The practice of science education has been increasingly informed by research into science teaching and learning. Research in science education relies on a wide variety of methodologies, borrowed from many branches of science and engineering such as computer science, cognitive science, cognitive psychology and anthropology. Science education research aims to define or characterize what constitutes learning in science and how it is brought about.
John D. Bransford, et al., summarized massive research into student thinking as having three key findings:
Preconceptions
Prior ideas about how things work are remarkably tenacious and an educator must explicitly address a students' specific misconceptions if the student is to reconfigure his misconception in favour of another explanation. Therefore, it is essential that educators know how to learn about student preconceptions and make this a regular part of their planning.
Knowledge Organization
In order to become truly literate in an area of science, students must, "(a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application."
Metacognition
Students will benefit from thinking about their thinking and their learning. They must be taught ways of evaluating their knowledge and what they don't know, evaluating their methods of thinking, and evaluating their conclusions.
Educational technologies are being refined to meet the specific needs of science teachers. One research study examining how cellphones are being used in post-secondary science teaching settings showed that mobile technologies can increase student engagement and motivation in the science classroom.
According to a bibliography on constructivist-oriented research on teaching and learning science in 2005, about 64 percent of studies documented are carried out in the domain of physics, 21 percent in the domain of biology, and 15 percent in chemistry. The major reason for this dominance of physics in the research on teaching and learning appears to be that physics learning includes difficulties due to the particular nature of physics. Research on students conceptions has shown that most pre-instructional (everyday) ideas that students bring to physics instruction are in stark contrast to the physics concepts and principles to be achieved – from kindergarten to the tertiary level. Quite often students' ideas are incompatible with physics views. This also holds true for students’ more general patterns of thinking and reasoning.