We aimed to examine the acceptance of evolution and its relationship with religiosity among Greek biology university students and whether the attendance of an evolutionary biology course could affect the acceptance of evolution. In Greece the teaching of evolution has been downgraded from secondary education for years and Greeks exhibit a strong…

A widespread call has been made to develop and support more integrated approaches to STEM education. The first law of thermodynamics serves as a guiding principle for the crosscutting concept of energy and matter. A qualitative interview study was undertaken to support integrated approaches to STEM education by exploring how chemistry, physics,…

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how much the science education community has yet to understand about myriad variables that impact accurately informed socioscientific issue decision-making. Toward that end, this study investigated 415 university biology students' COVID-19 behaviours and opinions regarding how COVID-19 mandates might be associated…

This study uses the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS:2002) to examine how varying levels of intention (planning) and action (choice) in pursuing a science-based major affect American college students' degree attainment in Science and Engineering (S&E) fields by age 26. The study is guided by the Social Cognitive Career Theory's…

Many countries are facing a shortage of science teacher candidates; thus, it becomes increasingly important to understand science preservice teachers' (PSTs') career entry motivations because it plays an important role in attaining and retaining talented science teachers. This study therefore aims to explore and compare science PSTs' motivations…

Research on students' understanding of the greenhouse effect and global warming has been focused on identifying and overcoming misconceptions. However, to date, very few studies have looked into the ways in which student conceptions are organised and interrelated from a model-based perspective. In this study, we investigated student-generated…

This study aimed at investigating the issue of domain specificity of motivation across specific science disciplines (chemistry and physics) in combination with influencing factors related with students' academic major and gender. A clustered sampling was used to select 281 participants who were undergraduate students (105 males and 176 females)…

Undergraduate STEM students majoring in various science sub-disciplines (e.g. chemistry, physics, engineering) must develop strong understandings of core foundational thermodynamics concepts. The ability for course instructors and researchers to effectively refine instruction and develop interventions to support students' learning hinges on their…

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Harmony Public Schools' (HPS) ' Class of 2024 high school students' current selves (high school experience, math and science efficacy, parent, and teacher expectations) affect to possible future selves (i.e. choosing a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM]-major in college). 1464…

This study investigated the interrelationships among university entrance score, career aspiration, academic major, and academic achievement, of foundation year students, at an overall level and at completion of each year level of a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree. Self-determination theory (SDT) was used as the underlying model for this study,…

Although students are expected to finish school having a solid understanding of scientific concepts, they graduate from universities maintaining their former misconceptions in several fields, like physics. This study aims at validating the Thermal Concept Evaluation (TCE) test for university student's misconceptions of thermal concepts in everyday…

This study examined the roles of gender and STEM major status as predictors of performance in formulating a research question and designing experiment among 70 undergraduate Taiwanese college students participating in inquiry-based learning (IBL). Student participants in this study were involved in discrepant demonstrations of scientific events…

Underrepresented minority (URM) students are subjected to historically rooted inequities when pursuing an education, especially in STEM disciplines with little diversity. In order to make STEM education equitable and inclusive, evidence for how students from different racial/ethnic demographics are faring is necessary. We use 10 years of…

Researchers have argued that a central goal of science education is to transform students' out-of-school experiences, so that students have aesthetic experiences of the world that would not otherwise be available to them. The goal of this paper is to articulate a set of design principles that support this goal. In doing so, I will first position…

The Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) has been extensively used in science education research for more than two decades. This study examines the fairness of MATE items based on religious convictions and academic majors. The multidimensional item response theory and differential item functioning analyses were run on data…