Research over the last decade has indicated that active learning and student-centered instruction lead to better learning outcomes in undergraduate biology courses than traditional methods such as lecturing. This shift in pedagogical approach has been applied to both high-enrollment lecture-based courses as well as smaller laboratory courses. In…

In this paper, we present the design of a teacher training sequence, emphasizing supporting pre-service teachers to reflect on their knowledge, skills, and emotions experienced when engaging in scientific practices. We consider such reflections being crucial in initial teacher training because they can make pre-service teachers aware of the…

In this design case, we describe our work to develop a gameful learning design for use in an introductory, undergraduate biology laboratory course for science majors. Our design team included three university-based mathematics and science educators and a biologist responsible for the management of curriculum and instruction in the course under…

Science inquiry challenges students to synthesize various ideas about complex phenomena into coherent explanations. It also challenges teachers, who must guide their diverse students' developing understanding during student-paced investigations. We describe the Idea Manager, a suite of web-based, curriculum-integrated tools that (a) guides…

The first author re-entered the middle grades classroom to teach a new National Science Foundation (NSF) physical science curriculum that was designed to foster conceptual change through a scientific approach. The curriculum design met the need and call for reform in science education through its focus on inquiry, evidence-based reasoning, peer…