Research has highlighted the significant decline in teachers' implementation of newly acquired teaching practices following professional development (PD), primarily attributed to the absence of follow-up support. Even science teachers who have participated in intensive PD programs often encounter challenges in integrating new teaching practices…

This communication presents a partial historical summary of some of Iowa State University's Chemistry Department teaching response to the shift to online course delivery caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The observations reflect discussions between and informal surveys of an instructor cohort that impacted roughly 1200 undergraduate students. These…

This study explored the effect of arts integration into science during an instructional unit on force and motion and one addressing natural weather disasters. Seventy-eight elementary students in four classrooms (grade 5, grade 4, and two at grade 3) participated in the study. This study assessed content retention, student-made products…

The purpose of this article is to provide an example of using real world issues as tools for science teaching and learning. Using real world issues provides students with experiences in learning in problem-based environments and encourages them to apply their content knowledge to solving current and local problems.

Retrieval practice has been shown to produce significant enhancements in student learning of course information, but the extent to which students make use of retrieval to learn information on their own is unclear. In the current study, students in a large introductory biology course were provided with optional online review questions that could be…

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance science teaching. This month's issue describes preservice elementary teachers learning engineering principles from engineers. Few elementary teachers have experience with implementing engineering into the classroom. While engineering professional development opportunities for inservice teachers…

This study explores the integration of the arts into the teaching of science nonfiction texts during literacy instruction. Sixty-one elementary students (15 second graders, 25 third graders, and 21 fifth graders) attending schools of differing socio-economic levels participated in this study. The study examined the effects of arts-integration on…

The study reports on an investigation about the impact of science-technology-society (STS) instruction on middle school student understanding of the nature of science (NOS) and attitudes toward science compared to students taught by the same teacher using traditional textbook-oriented instruction. Eight lead teachers used STS instruction an…

This study examined the self-efficacy in science, art, dance, and music; attitudes concerning contributions of people of various ethnic/cultural groups; and science learning of students involved in an after-school arts-integrated science enrichment project. Students dramatized three traditional animal legends from African, Native American, and…

The U.S. began a new national standards movement in the area of K-12 science education curriculum reform in the 1980s known as "Science for All" to develop a population that is literate in economic and democratic agendas for a global market focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (Duschl, 2008). The National…

A recent survey of undergraduates at five schools across the United States indicates that many undergraduates feel that they have learned more about volcanic systems from Hollywood films and the popular media than they learned in the course of their precollegiate formal education. Scores on the Volcanic Concept Survey, an instrument designed to…

In this article, I return to the interactions of Augusto and his teacher in an "English Learner Science" classroom in a demographically-transitioning US Midwest community (Richardson Bruna and Vann in Cult Stud Sci Educ 2:19-59, "2007") and further engage a class-first perspective to achieve two main conceptual objectives.…

The study reports on an investigation of the impact of a Science-Technology-Society (STS) approach in promoting more positive student attitudes toward science that are recommended by current reform documents. A total of 609 students from grades six through nine were selected for a survey of attitudes in two class sections assigned as either…

This research investigated the impact of teacher questions, question types, and interaction patterns that coincide with high and low levels of constructivist teaching practices. Through both quantitative and qualitative methods the findings revealed that teachers facilitating classrooms with high levels of constructivist teaching practices (HLCTP)…

The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the Iowa Chautauqua Professional Development Program in terms of changes in concept mastery, use of process skills, application of science concept and skills, student attitudes toward science, student creativity, and student perceptions regarding their science classrooms. Participants…