretical areas; introduce key areas of research into teaching informed by psychological perspectives; and encourage readers to consider exploring some of these topics in more depth. The diverse nature of perspectives and methodologies adopted in psychology, and the challenge of studying mental events, are highlighted. The preponderance of informal references to mental phenomena in evAimeryday discourse (the ‘mental register’) is acknowledged as tending to make some psychological constructs seem more directly accessible and widely understood than is actually the case. Among the topics considered are ‘theory of mind’, perception, memory, cognitive development, scaffolding learning, metacognition, intelligence, giftedness, motivation and individual differences.

The construction of scientific explanations is recognised by science education researchers and curriculum developers as one of the core epistemic practices in which students should acquire proficiency. However, little is known about the knowledge and skills that teachers must and do put into practice to successfully engage their students in building explanations. Therefore, an exploratory study was conducted to analyse the instructional strategies that two secondary science teachers used to promote students’ participation in the elaboration of scientific explanations. To this end, a multi-method approach was used for data collection, which included observations and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was carried out in two stages: the first stage was aimed at inductively encoding the participants’ interactions and discursive actions, and the second stage was aimed at performing a cross-case examination of them through constant comparative analysis. Codes were refined and clustered into seven categories. The results show that teachers quite frequently use micro strategies to interact with and guide students in explanatory episodes, but very rarely structure them into/within a complete instructional sequence to purposely promote the formulation of scientific explanations. This suggests the need to promote an explicit and conscious science teacher training to enrich their knowledge of instructional strategies for fostering and scaffolding students’ explanations.

There is little doubt that the development of technology has changed the landscape of science learning in both formal and informal settings. However, often existing research studies lack a strong conceptual underpinning in terms of pedagogic theory. Regardless of the fair body of studies relating to early childhood education and science education, early childhood science learning remains a relatively under-researched area. As representatives of advanced technologies which have been widely adopted in many fields, augmented reality (AR), holography and artificial intelligence (AI) have rarely been applied and studied in early childhood science education despite the enormous potential they offer. Drawing upon Vygotsky’s notions of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), tools and mediation, this chapter provides a new perspective by exploring the potential use of AR applications (apps), holography and AI-based tools in early childhood science education. The key argument is that these tools can potentially change the nature of the interaction between learners and learning materials, and they offer significant affordances in early childhood science education. The mission of the present chapter is to inform the design and development of educational technology based on psychological and pedagogical perspectives, and help parents and early childhood teachers understand the potential use of AR, holography and AI in science education.

This article argues that what is most at risk in schooling during a global pandemic, or other similar broad challenges to normal functioning, are those elements that might be considered the less traditional and so the most progressive. After setting out some general background common to the challenge faced by schools and school teachers, this argument is exemplified through the case of school science education. Two particular aspects are considered: one related to pedagogy (responding to learners’ alternative conceptions or ‘misconceptions’) and one related to curriculum (teaching about the nature of science). These are considered ‘progressive’ features in the sense that they have widely been championed as ways of improving and reforming science education across a wide range of national contexts but can be understood to have faced resistance both in the sense of being opposed by ‘reactionary’ stakeholders and in terms of the level of support for teacher adoption. It is argued that at a time when the education system is placed under extreme stress, such progressive elements are at particular risk as teachers and administrators may view them as ‘extras’ rather than ‘core’ features of practice and/or as reflecting more ‘difficult’ educational objectives that may need to be de-prioritised (and so neglected) for the time being. In that sense, they are fragile aspects of practice that lack the resilience of more established, and thus robust, features. It is concluded that where progressive elements are especially valued, they need to become sufficiently embedded in custom and practice to no longer be viewed as luxuries but rather to be recognised as core elements of good teaching to be protected and maintained during a period of emergency.

There has been concern about the attractiveness of science-based careers to many adolescent learners, and it has been suggested that school science may not always recognise or engage personal values that are important to young people in making life choices. The present study discusses interview comments made by upper secondary level students in England when 15 young people were asked to give their personal responses to brief vignettes describing scientific careers. Using an interview-about-scenarios approach, the students were asked about whether they would feel comfortable working in the scientific careers represented. The career areas were purposefully selected because they might be considered to potentially raise issues in relation to personal values or commitments that some students might hold. A range of student perceptions relating to the mooted careers were elicited (positive, negative and indifferent), but all of the participants raised issues that impacted on the acceptability or attractiveness of at least one of the mooted scientific careers, in terms of aspects of their own personal beliefs and values systems. It is recommended that teachers and career advisors should be aware of the range of value-related considerations that influence student views of science-related careers and should consider exploring aspects of science-based careers that link to values commonly shared by young people. This exploratory study also offers indications for directions for further research exploring how learners' value systems impact upon their perceptions of science and scientific work.

Representing conceptual change is challenging. Claims that conceptual change has occurred are sometimes based on data from a small number of probes given over a relatively long interval. Data collected in this way do not allow short-lived variability to be distinguished from more stable conceptual change and can lead to mistaken conclusions about learning. Different forms of variability can be distinguished by reporting temporal patterns of conceptual change, representations of the activations of different conceptions over an interval. In this paper, temporal patterns are constructed from a microgenetic, multiple case study of four 16-17-year-old students' learning in a school in England. The students were interviewed once a week for twenty-two weeks using various probes related to force. The learners' activation of two force conceptions showed a high degree of variability over time and to different contexts. Three temporal patterns are discussed, leading to recommendations for teachers and researchers interested in making claims about learning: change should be described by reference to data collected at multiple points over an extended period and claims that conceptual change has occurred require evidence that change has reached a relatively stable state. Future directions for investigations of temporal patterns of conceptual change are proposed.

We report on a survey of 1717 students at two different points of their secondary school education. This survey is designed to discover their reasoning about scientific and religious accounts of the origins of the universe and life. The study was motivated by a concern, based on previous research, that factors such as the compartmentalised curriculum may limit students’ progression in interdisciplinary reasoning and their capacities to appreciate why science and religion are not necessarily incompatible. To investigate these matters, we gathered data in seven secondary schools in England. The findings indicated that a significant proportion of students are working with a poor understanding of the limits of science and of the range of scholarly positions on the nature of religious explanation. The implications of the results for educational theory and practice are discussed.

This article offers a viewpoint regarding the current status of chemistry education research (CER) as a scholarly field within science education, and suggests priorities for future directions of work in the field. The article begins by briefly considering what makes something a discrete field of activity, and what makes such a field ‘scientific’. This provides a basis for understanding and evaluating CER, and informs a consideration of imperatives and priorities for progressing the field. In particular, it is suggested one emphasis should be on areas of work which can be considered ‘inherent’ to CER as they arise from essential aspects of chemistry teaching and learning, and some examples of such inherent research foci (the ‘chemist’s triplet’; models in chemistry; chemical explanations) are briefly discussed.