General chemistry is a gateway course that students from several STEM-related majors take at the beginning of their college careers. Faced with high attrition rates of students in STEM fields and even higher rates for groups minoritized due to gender and ethnicity/race, this study explored how a general chemistry course influenced students'…

This study investigated the impact of training in self-regulated learning on community college, geoscience students' achievement, metacognition, time management, and science motivation scales. The study also investigated the impact of SRL training on these outcomes as a function of gender and ethnicity. During the Fall of 2022, 70 community…

Water sciences education is paramount to sustainable groundwater resource management, especially of drinking water, but misunderstandings about groundwater among non-experts remain widespread. Groundwater residence is an especially challenging concept to learn because it is not directly visible in typical circumstances. The present study uses a…

Students vary in their perceptions of teachers' motivational supports, even within the same classroom, but it is unclear why this is the case. To enable the design of equitable environments and understand the theoretical nature of motivational climate, this study explored demographic differences in university students' perceptions of instruction…

An increase in online science course offerings requires a closer evaluation of the online laboratory experience. While it has been established that students can successfully learn from online laboratory simulations, there is a lack of knowledge regarding factors that impact student success. Grounded in the constructivist learning theory, a unique…

We examined the predictive relationship between high school students' gender, ethnicity, science self-efficacy as measured by the Science Self-Efficacy Questionnaire composite score, teacher interpersonal behaviors (TIP) as measured by the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) scale scores, and science grade point average in an urban Title I…

Attracting more students to the geosciences is imperative. We have an excellent opportunity to model an inclusive community, with hundreds of thousands of students passing through introductory college courses each year. A previous study documented gender and racial bias in physical geology textbooks. Six texts were reexamined to determine any…

Exposure to information about genetics is at an all-time high, while a full understanding of the biocultural complexity of human difference is low. This paper demonstrates the value of an "anthropological approach" to enhance genetics education in biology, anthropology, and other related disciplines, when teaching about human differences…

Even among the sciences, physics stands out as an unusually White- and male-dominated field. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) reports that only 19% of physics faculty are women, and less than 6% of physics faculty are African American or Hispanic. Particularly for female students, the transition from high school to a college major in…

Development and use of validated assessments in physics provide insight into student understanding of physics concepts and can be utilized to track student learning across time and instructional strategies. These tools can be used to gauge the efficacy of interventions designed to support students and persistence, and allow instructors to make…

Efforts to understand growth and disparities in science achievement have mainly been focused on the middle and high school grades in studies of K-12 science education, leaving a gap in the research about the early elementary years. This study used a nationally-representative sample of students in Grades K-2 to examine science achievement and…

This study investigated if student placement in a primary grade 1-3 classroom with a teacher who had been trained in a U.S. science Framework-aligned [National Research Council. (2012). "A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts and core ideas." The National Academies Press] professional development science…

Recent research indicates that students are adopting a consumerist approach to education, while data shows that the best academic outcomes are associated with intrinsic motivation. The goal of the study was to explore student academic motivation in an undergraduate Principles of Chemistry I class. The study targeted 432 students enrolled in 9…

Equitable access to advanced science coursework paired with highly qualified teachers is vital to improving the performance and persistence of students in STEM, particularly students traditionally underrepresented in related fields. This dissertation explored predictors of high school physics and chemistry teacher retention, as well as…

The use of tablets for large-scale testing programs has transitioned from concept to reality for many state testing programs. This study extended previous research on score comparability between tablets and computers with high school students to compare score distributions across devices for reading, math, and science and to evaluate device…