This study examines the effectiveness of an undergraduate intercultural learning assignment immediately and over time. Students were asked to consider what they know or believe about refugees and the sources of their information. They then engaged in two one-hour online interviews with a refugee. After the interviews, they wrote reflective…

Instructional strategies that support meaningful student learning of complex chemical topics are an important aspect of improving chemistry education. Adequately assessing the success of these approaches can be supported with the use of aligned instruments with established psychometrics. Here, we report the implementation and assessment of one…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] As part of a larger project studying undergraduate students' understanding of cosmology, we explored students' ideas about the curvature of the Universe. We investigated preinstruction ideas held by introductory astronomy (ASTRO 101) students at three participating…

"Learner centered" term points out environments that attention to the learners brings to the educational setting. This term includes teaching practices: effort to uncover what learners think in a specific problem on hand, talking about their misconceptions and, giving them situations to readjust their ideas. In Learner centered…

Screening brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is a clinical intervention empirically linked to reductions in substance usage. However, less is known on how to effectively train social work students on SBIRT. This study examines the impact of a SBIRT training administered to BSW and MSW students (N=228) at the University of…

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cooperative learning based on conceptual change approach instruction on ninth-grade students' understanding in chemical bonding concepts compared to traditional instruction. Seventy-two ninth-grade students from two intact chemistry classes taught by the same teacher in a public high…

This article draws on a one-semester study to investigate the effect of videos and 3D animations on students' conceptual understandings about basic computer units. A quasi-experimental design was carried out in two classrooms; videos and 3D animations were used in classroom activities in one group and those were used for homework in the other…

Background: Common cold misconceptions may contribute to ill-informed decisions and recommendations made by K-12 educators who often encounter infected students. Understanding the structure of educators' misconceptions can be used to improve health instruction in teacher professional preparation programs. Purpose: The purposes of this project were…

The purpose of this study is to explore how an online-structured dialogue environment supported (OSDE) collaborative learning about the nature of science among a group of trainee science teachers in the UK. The software used (InterLoc) is a linear text-based tool, designed to support structured argumentation with openers and "dialogue…

The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate students' concept images about class, object, and their relationship and to help them enhance their learning of these notions with a visualization tool. Fifty-six second-year university students participated in the study. To investigate his/her concept images, the researcher developed a survey…

Background: Learning processes are usually characterized by students' misunderstandings and misconceptions. Engineering educators intend to help their students overcome their misconceptions and achieve correct understanding of the concept. This paper describes a misconception in digital systems held by many students who believe that combinational…

The objective of this action research study was to explore the use of formative assessment (daily quizzes), including identification of student weaknesses or lack of understanding, along with instructional correctives that are different from previous instruction, to help students attain the intended learning goals. Part of the exploration was to…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the use of 3-D printed models as an instructional tool in a middle school science classroom for students with visual impairments and compare their use to traditional tactile graphics for aiding conceptual understanding of geoscience concepts. Specifically, this study examined if the students'…

Background: The motivation for this work is built upon the premise that there is a need for research-based materials for design-based science instruction. In this paper, a small portion of our work investigating the impact of a LEGO[TM] engineering unit on fourth grade students' preconceptions and understanding of animals is presented. Purpose:…

Over the last 20 years, science education studies have reported that there are very different understandings among students of science regarding the key aspects of climate change. We used the cognitive linguistic framework of experientialism to shed new light on this valuable pool of studies to identify the conceptual resources of understanding…