Assessing scientific modeling competence (SMC) is challenging because of the multi-dimensionality of the construct and the potential variability of student performance across tasks. To deal with the challenges, this study applied Kane's validity framework to assess high-school students' SMC in Newtonian mechanics and examined how students'…

Recent instructional reforms in science education aim to change the way students engage in learning in the discipline, as they describe that students are to engage with disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and the practices of science to make sense of phenomena (NRC, 2012). For such sensemaking to become a reality, there is a need to…

In this study, we investigated how students organized their knowledge about organic chemistry reactions in a transformed curriculum, including their choices, abilities, and changes over time. This transformed curriculum focuses on interpreting the underlying mechanistic patterns of chemical reactions and emphasizes the principles of reactivity in…

Worldwide, teachers are expected to engage their students in authentic practices, like scientific modeling. Research suggests that teachers experience challenges when integrating modeling in their classroom instruction, with one explanation that teachers themselves lack the necessary modeling competence. Currently, theoretical conceptualizations…

In science education, representations are necessary inter alia for the understanding of relationships between structures and systems. However, several studies have identified difficulties of students when working with representations. In the present study, we investigated students' responses (regarding their preference, test performance, mental…

The idea that characteristics acquired by an organism during its lifetime can be inherited by offspring and result in evolution is a substantial impediment to student understanding of evolution. In the current study, we performed a preliminary examination of how acquiring physical changes in a question prompt may differentially cue intuitive and…

Students' difficulties in interpreting what counts as knowledge have been addressed in past research on science education. The implementation of progressivist pedagogy in terms of more student-active classroom practice and the introduction of a variety of discourses into the science classroom deepens students' difficulties. The integration of…

As engineering learning experiences increasingly begin in elementary school, elementary teacher preparation programs are an important site for the study of teacher development in engineering education. In this article, we argue that the stances that novice teachers adopt toward engineering learning and knowledge are consequential for the…

Many countries, including the United States, emphasize the importance of developing students' scientific habits of mind and their capacity to think deeply about scientific ideas in an integrated fashion. Recent science education policies in the United States portray a related vision of science teaching and learning that is meant to guide the…

Evaluating the relation between evidence and theory should be a central activity for science learners. Evaluation comprises both hypothetico-deductive analysis, where theory precedes evidence, and inductive synthesis, where theory emerges from evidence. There is mounting evidence that induction is an especially good way to help learners grasp the…

Early career teachers rarely receive sustained support for addressing issues of diversity and equity in their science teaching. This paper reports on design research to create a 30 hour professional development seminar focused on cultivating the interpretive power of early career teachers who teach science to students from historically…

Poor instruction has been cited as a primary cause of attrition from STEM majors and a major obstacle to learning for those who stay [Seymour and Hewitt [1997]. Talking about leaving: Why undergraduates leave the sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview]. Using a double-blind design, this study tests the hypothesis that the lack of explicit instructions in…

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of map structure, concept quantification, and focus question on dynamic thinking during a Concept Map (CMap) construction task. The first experiment compared cyclic and hierarchical structures. The second experiment examined the impact of the quantification of the header concept in the map.…