Graduate students who fulfill teaching roles in the undergraduate laboratory play an important role in establishing a positive learning environment. A host of various graduate teacher training programmes have been developed, implemented and evaluated accordingly in order to enhance their teaching capability. In addition research has also…

Self-explaining refers to the generation of inferences about causal connections between objects and events. In science, this may be summarised as making sense of how and why actual or hypothetical phenomena take place. Research findings in educational psychology show that implementing activities that elicit self-explaining improves learning in…

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) observed in one topic is commonly understood not to be transferable to another topic. This study asked, what can then be transferred in the context of learning and acquiring PCK? The study firstly posits the existence of a generic pedagogical competence that is developed in pre-service teachers to pedagogically…

Educational transformation in the 21st century demands in-depth knowledge and understanding in order to promote the development of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). However, the most commonly reported problem with respect to developing a knowledge of chemistry is poor mastery of basic concepts. Chemistry laboratory educational activities are…

This mixed method study mainly explored how the extent of pre-service chemistry teachers' understanding of the particle nature of matter (PNM) affects their understanding of solution chemistry in the context of multirepresentational (MR) instruction. The ultimate goal was to describe the levels of understanding of specific solution chemistry…

The aim of this study was to apply current pedagogical research in order to develop an effective course and exercise structure for a physical chemistry thermodynamics course intended for second or third year university students of chemistry. A mixed-method approach was used to measure the impact the changes had on student learning. In its final…

A convergent mixed methods research study was used to investigate whether or not undergraduate students who participated in a problem-based learning (PBL) laboratory environment improved their self-efficacy beliefs in chemistry. The Chemistry Attitude and Experience Questionnaire (CAEQ) was used as a pre- and post-test to determine changes in…

Visualizing the chemical structure and dynamics of particles has been challenging for many students; therefore, various visualizations and tools have been used in chemistry education. For science educators, it has been important to understand how students visualize and represent particular phenomena--i.e., their mental models-- to design more…

An assessment of the acylation of ferrocene laboratory exercise across three successive years resulted in a significant fluctuation in student perception of the experiment. This perception was measured by collecting student responses to an instrument immediately after the experiment, which includes Likert and open-ended responses from the student.…

The ability to make realistic judgments of one's performance is a demonstration of the possession of strong metacognitive skills. In this study we investigate the relationship between accuracy of self-evaluation as an expression of metacognitive skill, and learning gain in stoichiometry. The context is an academic development programme at a South…

Nursing students have typically found the study of chemistry to be one of their major challenges in a nursing course. This mixed method study was designed to explore how prior experiences in chemistry might impact chemistry achievement during a health science unit. Nursing students (N = 101) studying chemistry as part of a health science unit were…

The use of concept mapping as a tool to measure the meaningful learning of students is the focus of this study. The study was carried out with 24 last year students (22 years old) from the Department of Chemistry Teaching at Fatih Faculty of Education, Karadeniz Technical University (KTU). Prospective Chemistry Teachers (PCT) were asked to create…

This paper describes the utility of using simulated, rather than real, student solutions to problems within a peer-assessment setting and whether this approach can be used as a means of improving performance in chemical calculations. The study involved a small cohort of students, of two levels, who carried out a simulated peer-assessment as a…

Students commencing studies in biochemistry must transfer and build on concepts they learned in chemistry and biology classes. It is well established, however, that students have difficulties in transferring critical concepts from general chemistry courses; one key concept is "energy." Most previous work on students' conception of energy…

The purpose of this article is to study the effects of an intellectually caring model of teaching and learning on alternative African American high school students' conceptual change and achievement in a chemistry unit on acids and bases. A mixed-methods approach using retrospective data was utilized. Data secured from the teacher were the…