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Disadvantaged pupils are those pupils whose ability to learn in school is impeded by their family, social or economic situations which are often times beyond their control. Without adequate intervention, there are chances that this group of pupils could drop out of school. In Nigeria, there are many categories of disadvantaged pupils into which a vast majority of pupils can be grouped. Providing science education requires a lot of resources and organization. By its nature, the engagement of children in science education under an ideal environment is a huge task, let alone for pupils who are disadvantaged and must learn science under abnormal circumstances. The gravity of the disadvantage suffered by these pupils vary, hence, this paper focuses on two very critical groups of disadvantaged pupils in Nigeria (the pastoralist nomads and the Almajiris) and describes the challenges faced by educators in providing science education to them. The paper further presents a critical appraisal of some national and international educational programs which are designed to assist educationally disadvantaged pupils with an intention to explore the successes and failures of such programs within the Nigerian context. Some recommendations on how to tackle the identified challenges are proposed.

The advocacy for writing in science and STEM-related fields through reasoning-based writing, critical thinking and argumentation has been accentuated as a core competence in curriculum documents. In South Africa, the CAPS document for Physical Sciences acknowledged the importance of writing and consequently, call on teachers to engage in teaching language across the curriculum. This study examined the characteristics of writing prompts in three selected samples of textbooks to understand how writing is addressed in the Physical Sciences textbooks. Specifically, the study examined the frequency and characteristics of writing prompts included in the chemistry component of three selected Physical Sciences textbooks for Grade 12 learners. A total of 533 writing prompts were identified and analyzed using a coding scheme adopted for the study. Findings revealed that learners are prompted to write in variety of ways, with prompts that positioned them to explain why, discuss your ideas, explain how and explain what. While the prompts that ask learners to explain why and discuss your ideas were the most frequently coded, the press to write their reasoning with specific features that are inherent in the respective topics were inadequate. The implications for curriculum developers are the need for explicit instructions on the length of writings required, and for authors to develop adaptable guidelines to enable textbook users understand the writing expectations.

Learners play very significant roles in the teaching-learning process. Irrespective of how teachers teach, learners often have their own ways of learning. Three hundred senior secondary school II students selected from 10 senior secondary schools in Ilorin, Nigeria participated in the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 30 students from each of the 10 purposively sampled senior secondary schools. Data were collected using three instruments, namely, Chemistry Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, Chemistry Metacognition Questionnaire and Chemistry Achievement Test with reliability indices of 0.83, 0.73 and 0.86, respectively. Answers were provided to four research questions each of which has a corresponding hypothesis. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using Pearson Product Moment Correlation, regression and analysis of variance. Findings from the study indicates significant positive relationship among senior secondary school students' Chemistry self-efficacy, metacognition and their achievement in Chemistry F(2, 297) = 332.482, p < 0.05.

Learning progressions (LPs) are descriptions of successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about an idea over an extended period of time. The growing interest of researchers in learning progressions is grounded in the potential it holds to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Previous review of research on LPs by Duschl et al. ("Studies in Science Education," 47(2), 123-182, 2011) established criteria that depicts foundational knowledge and instructional pathways researchers can used to propose and empirically validate/refine LPs. Building on this, our review utilized these criteria to examine recent LPs research for: (1) evidence of foundational knowledge and conjectural pathways that can facilitate and advance learners' reasoning and understanding of core ideas and (2) detailed or thoroughly mediated learning pathways. Articles were drawn from science education journals through five educational databases. Findings revealed competing attention for both evolutionary and validation LPs. However, there is a slow but growing convergence of thoughts on frameworks for establishing LPs. In the light of key criteria that define a complete LP, directions for validating or establishing LPs were suggested.

The current reforms in science education around the world emphasize science for all, with the ultimate goal of achieving scientific literacy. These reform initiatives provide platforms for re-designing coherent science curricula that could serve as resources for scientific literacy, and consequently, contribute to the development of scientifically literate citizens--who will be able to use scientific knowledge in their daily decision-making processes and other socio-scientific issues. This study, therefore, investigated the coverage of scientific literacy themes in the Nigerian senior school chemistry curriculum and examination questions. A framework developed by Chiappetta, Fillman and Sethna (1991) was adopted to analyze aspects of the curriculum and examination questions. The results revealed that the chemistry curriculum placed more emphasis on the knowledge of science and investigative nature of science. The examination questions mostly stressed investigative nature of science and science as a way of thinking. The interaction of science, technology and society was sparingly represented in the curriculum and the theory component of the examination questions, and almost absent in the practical questions. While the chemistry materials may have a prospect to contribute to the preparation of scientifically literate citizens, a re-adjustment to the structure of the chemistry curriculum and examination questions could provide a balance of the scientific literacy themes in chemistry materials.

Textbooks are a prominent part of science teaching and learning. For science teachers and students, textbooks are the major source of information for planning and classroom practice. In addition to the content of textbooks, are end-of-chapter questions that should consolidate students learning and enhance their thinking processes. Therefore, this study adopted the framework of the revised Bloom's Taxonomy to classify and analyze end-of-chapter questions from three chemistry textbooks used in Nigeria. The results from this study indicated that majority (76%) of the questions were at the lower order of ("understand," "remember," and "apply"), while 46% and 32% measure "conceptual" and "procedural" knowledge respectively. The results further revealed that the number of questions in the categories of evaluate and create differs significantly at, F (5, 1744) = 5.61, ? < 0.01, from the other categories of the cognitive process skills. The following conclusions were drawn: "understand" and "analyze" categories recorded the highest number questions in the cognitive objectives; and there was no metacognitive questions. Implications for textbook authors and teachers were discussed.

The development of science education in many countries is varied and diverse. However, one common goal of science education in the different contexts is the focus on scientific literacy. To promote scientific literacy, the Nature of Science (NoS) is one of the vital components for raising scientifically literate citizens. In view of this, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA 2000) proposed that all those who are involved in science teaching and learning should have a common view of the NoS. In Nigeria, this view is interpreted to have informed the stronger advocacy for students to develop an understanding of the scientific enterprise as articulated in the nation's policy document and revised science curricular. Therefore, this study aims to examine how NoS is represented in three Nigerian chemistry textbooks. The study draws from the NSTA document and literature--the analytical framework for the representations of NoS aspects, approaches used, and the content relation of NoS in the textbooks. Though comparatively few, the results indicated that NoS aspects of tentativeness, empirical nature, human endeavor, creativity, and imagination were the most cited in all the three textbooks. NoS aspects of theories and laws, subjectivity, and scientific methods were less mentioned, while the interdisciplinary nature of science, use of models, and science as a solitary pursuit were neglected in about two thirds of the textbooks. The results further revealed the dominance of implicit approach, followed by the historical approach used to integrate a few NoS aspects in the textbooks. The content relation of the NoS aspects were more of content-embeddedness than content-generic. Following these results, we conclude that the analyzed textbooks may not be adequate to promote scientific literacy in their present states but have the potential to contribute to scientific literacy among students; if revised to reflect recommendations, this study adds to existing literature on NoS representations in science textbooks.

Assessment as classroom activities is a fundamental process required to determine the extent to which intended learning outcomes has been achieved. Whatever form of assessment is employed to measure students' learning, they should include tasks that are authentic, relevant and approximate skills students will need in real-life situations. These skills are well accentuated in the advocacy of the current reforms in science education to develop students' higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS) through question-asking, critical thinking and problem solving. Therefore, this research analyzes chemistry questions of senior school certificate examination conducted by the National Examination Council (NECO) within the framework of Bloom's revised taxonomy of cognitive objectives. The source of data consisted of 257 questions drawn from 5 years examination, from 2010-2014. The results from this research indicated that about 80% and 44% of the questions require lower-order cognitive skills (LOCS) and factual knowledge respectively. The results further revealed that there was no question in the evaluate category of the HOCS, and none of the questions required students to apply metacognitive knowledge. The research concludes that the chemistry questions were not as cognitively demanding as they should be, and it is recommended that, examination should ensure that examination questions reflect the dual perspective of the Bloom's revised taxonomy of cognitive process skills and the knowledge dimensions.

The difficulties encountered by students in learning chemistry range from human factors to the intrinsic nature of chemistry. To enhance students' understanding of chemistry, there is a wide consensus within the community of chemistry educators on the importance of and need to integrate different levels of representations in chemistry teaching and learning resources. As learning resources, textbooks are ubiquitous and usually readily available to both students and teachers. Therefore, this study investigated how chemical phenomena are represented or depicted in secondary school chemistry textbooks. We adopted a rubric developed by Gkitzia et al. (Gkitzia V., Salta K. and Tzougraki C., (2011), Development and application of suitable criteria for the evaluation of chemical representations in school textbooks, "Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.," 12, 5-14) to analyze the textbooks for types of representations; relatedness of chemical representations to text; and the appropriateness of captions. The results indicated the dominance of symbolic representations, followed by sub-microscopic, then hybrid and multiple representations. In all three textbooks, there was no evidence of mixed representation. While many of the chemical representations were completely related to the texts, some were unlinked. The germaneness of suitable captions in textbooks is in the explicit, brief and concise explanation that captions give to an entire representation. While our results indicated that more than half of the representations had suitable captions, there was evidence of representations that were problematic and had no captions. The implication of these results for students' cognitive load, and the need for textbook-users to explore alternative resources that depict phenomena in 2D or 3D representations are discussed.

Textbooks play a prominent role in the teaching and learning of chemistry. It is the major organiser and the intended curriculum teachers adapt for their instructional practices. Although chemistry is abstract in nature, the use of visuals or images in textbooks to depict chemical phenomena at different levels remains a meaningful approach to help facilitate students' understanding of chemistry. Therefore, this study analysed chemical representations in the chemistry components of the Physical Sciences textbooks for grade 12 learners in South Africa. Three textbooks were selected and analysed using the five criteria developed by Gkitzia, Salta and Tzougraki (2011). The findings revealed that the chemical representations in the textbooks were largely at the macroscopic and hybrid levels, with surface features that are ambiguous or explicit and representations that are unlinked to text. In addition, there were few sub-microscopic, multiple, and mixed representations in the textbooks. An interesting result is that a majority of the chemical representations had appropriate captions. The implications of these findings for textbook authors or publishers were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disadvantaged pupils are those pupils whose ability to learn in school is impeded by their family, social or economic situations which are often times beyond their control. Without adequate intervention, there are chances that this group of pupils could drop out of school. In Nigeria, there are many categories of disadvantaged pupils into which a vast majority of pupils can be grouped. Providing science education requires a lot of resources and organization. By its nature, the engagement of children in science education under an ideal environment is a huge task, let alone for pupils who are disadvantaged and must learn science under abnormal circumstances. The gravity of the disadvantage suffered by these pupils vary, hence, this paper focuses on two very critical groups of disadvantaged pupils in Nigeria (the pastoralist nomads and the Almajiris) and describes the challenges faced by educators in providing science education to them. The paper further presents a critical appraisal of some national and international educational programs which are designed to assist educationally disadvantaged pupils with an intention to explore the successes and failures of such programs within the Nigerian context. Some recommendations on how to tackle the identified challenges are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of science education in many countries is varied and diverse. However, one common goal of science education in the different contexts is the focus on scientific literacy. To promote scientific literacy, the Nature of Science (NoS) is one of the vital components for raising scientifically literate citizens. In view of this, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA 2000) proposed that all those who are involved in science teaching and learning should have a common view of the NoS. In Nigeria, this view is interpreted to have informed the stronger advocacy for students to develop an understanding of the scientific enterprise as articulated in the nation's policy document and revised science curricular. Therefore, this study aims to examine how NoS is represented in three Nigerian chemistry textbooks. The study draws from the NSTA document and literature—the analytical framework for the representations of NoS aspects, approaches used, and the content relation of NoS in the textbooks. Though comparatively few, the results indicated that NoS aspects of tentativeness, empirical nature, human endeavor, creativity, and imagination were the most cited in all the three textbooks. NoS aspects of theories and laws, subjectivity, and scientific methods were less mentioned, while the interdisciplinary nature of science, use of models, and science as a solitary pursuit were neglected in about two thirds of the textbooks. The results further revealed the dominance of implicit approach, followed by the historical approach used to integrate a few NoS aspects in the textbooks. The content relation of the NoS aspects were more of content-embeddedness than content-generic. Following these results, we conclude that the analyzed textbooks may not be adequate to promote scientific literacy in their present states but have the potential to contribute to scientific literacy among students; if revised to reflect recommendations, this study adds to existing literature on NoS representations in science textbooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current reforms in science education around the world emphasize science for all, with the ultimate goal of achieving scientific literacy. These reform initiatives provide platforms for re-designing coherent science curricula that could serve as resources for scientific literacy, and consequently, contribute to the development of scientifically literate citizens-who will be able to use scientific knowledge in their daily decision-making processes and other socio-scientific issues. This study, therefore, investigated the coverage of scientific literacy themes in the Nigerian senior school chemistry curriculum and examination questions. A framework developed by Chiappetta, Fillman and Sethna (1991) was adopted to analyze aspects of the curriculum and examination questions. The results revealed that the chemistry curriculum placed more emphasis on the knowledge of science and investigative nature of science. The examination questions mostly stressed investigative nature of science and science as a way of thinking. The interaction of science, technology and society was sparingly represented in the curriculum and the theory component of the examination questions, and almost absent in the practical questions. While the chemistry materials may have a prospect to contribute to the preparation of scientifically literate citizens, a re-adjustment to the structure of the chemistry curriculum and examination questions could provide a balance of the scientific literacy themes in chemistry materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]