Collaborative argumentation has been recognized as a powerful means to facilitate conceptual change of scientific concepts for which students have robust misconceptions. However, eliciting and maintaining collaborative argumentation that yields such productive outcomes is known to be difficult. Specifically, social-motivational antecedents have…

This qualitative descriptive study aimed to explore how community college students describe their motivations and reasoning when learning about controversial science topics at a southwestern community college. Anti-science attitudes have been increasing globally, but is not fully understood. Two research questions were developed using the theory…

Teaching topics that implicate student identities, traumas, and/or activism is challenging because students often come with very personal attachments to curricular and extracurricular topics, such as in courses on sexualities, race, gender, and/or social movements. These classes may be described as "wobbly," responding to outside events…

We assessed the influence of genre-specific discourse knowledge and writing goals on the persuasive writing of 4th and 6th grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD). Students were first interviewed about their knowledge of persuasion and persuasive writing. They then wrote a persuasive essay about a controversial topic after…

An unwillingness to consider empirical evidence that contradicts one's desired conclusion, or science denial, is an enormous barrier to producing an informed citizenry. This essay explores literature on conceptual change and motivation to put forth fresh ideas on how curricula can foster science acceptance, or the willingness to engage in critical…

The Diversifying the Education Profession Ohio Taskforce consists of aspiring teachers, K-12 educators, human resources personnel, educator preparation program representatives, community members, State Board of Education representation, and staff members from the Ohio Department of Education and Ohio Department of Higher Education and convened to…

Preparing a generation of citizens to respond to the impacts of climate change will require collaborative interactions between natural scientists, learning scientists, educators and learners. Promoting effective involvement of scientists in climate change education is especially important as climate change science and climate impacts are…

Citizens participating in contemporary socio-scientific issues (SSI) need to draw on local knowledge and personal experience. If curricular developments in the teaching of controversial SSI are to reflect contemporary notions of citizenship then the personal narrative is an indispensable instrument in bridging the gap between the local/personal…