Enzymes are nature's catalysts, mediating chemical processes in living systems. The study of enzyme function and mechanism includes defining the maximum catalytic rate and affinity for substrate/s (among other factors), referred to as enzyme kinetics. Enzyme kinetics is a staple of biochemistry curricula and other disciplines, from molecular and…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] In recent years, physics instructional labs have been under considerable research and development. However, there seems to be no shared understanding of how the assessment of instructional labs should be arranged to best serve students'…

Models and modeling are central to both scientific literacy and practices as demonstrated by the Next Generation Science Standards. Through a design-based research framework, we developed a model-based assessment (MBA) and associated rubric as tools for teachers to understand and support students in their conceptualization of the flow of energy…

The challenge of accurately assessing critical thinking in physics education, particularly on topics like work and energy, remains a key issue for educators. The current study aims to address this challenge by exploring students' critical thinking abilities using two-tier test data analyzed through the Rasch model. Data were collected from…

One agenda of science instruction in primary schools is to develop learners' scientific reasoning abilities and to equip them with the necessary twenty-first-century skills. Few studies have been conducted to develop measurement tools that aspire to assess primary school learners' scientific reasoning. Most of these studies lack a theoretical…

As educational accountability pressures and science teacher attrition rates within American public-school systems continue to rise, so does the need for improved reform-based professional development (PD) opportunities that allow science educators to challenge their pedagogical beliefs and teaching practices. This qualitative case study explores…

Assessing students' participation in science practices presents several challenges, especially when aiming to differentiate meaningful (vs. rote) forms of participation. In this study, we sought to use machine learning (ML) for a novel purpose in science assessment: developing a construct map for students' "consideration of generality,"…

Purpose: This study aims to assess the validity and reliability of the Psycho-B'GREAT Module developed according to the ASSURE's Module Development Model. Method: The content validity of the Psycho-B'GREAT Module was assessed by ten experts in the fields related in teaching and learning (T&L) and biology education. In testing the…

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to explore the development of pre-service chemistry teachers' pedagogical content knowledge regarding the effect of temperature on reaction rate topic as they took pedagogical content knowledge courses throughout the teacher education program. Pre-service teachers' pedagogical content knowledge was…

Cultivating students' scientific knowledge and developing their capability in scientific inquiry depends on a teacher's ability to use existing resources to design rich learning opportunities. Designing such experiences is not easy, and is particularly challenging for new teachers who have little experience making decisions about the best way to…

Introducing abstract concepts to students from applied fields can be challenging. Electromagnetics is one of those courses where abstract concepts are introduced. This work presents a conceptual model which defines learning objectives in three levels for Engineering Electromagnetics. Each level is aligned with its own assessment and evaluation…

Automatic assessment and evaluation of team performance during collaborative tasks is key to the research on learning analytics and computer-supported cooperative work. There is growing interest in the use of gaze-oriented cues for evaluating the collaboration and cooperativeness of teams. However, collecting gaze data using eye-trackers is not…

This study concerns a framework for designing Teaching-Learning Sequences that aims to integrate the implementation of scientific practices in the context of daily problems. Said framework consists of three stages (formulation of the design principles, instructional design and design of the learning activities). It is based on four design…

This paper builds on the current literature base about learning progressions in science to address the question, "What is the nature of the learning progression in the content domain of the structure of matter?" We introduce a learning progression in response to that question and illustrate a methodology, the Construct Modeling (Wilson,…

Modelling-based teaching activities have been designed and analysed from distinct theoretical perspectives. In this paper, we use one of them--the model of modelling diagram (MMD)--as an analytical tool in a regular classroom context. This paper examines the challenges that arise when the MMD is used as an analytical tool to characterise the…