We present a systematic review of 29 empirical studies on disability and fieldwork in natural science, postsecondary educational settings. Undergraduate students with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM, and disciplines requiring major field components are some of the least diverse, at least in part because fieldwork has been traditionally…

An inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities for marginalized students (i.e., opportunity gaps) leads to challenges in identifying effective study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking in higher education. While students benefit when these skills are taught explicitly through co-curricular workshops and courses, these…

Approximately 2 million students take Advanced Placement (AP) examinations annually. However, departmental policies that allow students to replace introductory courses with AP credit greatly vary within and across universities, even across relatively similar universities. This study examines the impact of AP credit policies on second-course…

Higher education biology is often imagined, perceived, and described as having reached gender equality in terms of who gets to participate in disciplinary practices. However, like any other natural science discipline, higher education biology is a world whose landscapes are shaped by (re)productions of historical, cultural, and social norms. We…

The use of two-dimensional images to teach students about three-dimensional molecules continues to be a prevalent issue in many classrooms. As affordable visualization technologies continue to advance, there has been an increasing interest to utilize novel technology, such as augmented reality (AR), in the development of molecular visualization…

This article reports on research investigating the experiences and resources that make science thinkable for undergraduate science majors as they engage in postsecondary science contexts. We regard these experiences and resources as contributing to science majors' "science capital," and we suggest that science capital accumulates over…

Many conversations surrounding improvement of large-enrollment college science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) courses focus primarily (or solely) on changing instructional practices. By reducing dynamic, complex learning environments to collections of teaching methods, we neglect other meaningful parts of a course ecosystem…

Discipline-based educational researchers and institutions that provide guidance on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics instruction have long documented the impact of active learning strategies on student learning and achievement, the lack of incorporation of active learning into undergraduate instruction, and the languishing rates of…

We validate the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) on undergraduate students using the Rasch model and utilize the MATE to explore qualitatively how students express their acceptance of evolution. At least 24 studies have used the MATE, most with the assumption that it is unidimensional. However, we found that the MATE is best…

We describe the development and validation of the Quantitative Assessment of Socio-scientific Reasoning (QuASSR) in a college context. The QuASSR contains 10 polytomous, two-tiered items crossed between two scenarios, and is based on theory suggesting a four-pronged structure for SSR (complexity, perspective taking, inquiry, and skepticism). In…

We investigated the intersectional nature of race/racism and gender/sexism in broad scale inequities in physics student learning using a critical quantitative intersectionality. To provide transparency and create a nuanced picture of learning, we problematized the measurement of equity by using two competing operationalizations of equity:…

This study aims to identify students' misconceptions regarding covalent bonds. Seventy-seven graduate students in the middle of Indonesia participated in the study. Data were collected in three stages. First, misconceptions were identified by using the Semi Open Diagnostic Test. Ten students who experienced the worst misconceptions were…

We present a multiple-choice test, the Montana State University Formal Reasoning Test (FORT), to assess college students' scientific reasoning ability. The test defines scientific reasoning to be equivalent to formal operational reasoning. It contains 20 questions divided evenly among five types of problems: control of variables, hypothesis…

Although the practice of giving examples is central to the effective teaching and learning of science, it has been the object of little educational research. The present study attends to this issue by systematically examining the exemplification practices of a university professor and his students' learning experiences during a biology lecture on…

Efforts to reform undergraduate chemistry laboratory coursework typically focus on the curricula of introductory-level courses, while upper-level courses are bypassed. This study used video-stimulated recall to interview 17 junior- and senior- level chemistry majors after they carried out an experiment as part of a laboratory course. It is assumed…