This study investigates associations between two types of control beliefs--self-efficacy for self-regulation and implicit theories of willpower--and undergraduate biology students' (N = 535) behavioral self-regulation and performance. Findings suggest that self-efficacy is the more proximally related motive for students to engage in academic…

Grades in introductory STEM courses can impact intrinsic motivation (IM) and self-efficacy (SE). We used an exploratory approach to examine trends in grades and how IM and SE impact students' grades. It is known that most first-generation (FG) college students are from underrepresented backgrounds (URM), and that these students are least likely to…

The Science Motivation Questionnaire II (SMQ II) was developed to measure aspects of student motivation in college-level science courses. Items on the SMQ II are structured such that the word 'science' can be replaced with any discipline title (e.g., chemistry) to produce a discipline-specific measure of student motivation. Since its original…

In this paper we report on the findings of a study on Advanced Level Chemistry students' approaches to investigations from a learning perspective in the Zimbabwean educational context. Students' approaches to investigations are inextricably linked to the quality of learning and performances in these practical activities. An explanatory…

Anxiety can impact overall performance and persistence in college. Student response systems (SRSs), real-time active-learning technologies used to engage students and gauge their understanding, have been shown to elicit anxiety for some students. Kahoot! is an SRS technology that differs from others in that it involves gamification, the use of…

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the education system worldwide, which was forced to respond with a sudden shift to distance learning. While successful distance teaching requires careful thinking, planning, and the development of technological and human resources, there was no time for preparation in the current situation. Various…

This paper reports on the results from administering a modified version of the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ) to middle school students and preservice science teachers in Norway. Ranking tasks formed a key part of the instrument, and we detail a new method for analyzing ranking task data. One of our main findings was that even after…

Clickers are often used as an active learning tool in face-to-face classes to enhance student engagement and assess student learning. In this article we share the variety of ways that we use clicker questions to promote deliberate practice in large science courses. Deliberate practice is the use of specifically structured exercises that develop…

Technology in college classrooms has gone from being an enhancement to the learning experience to being something expected by both instructors and students. This design-based research investigation takes technology one step further, putting the tools used to teach directly in the hands of students. The study examined the affordances and…

It was planned to introduce online pre-laboratory session activities to a first-year undergraduate physics laboratory course to encourage a minimum level of student preparation for experiments outside the laboratory environment. A group of 16 and 17 year old laboratory work-experience students were tasked to define and design a pre-laboratory…

There is a tendency for lecture-based instruction in large introductory science courses to strongly focus on the delivery of discipline-specific technical terminology and fundamental concepts, sometimes to the detriment of opportunities for application of learned knowledge in evidence-based critical-thinking activities. We sought to improve…

Biology I is a required course for many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and is often their first college-level laboratory experience. The replacement of the traditional face-to-face laboratory experience with virtual laboratories could influence students' content knowledge, motivation to learn biology, and overall…

In flipped classrooms, lectures, which are normally delivered in-class, are assigned as homework in the form of videos, and assignments that were traditionally assigned as homework, are done as learning activities in class. It was hypothesized that the effectiveness of the flipped model hinges on a student's desire and ability to adopt a…

This study aimed to determine the changes in understanding about the nature of science (NOS) and conceptual values of 28 elementary science teacher candidates who engaged in the instruction of the nature and history of science (NHOS). A values scale was used to determine the values of science teacher candidates in six areas of the conceptual…

The objective of this study was to characterise the changes in the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) about electric fields of two Colombian physics teachers (Isabel and Alejandro) at the high school level (pupils of ages 17-19), the emotions and their relationship with PCK. The research was conducted during two consecutive years, before and…