This study sought to use simple, less costly, robust equipment and constructivist pedagogies, that promote and foster learning, to enable an intact class of 81 teacher trainees in a teaching programme to form their own authentic concepts through fun-filled, engaging social interactions. Data were collected by means of two-tier diagnostic…

This work describes the design and testing of a low-cost light-emitting diode (LED)-based nephelometer for turbidity analysis. It also describes the use of this nephelometer for context-based learning (CBL) experiments designed for teaching laboratories. The LED nephelometer is simple, low-cost, and robust, providing similar results as a…

Science data literacy (SDL) is an important literacy for college students in STEM majors to possess. However, the current understanding of SDL is incomplete and lacks effective cultivation strategies. This study integrates the core ideas of science literacy (SL) and data literacy (DL), while considering the characteristics of science data, and…

Students in a typical instrumental analysis course may learn more than 30 analytical techniques. There are more than 150 components associated with the instrumentation that they learn. To help students organize this large amount of information, we classified these components into four categories: sources, samples, discriminators, and detectors. In…

Satellite remote sensing has been largely adopted in all kinds of environmental applications as it has proved to be an excellent tool for research and decision-making purposes. It has also been recognized as an important educational tool in the past years. However, it has been insufficiently incorporated in school practice, especially at the…

In this study, diagnostic worksheets adopted from the Royal Society of Chemistry and microscale chemistry activities were employed to investigate teacher trainees' understanding of chemical compounds. The framework for the study was hinged on the constructivist theory. Participants in this study were 36 1st-year undergraduate teacher trainees of…

Learning quantum mechanics is challenging, even for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Research-validated interactive tutorials that build on students' prior knowledge can be useful tools to enhance student learning. We have been investigating student difficulties with quantum mechanics pertaining to the double-slit experiment in…

Science education is criticized because it often fails to support problem-solving skills in students. Instead, the instructional methods primarily emphasize didactic models that fail to engage students and reveal how the material can be applied to solve real problems. To overcome these limitations, this study asked participants in a general…

A questionnaire was mailed to 50 major chemistry departments, 112 smaller chemistry departments, and 25 chemical engineering (CE) departments. The survey (included in an appendix) consists of a series of questions on two broad subjects--the current inventory at the surveyed institutions and the needs for instrumentation. Responses were received…

Presented are statistical data from the Annual Survey of Scientific and Engineering Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, FY 1983. These data represent science and engineering (SE) expenditures for separately budgeted research and development (R&D). The phrase "separately budgeted R&D expenditures" refers to current fund…

This paper describes the development, administration, and results of an instrument to assess changes in students' science abilities as they progress from ninth grade through twelfth grade. Standard science tests commonly in use in schools to measure high school science students' achievement are content specific. Although these tests are useful…

This report presents information from phase I of a survey designed to develop quantitative indicators of the current national stock, cost/investment, condition, obsolescence, utilization, and need for major research instruments in academic settings. Data for phase I (which focused on the physical and computer sciences and engineering) were…

The purposes of this study were to determine how experienced high school physics teachers were in using computers, how computers were being used for high school physics instruction, what the teachers perceived the use of computers in their physics classes should be, and what the enabling and constraining factors were in developing the use of…

At the request of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Higher Education Panel (a stratified sample of 760 colleges and universities) collected information on the level of institutional expenditures for research equipment, the federal contribution to those expenditures, and the share of funds expended for high-cost items. The data were…

The College Science Instrumentation Program (CSIP) was developed to provide seed money matching funds for the acquisition of laboratory instrumentation in order to improve the quality of undergraduate science/engineering education. This report describes the impact of the program and the program characteristics during the years 1985-87. An…