This work reports the development and application of an analytical tool for the analysis of the formation of the scientific mind of students who took part in inquiry activities, based on the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard, in a Chemistry Club. For the construction of the analytical instrument, an extracurricular course was offered to first-year…

When teaching STEM courses, it is important to introduce state-of-the-art techniques. Students need to learn how to conduct experiments, analyse data and choose the most effective approaches to address meaningful situations. Here we present the assessment of the implementation of a structured inquiry-based activity aimed at teaching students about…

Background: Scientific thinking is an essential learning goal of science education and it can be fostered by inquiry learning. One important prerequisite for scientific thinking is procedural understanding. Procedural understanding is the knowledge about specific steps in scientific inquiry (e.g. formulating hypotheses, measuring dependent and…

The study sought to determine the effects of a pilot home-based science intervention on deaf and typically hearing children's conceptual understanding of science and their abilities to reason about and communicate their understanding (scientific enquiry skills). Data show that by age 5 years a science attainment gap exists between deaf children…

Inorganic Chemistry teaches students the concept that modifications to ligand structures, especially the donor properties, can have a drastic impact on the reactivity and stability of the metal complexes. Experiments described here reinforce this concept through the investigation of two tetradentate ligands derived from…

Developing and communicating evidence-based explanations are regarded as essential skills in 21st-century learning. These skills are central to the process of scientific argumentation. Hence, teachers must adhere to a student-centered pedagogy that cultivates students' understanding and argumentation skills. This study investigated the effects of…

Large introductory STEM courses have a reputation as "weed out" classes. These classes and their laboratory components are more often viewed by students as hurdles to overcome than valuable learning experiences relevant to their future careers. This perception especially impacts students who have a lower science identity and…

The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how engaging with a computer-supported collaborative knowledge-building environment helps students to develop a more sophisticated approach to scientific inquiry. A total of 52 undergraduate students took a course entitled "Introduction to Natural Sciences" that was based on…

This study examined the effects of school location on secondary school students' academic achievement in Physics based on the 5E learning cycle. The design of the study was a non-randomized pre-test, post-test control group quasi-experimental design. The population of the study was 66,345. Two hundred and forty-three students were sampled from six…

This modular, open-framework capstone course delves deeply into the synthesis, separation, and characterization of chiral molecules while teaching critical thinking and writing skills in a research-like setting within a fertile area for discovery. This course has evolved over 30 years and has been in its present form for 5 years at the time of…

The purposes of this research were 1) to develop student's scientific reasoning ability on the concept of light and image at a criterion of 70 using inquiry-based learning 5E with prediction observation and explanation strategy and 2) to compare students' scientific learning achievement on the concept of light and image after using inquiry-based…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate pre-service teachers' epistemologies of scientific models and their model formation in a model-based inquiry environment. Theoretical underpinnings of this paper are the following: Pre-service teachers' epistemologies of models are structured as their beliefs, can be reshaped by instructional experiences,…

As part of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (K-LS1-1), students are expected to develop an understanding of what living things need in order to live and grow. The lessons provided in this article help students understand the difference between living and nonliving things, and help them acquire important background knowledge to…

This article describes a new competence-oriented teaching rationale for a science course, developed in Germany through close cooperation between teachers and researchers, that seeks to improve scientific literacy at upper-level secondary school (ages 15-17). Its aim is to help students become independent and competent experimenters by combining…

One way to help students understand the scientific inquiry process, and how it applies in investigative research, is to involve them in scientific investigation. An example of this would be letting them come to their own understanding of how different variables (e.g., starting products) can affect outcomes (e.g., variable quality end products)…