This article presents a case study of four academic scientists. These academics teach in the first year of a Bachelor of Science degree at a large research-focused Australian university that has demanded and supported a greater focus on undergraduate learning. Taken as a whole, the accounts of science that the first-year academics in this case…

This paper reports the results of a study that compared two approaches to developing in-service teachers' subject matter knowledge and strategies for teaching nature of science. A treatment post-test only quasi-experimental research design was used. One group of in-service teachers (n = 15) was taught using what is called a capsular approach. In…

In this article, the educative value of scientific biographies will be explored, especially for non-science major college students. During the "Scientist's life and thought" course, 66 college students read nine scientific biographies including five biologists, covering the canonical scientific achievements in Western scientific history.…

This paper reports evidence that learners commonly develop a notion of chemical stability that, whilst drawing upon ideas taught in the curriculum, is nevertheless inconsistent with basic scientific principles. A series of related small-scale studies show that many college-level students consider a chemical species with an octet structure, or a…

Previous research has shown that students' existing conceptions are critical to subsequent learning because there is interaction between the new knowledge that the students encounter and their existing knowledge from previous lessons. Taber (1999a) found A-level students in the UK had difficulty in understanding the principles determining the…