In recent years, there has been a strong push to transform STEM education at K-12 and collegiate levels to help students learn to think like scientists. One aspect of this transformation involves redesigning instruction and curricula around fundamental scientific ideas that serve as conceptual scaffolds students can use to build cohesive knowledge…

Carbon cycling is a key natural system that requires robust science literacy to understand how and why climate change is occurring. Studies show that students tend to compartmentalize carbon movement within plants and animals and are challenged to make sense of how carbon cycles on a global scale. Studies also show that students hold faulty models…

Many students feel the curriculum is detached from their lives and interests. Indeed, about half the questions asked by high school biology students are not addressed by the curriculum. This study presents a strategy to incorporate students' curiosity questions into the curriculum as a way to reduce the disparity between students' interests and…

Explores how a dozen high school girls express their relationship to and understanding of prenatal testing and its possible place in their lives and the lives of others in the context of a short unit on prenatal testing in a semester-long genetics course. Contains 57 references. (DDR)

Mixed methods research conducted across three semesters in introductory college geology classes (n=187, 190, 138) attempted to ascertain whether integrated study of petrified wood could serve as a portal to improved student geobiological understanding of fossilization, geologic time, and evolution. The Petrified Wood Survey[TM] was administered as…

Reports on the analysis of science curricula carried out across Canada within the framework of the Second International Science Study by: (1) describing the background to the study and the research methodology employed; (2) showing how data were organized; and (3) discussing meanings derived from the data analysis. (JN)

Discusses formative evaluation (those evaluation activities carried out while a curriculum is still being developed) and relates this to the development of the Individualized Science (IS) program at the University of Pittsburgh. (PEB)

Describes changes and effects of the Israeli paper-and-pencil matriculation examination in biology since first analysis in 1972. The examination has been significant for implementing an inquiry-oriented high school biology program based on the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. Implications for upgrading science education are discussed.…

Explores how educational experience organized around students' use of a world wide web (WWW)-controllable atomic force microscope (AFM) influenced student understanding of viruses. Conducts a unit on viruses for two high school biology classes, which incorporated the use of WWW-controllable AFM. Suggests that the use of this technology as a tool…