In an effort to promote integrated STEM education, the Malaysian government has integrated STEM teaching framework within the science and mathematics curriculum specifications to guide the science and mathematics teachers to design and implement interdisciplinary teaching while teaching science and/or mathematics concepts. Some of the factors that…

The landscape of undergraduate biology education has been shaped by decades of reform efforts calling for instruction to integrate core concepts and scientific skills as a means of helping students become proficient in the discipline. Assessments can be used to make inferences about how these reform efforts have translated into changes in…

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) has emerged as a core curricular goal since at least the 1960s. While science education reforms around the world have shed light on various epistemic and social underpinnings of science, how science curriculum documents portray the nature of other related disciplines such as mathematics and engineering has…

Despite its popularity in education studies literature, interdisciplinary science education is mostly considered outside the multitude of social forces that drive education reform. This has contributed to a mythologizing of interdisciplinary science education and lead to assumptions about the necessity of its intervention into science education…

The Korean STEAM education pursues a convergent human resources education, but there are shortcomings associated with it due to the fact that it excludes the Humanities in its curriculum. This study embodies the accomplishments from the design and field application of the STEAM education model that has added Humanities fields (history, geography,…

Helping students understand "chemical energy" is notoriously difficult. Many hold inconsistent ideas about what energy is, how and why it changes during the course of a chemical reaction, and how these changes are related to bond energies and reaction dynamics. There are (at least) three major sources for this problem: 1) the way biologists talk…

In many countries around the world, there has been an increasing emphasis on improving science education. Recent reform efforts in the USA call for teachers to integrate scientific and engineering practices into science teaching; for example, science teachers are asked to provide learning experiences for students that apply crosscutting concepts…

Ecological ideas have been manifested in diverse ways in American high schools since the early twentieth century. Core scientific concepts in ecology--the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment--include adaptations, plant succession, ecosystem ecology, and population ecology. This dissertation argues, however, that there…

In this dissertation, I perform and compare three studies of introductory biology students' classroom expectations--what students expect to be the nature of the knowledge that they are learning, what they think they should be (or are) doing in order to learn, and what they think they should be (or are) doing in order to be successful. Previous…

Science IDEAS is an evidence-based model that reflects interdisciplinary research findings that support the integration of literacy (e.g., reading comprehension) within science instruction in grades K-5. Presented is a framework for planning integrated science and literacy instruction in which six elements (hands-on investigations, reading,…

In the final paragraph of his 1984 book "From knowledge to wisdom, a revolution in the aims and methods of science," the philosopher Nicholas Maxwell boldly declared that an intellectual revolution was underway in the aims and methods of science, and academic inquiry in general, from what he termed knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry.…

A new, integrated laboratory curriculum was recently developed at the U.S. Naval Academy in response to the 1999 ACS Committee on Professional Training guidelines that required inclusion of biochemistry and a stronger emphasis on student research. To meet these ACS requirements and to introduce more student choice in the major, we embarked on a…

Good teaching highlights underlying connections between creation and dissemination of knowledge. Analysis of successful biology departments for underlying themes in improving undergraduate education led to the following conclusions: the best kind of teaching is one-on-one; change must be firmly grounded at the departmental or programmatic level;…

Science/Technology/Society (STS) is widely recognized as a major reform effort as correctives are sought around the globe to attain scientific literacy for all. The focus of this book is on STS offered as reform. The efforts during the decade from 1984-1994 have resulted in research that can be used to affect practices while also assuring that STS…

This concept paper outlines the rationale for a project on the development of science curriculum for K-8 high ability learners. The rationale was developed through a synthesis of major recommendations from national science reform reports and from a review of the literature on effective science curriculum for high ability learners. The paper begins…