Many scholars in the teaching of science put forth that the perennial target of science education is to teach the nature of science (NOS), and science textbooks play a crucial role in the teaching of the nature of science (NOS). Understanding the nature of science is said to be effective when both understanding science concepts and doing science. Numerous studies focus on the teaching of NOS. This study investigates the effect of a science content that is prepared in history and philosophy of science (HPS) perspective on the NOSunderstandings of pre-service science teachers. 34 sophomore pre-service science teachers participated in the study. The quasi-experimental method was used by employing a pre-test, an intervention, and a post-test which is the same as the pre-test. The intervention involved the presentation of science content from the HPS perspective in six weeks long of discussions. Data were collected through a survey that revealed categorical views regarding the characteristics of the NOS. The results showed that the demonstration of atom theories in the HPS perspective gave a positive effect on the pre-service science teachers in understanding the NOS.

Numerous studies demonstrated that the meaning-making of scientific knowledge is affected by the design of multimodal science texts. Various modes are co-operated together in certain inter-semiotic mechanisms to produce meaning in multimodal texts. Based on this perspective, this research seeks to investigate the effect of mode level in science texts and compositional arrangement on the meaning-making of science concepts and processes. In this context, four science texts with the same content (transformation of energy) at different mode densities and two science texts with the same content (covalent bonding) one of which is arranged in accordance with variation theory of learning are designed. By using the case study method, this research explored six experienced science teachers’ views about the effects of mode level and multimodal text composition on meaning-making. The data were collected with semi-structured interviews. The thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The findings demonstrated that mode density may affect meaning-making and so learning since different modes have affordance to represent different meaning and meaning relationship types. Besides, multimodal text composition may foreground the critical aspects of content, and help to design a coherent multimodal science text.

In science education many researches and studies have demonstrated importance of nature of science (NOS) and they claimed that teaching of NOS is the ultimate goal of science education. Given importance has been emphasized to reflect on all components of science education from school environment to curriculum content. Besides, many researches embraces a view that beliefs of science teachers about NOS and epistemology of science have a direct effect on their instructional practices. Although numerous global and local (Turkey) attempts aim to teach a satisfactory level of understanding about NOS and pave epistemological beliefs in line with the modern philosophical approaches for both students and teachers, most of the researches, authentic or novel, have demonstrated unsatisfactory results. This study has two main goals. First aim is to reveal sophomore pre-service science teachers' epistemological beliefs and views about the NOS. Secondly, evaluate the results in the lights of previous constructivist efforts that aims to transmit NOS views in line with consensus view. To reveal the views about the NOS, VOSTS test was used. 45 sophomore pre-service science teachers responded the test and the results were quantitatively analyzed. The results showed that eight of ten items were mostly responded in a positivist approach. Because the results of the questionnaire demonstrated that most of the participants have positivist views, it was questioned that why still the level of understanding of the NOS is not satisfactory. Additionally, results showed that participants, who had been educated by constructivist science curricula that has mainly supported consensus view of NOS teaching, showed weak level of understanding NOS. In a similar vein, possible reasons were proposed and discussed in the light of previous studies for inadequate level of understanding of the NOS. Results imply that teaching of the NOS seems far from being contextualized with daily life and science as a human enterprise.

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A variety of semiotic resources makes the construction of scientific knowledge possible and meaning-making resources are conveyed by certain semiotic modes. Next, numerous studies have demonstrated the pedagogical importance of gestures in the demonstration of scientific knowledge in the classroom. Drawing on social semiotic systemic functional theory and legitimation code theory, this study explores the types and the role of gestures in the semiotic construction of scientific knowledge in pedagogic semiosis and their pedagogical values for the meaning-making of science content. With this aim, a gesture observation protocol (GOP) is developed to annotate and analyze data. Two science lectures, which are broadcast remotely for middle school students including gifted students, are observed. Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) method is employed to analyze and evaluate data. Results demonstrated that the deployment of gestures that contributes to the construction of scientific knowledge is low and deployed gestures mostly do not have pedagogical value. It is recommended that teachers should be more conscious and educated about deploying gestures to present scientific knowledge efficiently.

Gifted students are exceptional learners who need differentiated education. Enrichment is the most prevalent differentiation strategy including supplementation learning experiences of the depth, breadth, or intensity of content and process as appropriate to the student’s abilities and needs. Given the importance of assuring such education, the aim of this study is to investigate the trends related to enrichment in recent years by focusing on the bibliometric results of previous studies in the literature on enrichment in gifted education. For this goal, a total of 296 publications on enrichment gathered from Scopus and Web of Science databases were analyzed in terms of different bibliometric variables, and they were presented with visuals and tables. The PRISMA model was used for data collection and RStudio was employed for data analysis and image/table creation. The results of the study showed that the most frequently used keywords in research in both databases were “enrichment program” and “gifted students”. In both databases, the countries that had the highest number of publications were determined as USA and Germany. Furthermore, it was also determined that the top three most cited authors in scientific creativity studies in both databases were Joseph Renzulli, Sally M. Reis, and Marcia Gentry. The highest number of published contributions to the field was made by the University of Connecticut and Purdue University. The most active journals in the field are Gifted Education International and Roeper Review. Researchers interested in enrichment for gifted students can benefit from the results of the present study.

Many scholars in the field accept scientific literacy as a main component of science education. Scientific literacy is depicted as accessing and obtaining scientific information and knowing how to do science. Next, information literacy is seen as an indispensable competency for science students to be scientifically literate persons. Given the crucial role in information literacy, utilizing print and online information resources that academic libraries provide may help science students get reliable and up-to-date information pertaining to science and latest developments. As such, this study aims to investigate, how pre-service science teachers as science students use print and digital information resources in the context of scientific literacy competency and explore relationships between various usages of library facilities. The study adopts an explorative descriptive method to get data about the point of interest. 82 pre-service science teachers joined the study. Data was statistically analyzed. Results indicate the utilization of various physically and virtually accessible information resources are below expectations. The study proposes a collaboration between science educators and information scientists in creating enhancements in the use of information facilities those libraries provide. This collaboration may help science students to enhance information, literacy and scientific literacy competencies.