Science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCs) constitute a significant part of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012). As teachers, the role of the authors is to highlight the pivotal role that both scientific knowledge and the practices used to generate knowledge play in learning. This article…

Green and sustainable chemistry (GSC) will become ever more central to the study of chemistry. This is demonstrated by commitments from the American Chemical Society, particularly the Committee on Professional Training and the Green Chemistry Institute, and the United Nations (UN Sustainable Development Goals), which underscore the urgent need for…

Especially within the light of the current loss of biodiversity, we want our students to gain a better understanding of the issues at stake in order to take action and support plants and their pollinators. Many educational approaches focus on honeybees, disregarding the vast diversity in the context of pollination systems and the complex…

Escape rooms are making their way into the chemistry classroom as a learning tool. However, escape rooms require a large amount of preparation and setup, and they are only novel and exciting for a single play-through. For escape room games to be incorporated into multiple class periods, they must be streamlined for reuse. In this work, I introduce…

The periodic table is a fundamental tool used in chemistry classes that allows students to systematically understand different types of elements and their physical and chemical properties. While many textbooks emphasize the historical process of classifying substances, they often superficially elucidate the achievements of chemists such as Dmitry…

It is the responsibility of chemistry educators to identify and implement instructional strategies, such as introducing educational board games that can foster active and constructive learning and promote an enjoyable learning experience. This study aimed to design, develop, and evaluate a board game that has the potential to be used as a…

Many approaches to teaching Newman projections and conformational manipulation rely on lecturing using only two-dimensional representations. While molecular models are recognized as useful learning tools, students are often left to figure out how to use them during the initial learning process. The availability of basic online molecular models…

Students tend to think of their science courses as isolated and unrelated to each other, making it difficult for them to see connections across disciplines. In addition, many existing science assessments target rote memorization and algorithmic problem-solving skills. Here, we describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of an activity…

Although the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) have three dimensions, the crosscutting concepts are often the forgotten dimension. One reason teachers may not emphasize the crosscutting concepts might be because they are broad, domain-general constructs that can be difficult to conceptualize in a meaningful way. Yet, when taught…

This article describes one participating teacher's reflections on the generalizable strategies and structures from the professional development (PD) sessions that enabled her sensemaking, and how she translated these generalizations into her own second-grade classroom. Readers will be able to make their own useful generalizations from these…

This study investigated students' meaning-making of polymeric concepts during modelling and discuss students' creation of visible representations in chemistry. The analysis combines a phenomenographic and social semiotic approach and leads to the finding and description of 21 different meaning-making processes. We refer to meaning-making as the…

The state of virtual reality (VR) development is mature enough to be explored for application in various fields including higher education teaching, research, and training including engineering education. Traditionally, engineering education relied on diagrams and images to describe various systems and objects, sometimes accompanied by laboratory…

As students learn physics, they are often required to reason about the behavior of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena, and to synthesize prior knowledge from several different areas of physics to construct understanding of new ideas. This can be a tremendously difficult cognitive task for novice students, especially when the unfamiliar…

Igniting excitement for physics in our students is a goal of every instructor. In this paper, we discuss a unique example of the concept of density, a subject that is rarely viewed as intriguing by students. By combining a problem involving dinosaurs and an effective density, our students' interest is often captured through calculating an…

Examination of my students' individual gains on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) over the course of several semesters led to the realization that student pretest knowledge on certain key questions appeared to be correlated to enhanced gain during the class. Acting under the hypothesis that early intervention aimed at helping the class perform…