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Purpose – The aim of this study is to determine the effects of inquiry instruction incorporating with STEM learning on Chemistry Education of Malikussaleh University students’ science process skills and science attitudes.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The pre-experimental design, which is a mixed method approach is used in the study that included a pretest-posttest one group model and descriptive quantitative.

Findings – As a result of data analysis that STEM learning significantly enhances students’ science process skills and attitudes toward inquiry instruction. This study examines how participation in a semester long inquiry-based STEM learning project that involves interdisciplinary skills, sociological research on attitudes, and behaviors enhances the scientific and quantitative literacies of STEM students.

Research Limitations/Implications – Quantitative research is needed to determine the more common effects of learning outcomes. However, this study only determines a self-assessment on science attitudes. The other one is a limitation on the participants and reviewing aspects of learning with more variables in order to obtain more optimal results.

Practical Implications – The results of this study have practical implications in terms of hands-on activities. The learning model can be used to explain the concept of multidisciplinary studies and particularly to students and their parents. It will be a useful model for lecturers, personal tutors, and any other practitioners involved in hands-on activities.

Originality/Value – This paper innovative at a conceptual level of education development for students, graduates, and it is very simple descriptive papers. It will be of value to anybody with an interest in education competitiveness issues.

In 1976, in a speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, Prime Minister James Callaghan asked ‘Why is it that such a high proportion of girls abandon science before leaving school?’ (Gillard, 2018). Little has changed over the last 40 years; a recent report from the National Audit Office (2018, p. 28) stated that only 8% of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) apprenticeships were taken up by women in 2016/2017 and that the shortage of STEM skills in the workforce is a key UK economic problem. However, just as the Aldridge marriage has been the source of considerable interest and the site of significant financial investment in terms of designer kitchens and expensive holidays, so has the issue of ‘girls in science’ been a consistently debated topic and taken up a large chunk of government and industry spending. Research (Archer et al., 2013) suggests that although children enjoy their science experiences in school, too few pupils aspire to a STEM career. It reveals that the pupils most likely to aspire to careers in science are those whose families have high ‘science capital’ which ‘refers to the science-related qualifications, understanding, knowledge (about science and “how it works”), interest and social contacts (e.g. “knowing someone who works in a science-related job”)’ (Archer et al., 2016, p. 3).

Episodes of The Archers are full of scientific talk, from herbal leys to plate meters. This chapter looks at how the science capital in Ambridge is shared. Why is Alice Carter an engineer and not Emma Grundy? Will Kiera Grundy choose physics A level? Who are the female STEM role models? How can the concept of science capital help us to understand the career paths of Ambridge residents? Will the young girls of Ambridge remedy the gender imbalance in STEM careers?

The Computing Research Association (CRA) was formed in 1972 as the Computer Science Board (CSB), which provided a forum for the chairs of Ph.D.-granting computer science departments to discuss issues and share information (CRA, 2009). Since 1989, women have never accounted for more than 24% of the computer science faculty at any given rank (e.g., assistant, associate, or full professor). Currently, women represent 21.7%, 15.4%, and 11.7% of computer science faculty at the assistant, associate, and full professor ranks, respectively. Women have been as much as 24% of the Ph.D. graduates in computing in a single year. Since 1998, African Americans have never accounted for more than 2.0%, 1.4%, and 0.7% of the assistant, associate, and full professors, respectively, in computer science. Furthermore, African Americans have never accounted for more than 2% of the Ph.D. graduates in computer science in a single year over that same time period. It appears women and African Americans overall are underrepresented among the ranks of computer science faculty, but to what extent?

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the issues, challenges, and opportunities of research and programmatic collaborations between science and social science.

Approach – Analyzed are the features of fields and the consequences of these features for partnership among scientists and social scientists.

Findings – The issues and challenges of collaboration between science and social science are rooted in – and reflect – variable levels of “consensus” and paradigm development, positions in the hierarchy of fields, and research practices. The opportunities lie in the collaboration as a strategic alliance.

Implications – The gains realized in successful collaborations between science and social science point to the importance of not simply bridging knowledge across fields, but also of bringing together people and ideas through mechanisms of leadership, management, and successful association.

Value – The chapter contributes to understanding about the growing, but still infrequent, collaborations between science and social science, and provides analyses that help support potential collaborations between these fields.

This Introduction gives a historical and theoretical overview of this volume on Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age, which showcases original research in political sociology of science targeting the changes in scientific and technological policy and practice associated with the rise of neoliberal thought and policies since the 1970s. We argue that an existing family of field theoretic frameworks and empirical field analyses provides a particularly useful set of ideas and approaches for the meso-level understanding of these historical changes in ways that complement as well as challenge other theory traditions in sociology of science, broadly defined. The collected papers exhibit a dual focus on sciences’ interfield relations, connecting science and science policy to political, economic, educational, and other fields and on the institutional logics of scientific fields that pattern expert discourses, practices, and knowledge and shape relations of the scientific field to the rest of the world. By reconceptualizing the central problem for political sociology of science as a problem of field- and inter-field dynamics, and by critically engaging other theory traditions whose assumptions are in some ways undermined by the contemporary history of neoliberalism, we believe these papers collectively chart an important theoretical agenda for future research in the sociology of science.

This paper sheds light on one of the educational projects that was launched by Ministry of Education (MOE) in Oman in the academic year 2007–2008. The project, which is called the “Cognitive Development Program for Students in Science, Mathematics, and Concepts of Environmental Geography”, was introduced in 741 government schools in response to the low national score in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007. Hence, the main aim of the program is to develop the students’ science and mathematics capabilities in order to improve their levels in mathematics and science and to give further emphasis to these skills that form the basis of the rapidly changing world. This paper endeavors to acquaint the Gulf Cooperation Council countries with the nature of this program. It also focuses on the impact this program has on mathematics and science teachers’ and on students’ achievements in mathematics, science, and concepts of environmental geography. To achieve this goal, two questionnaires – one for teachers and the other for students – are conducted to measure the effectiveness of the Cognitive Development Program from teachers’ and students’ perspectives. The results of the questionnaires showed that the program has remarkably affected both teachers and students. One of the positive effects of this program was that it has encouraged the teachers to be always updated about what is new in these subject areas and the students are exposed to questions that test their synthesis. However, there are a number of drawbacks to this program from teachers’ and students’ perspectives. Constructive feedback for the program developers and supervisors in the MOE to base improvement is provided.