Our goal as educators should be to help our students become well positioned to achieve future success. To develop effective strategies for accomplishing this objective, we must first understand the root causes of success. Thus, to best serve undergraduate students who are taking organic chemistry courses, we must understand the attributes that…

Non-science majors often lack motivation to take science courses required for their graduation, because these courses are usually taught in a lecture format and are disconnected from their everyday life and needs related to future careers. This two-phase action research, utilizing argumentative writing (AW) supported with online simulation, was…

In an effort to investigate the factors that lead to success in general chemistry, the Math-Up Skills Test (MUST) and common questions were used along with a student characteristic questionnaire. The MUST is a 20-item instrument to measure mathematics fluency, which is done without a calculator with a 15-min time limit. It has been shown as a…

In this study, adults naïve to organic chemistry drew stereoisomers of molecules and explained their drawings. From these explanations, we identified nine strategies that participants expressed during those explanations. Five of the nine strategies referred to properties of the molecule that were explanatorily "irrelevant" to solving the…

Over 40 years of research, concept maps have shown that they are beneficial for learning. However, much of this research has been conducted in laboratory settings. Although there are a few studies conducted in the classroom, there is little understanding of the instructional efficacy of using different types of concept maps. In a between-subjects…

In the United States, research on beginning science teachers provides little guidance regarding empirical minimum levels of discipline-specific science coursework for sufficient subject matter knowledge to teach science. Accordingly, in this study we analyzed secondary physical science teachers' science coursework for subject matter knowledge…

This study focused on how culture of peace and care for the planet earth variables predicted public coeducational secondary school students understanding of chemistry concepts in Anambra State of Nigeria. Three research questions guided the study. It was a survey and correlational research designs that involved sample of 180 drawn from six schools…

Chemical representations serve as a communication tool not only in exchanges between scientists but also in chemistry lessons. The goals of the present study were to measure the extent of student teachers' knowledge about chemical representations, focusing on chemical formulae and structures in particular, and to explore which factors related to…

One primary goal of many science courses is for students to learn creative problem-solving skills; that is, integrating concepts, explaining concepts in a problem context, and using concepts to solve problems. However, what science instructors see is that many students, even those having excellent SAT/ACT and Advanced Placement scores, struggle in…

Self-regulated learning skills (such as goal setting, organizing environment and time, seeking help and self-evaluation) are critical for students to be able to successfully and meaningful learn abstract concepts such as reduction, oxidation and electrolysis. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between self-regulated…

This study involves the development of a three-tier diagnostic test to measure high school students' understanding of states of matter concepts. The States of Matter Diagnostic Test (SMDT) is a 19-item three-tier diagnostic test consisting of three-tier items for assessing students' understanding of states of matter concepts. The SMDT was…

In this study, students' understanding of chemical changes was investigated in relation to four individual differences, related to logical thinking, field dependence/independence, convergence and divergence thinking. The study took place in Greece with the participation of students (n = 374) from three grades (8th, 10th and 12th grades) of…

This paper addresses a central need among people who are blind, access to inquiry-based science learning materials, which are addressed by few other learning environments that use assistive technologies. In this study, we investigated ways in which learning environments based on sound mediation can support science learning by blind people. We used…

This investigation focused on the effects of a treatment package including multiple exemplar training, time delay, and a self-directed learning prompt (KWHL chart) on students' ability to complete an inquiry lesson independently and generalize to untrained materials. Three middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities learned to…

The purpose of this study is to examine the difference in effectiveness between two on-line scientific learning programs--one with an argumentation component and one without an argumentation component--on students' scientific argumentation ability and conceptual change. A quasi-experimental design was used in this study. Two classes of 8th grade…