Educators have struggled with maintaining student engagement in science, especially as students transition from primary to middle school and upper grades (Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2012). A recent push in science education has been the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), released in 2013, whose development was guided by…

Educators have struggled with maintaining student engagement in science, especially as students transition from primary to middle school and upper grades (Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2012). A recent push in science education has been the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), released in 2013, whose development was guided by…

A national Task Force of 25 Australian physiology educators used the Delphi protocol to develop seven physiology core concepts that were agreed to nationally. The aim of the current study was to unpack the "physiological adaptation" core concept with the descriptor "organisms adjust and adapt to acute and chronic changes in the…

When conducting biological investigations, experts constantly integrate their conceptual and quantitative understanding of variation with the design and analysis of the investigation. This process is difficult for students, because curricula often treat these concepts as separate components. This study describes the effect of a curricular…

To examine differences between sequences of secondary science courses on achievement on science high stakes exams, a purposive quantitative research design was utilized in this study. A short survey was sent out to public high schools in the state of Missouri that asked to identify their main science course sequence. In addition, participants were…

We have successfully developed a one-semester general chemistry course that meets the primary learning goals of the traditional two-semester sequence. It is appropriate for physical, life, and earth science majors. Since implementation, 88% of students who start general chemistry complete it, an increase from 72% in our prior traditional…

At an Extension youth agricultural science center, our team developed and pilot tested a five-lesson weather and climate science curriculum for middle school-aged youths. As part of the endeavor, we conducted an item analysis of the five worksheets used across the lessons and determined relationships between worksheet scores and pretest/posttest…

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is one of two large scale international comparative projects of student assessment that now exert considerable influence upon school science education policy, the other being TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). This paper focuses on PISA, now the most influential…

This study sought to assess the level of secondary students' scientific literacy in suburban schools in Malaysia and England, a research area which to date has not been fully explored in the literature. The study analyzed the data using the OECD's three domain-specific competencies of scientific literacy, namely: (i) explain phenomena…

Undergraduate biology laboratories emphasize hands-on skills. Typically, descriptions of manual techniques are delivered via written instruction. Custom-produced prelab instructional videos, which augment prelab instruction, have come into wider use in recent years. However, institutional and economic barriers can interfere with video production…

Optics is a core field in the curricula of secondary physics education. In this study, we present the development and validation of a test instrument in the field of optics, the ray optics in converging lenses concept inventory (ROC-CI). It was developed for and validated with middle school students, but can also be adapted for the use in higher…

Writing a lab report can be an opportunity for students to engage in scientific thinking. Yet students' lab reports often do not exhibit evidence of such engagement. Students' writing can appear focused on "filling in" required components and reporting on predetermined conclusions. We conducted a design experiment in an introductory…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the Primrose® Balanced Learning® Curriculum on young children's science performances. The sample of this study included 158 children attending two private preschools. The study utilized a single group pre-post-test design. The children were tested before and immediately after the…

The study aims to investigate the effect of context-based learning (CBL) on vocational high school students' chemical literacy of petroleum topics. Through quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest design, 30 students from the automotive engineering program were assigned as the experimental group, while 31 students from the same school…

Participation in the science workforce is low, and this can be partially attributed to low retention rates of undergraduate students who initially declare a science major. Low retention rates are further exacerbated for under-represented minority (URM) and first-generation (FG) college students pursuing science, and the existence of achievement…