Science Insights Education Frontiers

Determining the Space Camp Experiences of Gifted Girl Students

2025-12-17T16:44:47+00:00

It has been demonstrated that space camps represent the most appealing informal learning environments for students. The objective of this research is to provide a detailed account of the changes experienced by gifted girl students before and after their space camp experiences. As part of the research, the students participated in a 6-day programme at a space camp supported by NASA, the second of its kind in the world, located in Turkey. The study involved a sample of five gifted sixth-grade students enrolled in secondary school. An embedded single case design, representing a qualitative research design, was employed in this study. In this research, semi-structured interview questions and the drawing technique were utilised as qualitative data collection tools. The NVivo 11 programme was utilised for the purpose of data analysis. The experience of attending the space camp had an emotional and cognitive impact on the gifted girl students. It was determined that experience-based activities at the space camp supported the career orientation of gifted students. This situation demonstrates that the space camp is a powerful educational tool that has the capacity to transform curiosity into scientific thinking, nurture areas of interest, and shape potential career orientations.

Sustainability-Oriented STEM Professional Development Program: Developing Teachers’ Competencies

2026-01-14T19:30:53+00:00

This study examines the effects of a six-day sustainability-oriented STEM professional development (PD) program on teachers’ conceptual understanding of sustainability and sustainable development, their sustainability literacy, and their capacity to integrate these concepts into STEM instructional practices. A qualitative holistic case study design was employed, drawing on comparative analysis of pre- and post-program data. The participants consisted of 16 volunteer teachers from different subject areas with varying levels of professional experience. Data were collected using a researcher-developed open-ended questionnaire comprising 10 items and were analyzed through qualitative content analysis involving open coding and thematic comparison. The findings indicate that prior to the program, teachers’ understandings of sustainability and sustainable development were largely fragmented and predominantly focused on environmental dimensions, while STEM was commonly perceived as a discipline-based approach. Following participation in the program, most teachers developed more multidimensional and systems-oriented perspectives integrating environmental, economic, and social dimensions. These conceptual shifts were reflected in instructional practice, as teachers demonstrated increased competence in designing planned, problem-based STEM activities grounded in the engineering design process and explicitly aligned with sustainability themes. However, a small number of teachers exhibited limited or no change in specific conceptual or instructional dimensions, highlighting the non-linear and context-dependent nature of professional learning in sustainability education. Overall, the results suggest that sustainability-oriented STEM PD can support transformative learning by strengthening the alignment between conceptual understanding, sustainability literacy, and pedagogical implementation, underscoring the importance of practice-oriented and interdisciplinary professional development designs.

Linking the School to Society: A Case Study on School-Community-Business Partnership in Labor Education

2026-05-27T22:28:13+00:00

Amid the call for strengthening social practice in labor education as a national educational policy, schools in China are facing a three-fold challenge, namely a lack of a legal basis, inadequate resource support, and unpredictable educational outcomes, in developing off-campus labor practice education programs. This study is a case study of the “Clothing Reuse Charity” program at Yuyao No.4 Senior High School, China, to explore the implementation mechanism of school-community-business partnership in labor education. Theory-driven case illustration is adopted as the research method. The results show that the school successfully integrated labor education into real social production processes in collaboration with the community and business. The study reveals a dynamic pattern of the evolution of the relationship between the three parties, from a school-led one to a genuine partnership. It also outlines two transferable principles for off-campus labor practice education programs – actively seeking community support to secure their legal status and attracting the business to engage for their public-benefit nature, thereby providing a workable pathway for extending labor education from the campus to authentic social production settings.

Integrating Sustainability Literacy Cultivation into STEM Education: A Pathway for Teacher Professional Development

2026-05-27T22:32:22+00:00

In the context of intensifying climate change, depletion of natural resources, and biodiversity loss, education has the responsibility for fostering sustainability literacy in future citizens. Sustainability literacy, one of the key 21st-century competencies, enables the individual learners to understand the interconnections between the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable development, as well as to make informed decisions in complex real-world situations (Evans et al., 2017).