Up to 78% of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) students experience poor academic achievement as defined by course grades of D, F and W in college. Students entering these fields are often not prepared (Chen & Soldner, 2013) and struggle to succeed in gateway STEM courses, with one-third of them possibly failing (Freeman…

Attracting and retaining diverse individuals is a core goal for reform efforts within in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) gateway courses. Evidence-based instructional strategies in STEM, including those that incorporate scientific practices, have demonstrated promising findings regarding student learning gains. Inspired by…

The problem addressed by this study was to determine the influence of high school start times on students' academic achievement and precisely how this impacts the scores students received on the Biology I End of Course Exams. It also determined if there was a difference in influence between males and females. This was determined by comparing the…

The problem addressed in this study was that students in upper elementary at four Title I elementary schools did not meet district achievement standards in science for four consecutive years, which could impede their educational and employment futures. Little is known how teachers in these elementary grades taught science content to improve…

Ninth-grade students with learning difficulties typically underperform those without learning difficulties, particularly in an integrated geoscience course. Despite the growing demand for STEM careers, science remains challenging to understand and inaccessible to many, especially those with learning difficulties (Vavougios et al., 2016).…

Classrooms today are more ethnically and linguistically diverse. Unfortunately, students of color demonstrate a history of marginalized educational inequities (Williamson et al., 2007). These marginalized educational inequities impact academic achievement across all content areas especially literacy, math, and science. To improve the academic…

The purpose of the study is to see if there is a significant difference in chemistry exam achievement growth for 10th grade students in classes with problem-based learning compared with those students in classes with direct instruction. The state in which the study was conducted is developing new standards that are challenging students more than…

This is potentially the first study that addressed the Puerto Rican high school students' chemistry knowledge acquisition using traditional teaching and Physics Education Technology. The problem addressed by this quantitative comparative quasi-experimental study was that students' showed a disadvantage on chemistry knowledge acquisition over other…

This quantitative, nonexperimental research study focused on discovering the impact of inquiry-based instruction on the science achievement of rural Georgia fifth-grade students as measured by the Georgia Milestones Assessment System (GMAS), a criterion referenced test. Inquiry-based instruction is a teaching method that combines the natural…

Student' achievement in science can be affected by teacher subject matter knowledge, ineffective instructional methods, and lack of student engagement. Although all schools provide professional development opportunities, not all teachers choose to engage in a program that provides teaching and learning through experiential techniques for the…

This applied dissertation was designed to determine if there is a difference between students' gender, ethnicity, and age and their performance in General Chemistry I at a Christian University in Florida. Many scientific studies reveal the existence of a gender performance gap in chemistry: women mostly underperform men. Certain factors reported…

Although many undergraduates begin college as STEM majors, attrition rates from the field are high and numerous reports suggest that evidence-based teaching methods are critical for retention. Despite educators' research and near consensus that active learning is more effective than lecture, there are many types of active learning and the…

This thesis identifies and explains the gaps in prior and current applications of representational competence construct in chemistry. Representational competence (RC) describes a set of skills that chemistry researchers Kozma and Russell observed experts demonstrate when engaging with disciplinary representations (Kozma & Russell, 1997; Kozma…

Teaching science concepts for conceptual understanding has its challenges. Promoting conceptual change in the science classroom can be difficult because most concepts are complicated and counter-intuitive. This dissertation research aimed to determine the effect of teaching for conceptual understanding models on pre-service teachers' conceptual…

The purpose of this study is to determine if the "Instructional Design Model" will improve science achievement. The study addressed the problem of low science achievement among 93 Grade 5 students. The theoretical framework that was applied to this study was developed by Ralph Tyler in 1949. The researcher believed that Tyler's…