A number of previous studies have shown that there is a widespread view among young people that science and religion are opposed. In this paper, we suggest that it requires a significant level of what can be termed "epistemic insight" to access the idea that some people see science and religion as compatible while others do not. To explore this further, we draw on previous work to devise a methodology to discover students' thinking about apparent contradictions between scientific and religious explanations of the origins of the universe. In our discussion of the findings, we highlight that students' epistemic insight in this context does seem in many cases to be limited and we outline some of the issues emerging from the study that seem to boost or limit students' progress in this area.

It has been argued that learning science may be complicated, and even compromised, when students hold worldviews that may seem at odds with what is presented in science lessons. In particular, in some parts of the world, there has been considerable concern that students from particular religious backgrounds may reject some science teaching if perceived as inconsistent with their faith commitments. In this paper, we report the findings from an interview study that investigated how 12 13–14‐year‐olds from four diverse English schools perceived the relationship between science and religion. In particular, we consider how these students responded to any perceived contradiction and conflict between science and religion. We found a spectrum of stances among this small sample of secondary students. The more extreme positions represented a choice for either science or religion when conflict was perceived. However, other stances were found that sought a synthesis, accommodated inconsistent frameworks, or considered science and religion as noninteracting domains. These alternative stances present a similar range of possibilities to the possible outcomes that have been discussed when students' informal ideas in science are inconsistent with formal science teaching. The implications for further research and for curriculum development and teaching are considered. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 95:1000–1025, 2011

Internationally in secondary schools, lessons are typically taught by subject specialists, raising the question of how to accommodate teaching which bridges the sciences and humanities. This is the first study to look at how students make sense of the teaching they receive in two subjects (science and religious education [RE]) when one subject's curriculum explicitly refers to cross‐disciplinary study and the other does not. Interviews with 61 students in seven schools in England suggested that students perceive a permeable boundary between science and their learning in science lessons and also a permeable boundary between religion and their learning in RE lessons, yet perceive a firm boundary between science lessons and RE lessons. We concluded that it is unreasonable to expect students to transfer instruction about cross‐disciplinary perspectives across such impermeable subject boundaries. Finally, we consider the implications of these findings for the successful management of cross‐disciplinary education.

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Despite numerous efforts to align educational practice more closely with findings from educational research, there is little clarity about how educational practitioners can, in principle, use research. We propose a conceptualisation based on how research can contribute to practitioners’ thinking: specifically, our framework proposes that research can inform bounded decision‐making, teachers’ reflection and organisational learning. Practitioners can also use research without being aware that they are doing so. We argue that this conceptualisation of research use has potential to inform researchers and practitioners.