Common over-the-counter medicines can be an exciting entry point for introducing students to the interesting chemistries that they encounter in their daily lives. In this inquiry-based activity, students are tasked with using a list of given supplies and information about four medications (Aspirin, Tums, Pepto-Bismol, and Tylenol) to design three…

The COVID-19 pandemic has left very little unaltered, education included. Institutions encountered an almost immediate transition to remote learning to prevent disease transmission. Because most students and instructors alike were unfamiliar with remote learning, challenges quickly arose and have unfortunately lingered longer than most had hoped.…

Science education reforms seek to increase student inquiry, peer collaboration, and making student thinking visible in order to better support science learning. Yet each of these ingredients assumes that students will choose to actively participate in various classroom activities. This article highlights key considerations to support agency -- or…

This qualitative, phenomenological study presents the experiences of high-school biology students (n = 233) in an outreach programme titled Students Meet Authentic Science. The core of the programme consists of students' visits to life-science university research laboratories (from here on referred to as labs). The programme was designed according…

A "wiki" is an easy-to-use online tool for teachers and students, as it is a collaborative website that provides the opportunity to develop and modify its content to every member in an interactive and fast way. This paper comparatively describes experiences in the implementation of "wikis" as voluntary activities in first-year…

This study investigated the opinions of teachers participated in 'This Is My Work' project competition on the applicability of the competition, the difficulties they faced and its contributions to science education. In this study, phenomenology which is one of the qualitative research methods was employed. Data was collected with four science…

In this paper I underscore the notion of "languaging" as students' ways of functioning in and through language, particularly in interactions that involve spoken and written texts in the classroom. Thus, "to language" should be understood as active student participation - verbally, in particular - that can reveal how they deal…

In entry-level university courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, students participating in associated laboratory sessions generally do better than those who have no related lab classes. This is a problem when, for various reasons, not enough lab sections can be offered for students and/or when students opt out of…

To understand the issues of inquiry-based education, I adopted John Dewey's theory of inquiry as the analytical framework to examine science learning activities, students' interactions, and education standards. Educators have tried to engage students in meaningful learning, but the analysis revealed that the meaning of inquiry was diverse:…

Participation of environmental chemistry students in mock congressional hearings is described, as a means of helping them better develop their speaking and debating skills. The activity brings active learning principles into the classroom and greatly increases student participation in an otherwise traditional lecture course.

To promote student engagement, professors must actively seek to create the conditions that foster engagement. Chickering and Gamson (1987) suggest that good practices in undergraduate education are ones that: encourage student-faculty contact, develop reciprocity and cooperation among students, encourage active learning, provide students with…

Raises the notion of service learning, which is defined as a method of helping students develop their own learning through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experience. Explores the use of science as the curriculum and service learning as the methodology to reach students and improve science instruction. (KHR)

In this article, we explore the roles of student researchers as they have emerged over 5 years of studies on the teaching and learning of science in urban high schools. These studies incorporate sociocultural theory in an approach to research that explores the capital that urban students bring to school and situates student researchers as active…

The purpose of this study was to find out whether: (1) truancy, drop-out and failure rates was as a result of the teacher teaching strategy in Secondary Schools in Osun State, (2) If skill in instructional design has any relationship with failure rate; and (3) whether teachers that studied Educational Technology would perform significantly better…

The present study examined the reliability of student evaluations of summer undergraduate research experiences using the SURE (Survey of Undergraduate Research Experiences) and a follow-up survey disseminated 9 mo later. The survey further examines the hypothesis that undergraduate research enhances the educational experience of science…