Previous research has shown that students employ intuitive thinking when understanding scientific concepts. Three types of intuitive thinking--essentialist, teleological, and anthropic thinking--are used in biology learning and can lead to misconceptions. However, it is unknown how commonly these types of intuitive thinking, or cognitive…

Do people think about genetic inheritance as a deterministic or probabilistic process? Do adults display systematic biases when reasoning about genetic inheritance? Knowing how adults think about genetic inheritance is valuable, both for understanding the developmental endpoint of these concepts and for identifying biases that persist even after…

The present study examined the effects on the role of color-blind racial attitudes on the link between internalization of the model minority myth and race-related stress. Using a sample of 309 (176 males and 133 females) Asian American college students, the present study examined the relationship between color-blind racial ideology (i.e.,…

Higher educational institutions in India actively address plagiarism through policies, training, and library initiatives. Despite efforts, frequent plagiarism incidents leading to retractions suggest gaps in understanding policies or their effectiveness. This study explores research students' awareness of anti-plagiarism norms and differences by…

This study documents the development of an assessment (a multiple-choice test with free text rationale) built into an academic skills module over a 2 year period. Initially introduced as a credit bearing assessment to promote student engagement, disappointing results in the first year prompted a further intervention in year 2 with an additional…

Objective: To explore the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding COVID-19 in university affiliates to inform future COVID-19 policies and practices. Participants: Undergraduate students, graduate students and university employees at a large public university. Methods: Semi-structured focus groups and interviews were conducted between…

Vaccines are an important and societally relevant biology topic, but it is unclear how much college biology students know about how vaccines work and what inaccurate ideas they have about that process. Therefore, we asked more than 600 college students taking biology courses at various levels to explain, "How does a vaccine work?" in a…

This article reports on a study of Kuwaiti college students' knowledge about the concept of functions. It also shows the connections these students make between different representations of functions. The results indicated that most students (96%) were unable to provide a definition of a function and only a third could provide examples of a…

The learning of scientific concepts is one of the main research subjects in science education. Although little used, the theory of conceptual profiles allows the study of this knowledge, taking into account the presence of different ways of thinking about a certain concept in the same individual. This study aimed to build a conceptual profile for…

The paper presents research that aims to expose students' understanding of the "this" reference in object-oriented programming. The study was conducted with high school students (N = 86) and college engineering students (N = 77). Conceptualization of "this" reflects an understanding of objects in general and involves aspects of…

Existing research identifying common student ideas about forces focuses on students' misunderstandings, misconceptions, and difficulties. In this paper, we characterize student thinking in terms of resources, framing student thinking as continuous with formal physics. Based on our analysis of 2048 written responses to conceptual questions, we…

This study examines what prior knowledge and misconceptions about evolutionary theory students bring with them into an introductory biological anthropology course. One hundred and fifty-three students completed short, anonymous surveys about evolution on the first day of class before any content was discussed. Of a possible seven points, the…

This article reports on a study of understanding of key sub-topics of the curricular model of covalent bonding among participants at all levels of the chemical education system in Croatia, including among secondary school students, university students (some of whom are pre-service teachers), and secondary school chemistry teachers. The diagnostic…

While many university health science programs include physics courses to raise knowledge and understanding of physical science concepts, they are still far from addressing the needs of that science health profession. This study aimed to investigate the effect of an introductory physics course on first-year physiotherapy and rehabilitation (PR)…

We examined predictors of rape myth acceptance (RMA) and bystander attitudes among college women (n = 137). Participants completed self-report measures of RMA, bystander attitudes, sexist beliefs, gender-conforming attitudes, sexuality attitudes, sexual knowledge, and just world beliefs. Stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that RMA was…