Effective communication within learning environments is a pivotal aspect to students’ success. By enhancing abstract concepts with visual media, students can achieve a higher level of retention and better understand the presented information. Knowledge Visualization and Visual Literacy in Science Education is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of visual images, aids, and graphics in classroom settings and focuses on how these methods stimulate critical thinking in students. Highlighting concepts relating to cognition, communication, and computing, this book is ideally designed for researchers, instructors, academicians, and students.

Biology is where many of science's most exciting and relevant advances are taking place. Yet, many students leave school without having learned basic biology principles, and few are excited enough to continue in the sciences. Why is biology education failing? How can reform be accomplished? This book presents information and expert views from curriculum developers, teachers, and others, offering suggestions about major issues in biology education: what should we teach in biology and how should it be taught? How can we measure results? How should teachers be educated and certified? What obstacles are blocking reform?

The COVID-19 pandemic has likely changed the mathematics, health and environmental education research landscape in profound and long-lasting ways. As such, more than ever, there is a need to creatively and critically think about how we design research and for what purposes. This necessitates a considered and robust discussion about educational research theory, method, and methodology to ensure that our research continues to impact practice in valuable ways. This book maps out some of these key challenges and opportunities as we collectively enter a post-COVID-19 world in which method and methodology need to be appreciated as much as research findings. Topics explored here range from big-picture issues in STEM Education research, through perspectives on design-based research, to questions of analysis, complexity, the Delphi method, and ethical dilemmas.

This book examines educational semiotics and the representation of knowledge in school science. It discusses the strategic integration of animation in science education. It explores how learning through the creation of science animations takes place, as well as how animation can be used in assessing student’s science learning. Science education animations are ubiquitous in a variety of different online sites, including perhaps the most popularly accessed YouTube site, and are also routinely included as digital augmentations to science textbooks. They are popular with students and teachers and are a prominent feature of contemporary science teaching. The proliferation of various kinds of science animations and the ready accessibility of sophisticated resources for creating them have emphasized the importance of research into various areas: the nature of the semiotic construction of knowledge in the animation design, the development of critical interpretation of available animations, the strategic selection and use of animations to optimize student learning, student creation of science animations, and using animation in assessing student science learning. This book brings together new developments in these research agendas to further multidisciplinary perspectives on research to enhance the design and pedagogic use of animation in school science education. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Though its primary goal is to serve as an introduction to the research on this important subject, Teaching Science to English Language Learners combines that research with classroom case studies and the perspectives of master teachers. Further, chapter authors strive to support your efforts to use diversity as a resource--rather than as an obstacle--in the science classroom.