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Jianqiang Ye; Yubin Zheng; Min Zhan; Yiling Zhou; Long Li; Dimei Chen – Research in Science Education, 2025
Organic chemistry is challenging for novices as it involves a large quantity of organic reactions. Effective learning requires not only profound theoretical knowledge but also the ability to reason about causal mechanisms. This study investigated pre-service chemistry teachers' mechanistic reasoning and the implicit cognitive process. Participants…
Descriptors: Organic Chemistry, Science Instruction, Preservice Teachers, Science Teachers
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Tufan Inaltekin; Tolga Saka – Journal of Baltic Science Education, 2025
In science, one of the most crucial representations for constructing meaning about physical events is graphs. The first graph students encounter in science class is the constant velocity motion graph. Therefore, examining students' understanding of structuring and interpreting these graphs for the relationship between distance, time, and velocity…
Descriptors: Science Instruction, Graphs, Motion, Scientific Concepts
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Phil Seok Oh; Heesoo Ha – Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025
Current science education reform efforts have identified sensemaking as an important goal of science education, and science education researchers have studied what constitutes the sensemaking process in the science classroom. Because the studies of sensemaking are loosely linked to those of scientific reasoning, however, they have provided little…
Descriptors: Role of Education, Science Education, Scientific Concepts, Scientific Literacy
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Joelyn de Lima; Tammy M. Long – CBE - Life Sciences Education, 2023
Evolution is foundational to understanding biology, yet learners at all stages have incomplete and incorrect ideas that persist beyond graduation. Contextual features of prompts (e.g., taxon of organism, acquisition vs. loss of traits, etc.) have been shown to influence both the learning process and the ideas students express in explanations of…
Descriptors: Evolution, Biology, Human Body, Animals
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Clare G.-C. Franovic; Keenan Noyes; Jon R. Stoltzfus; Christina V. Schwarz; Tammy M. Long; Melanie M. Cooper – Journal of Chemical Education, 2023
There is emerging recognition that mechanistic reasoning about scientific phenomena as well as developing an interdisciplinary understanding of science are valuable for student success. Our team of chemistry, biology, and teacher education researchers strives to support students in their interdisciplinary learning and engage them in causal…
Descriptors: Undergraduate Students, Chemistry, Biology, Science Instruction
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Stephens, A. Lynn; Roderick, Steven; Shin, Namsoo; Damelin, Daniel – International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 2023
An ability to engage in system thinking is necessary to understand complex problems. While many pre-college students use system modeling tools, there is limited evidence of student reasoning about causal relationships that interact in diverging and converging chains, and how these affect system behavior. A chemistry unit on gas phenomena was…
Descriptors: Chemistry, Science Instruction, High School Students, Scientific Concepts
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Lu, Alexander; Dong, Vy M. – Journal of Chemical Education, 2022
We present two simple classroom exercises designed to explain challenging concepts in conformation for students beginning organic chemistry. These macroscopic demonstrations serve as analogies to bridge students' understanding of flat two-dimensional drawings to real three-dimensional molecules. In the first demonstration, an apple is drawn from…
Descriptors: Class Activities, Logical Thinking, Scientific Concepts, Organic Chemistry
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Gur Arie Livni Alcasid; Michal Haskel-Ittah – Research in Science Education, 2025
Mechanistic explanations, aiming to disclose details of entities and their activities, employ the act of unpacking which, inherently and paradoxically, produces explanatory gaps--pieces of undisclosed, undetailed mechanistic information. These gaps, termed explanatory black boxes, are often perceived as counterproductive to the teaching of…
Descriptors: Science Instruction, Science Teachers, Biology, Teacher Attitudes
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Ebba Koerfer; Bor Gregorcic – Physical Review Physics Education Research, 2024
Statistical mechanics has received limited attention in physics education research and remains a relatively underrepresented topic even in research on upper-division physics courses. The purpose of this study was to explore potential challenges that physics students encounter when they solve statistical mechanics problems in groups. Adopting a…
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Mechanics (Physics), Barriers
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Gürses, Ahmet; Sahin, Elif; Barin, T. Barkin; Günes, Kübra – Education Quarterly Reviews, 2022
Analogies can be powerful teaching tools because they can make new material intelligible to students by comparing it to material that is already familiar. In assisting students to understand chemistry concepts, teachers occasionally use analogies. These analogies are believed to help the students to structure the new knowledge and they are…
Descriptors: Teaching Methods, Logical Thinking, Thermodynamics, Constructivism (Learning)
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Slominski, Tara; Christensen, Warren M.; Buncher, John B.; Momsen, Jennifer – CBE - Life Sciences Education, 2023
Contextual features of assessments can influence the ideas students draw from and the ways they assemble knowledge. We used a mixed-methods approach to explore how surface-level item context impacts student reasoning. In study 1, we developed an isomorphic survey to capture student reasoning about fluid dynamics, a crosscutting phenomenon, in two…
Descriptors: Context Effect, Science Instruction, Physics, Logical Thinking
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Tugba Yuksel; Lynn A. Bryan; Alejandra J. Magana – International Journal of Science Education, 2024
Quantum physics forms the basis for exciting new technologies, including quantum computers, quantum encryption, and quantum entanglement. The advancement of science and technology highlights the importance of mastering quantum physics and its applications, not only at the college level but also as early as high school. In this multiple case study,…
Descriptors: Undergraduate Students, Models, Quantum Mechanics, Science Instruction
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Reiss, Michael J.; Winterbottom, Mark – School Science Review, 2023
The third edition of the ASE's "Teaching Secondary Biology" sets out a vision for teaching and learning biology. Learning biology is not about learning the contents of a textbook. It is about conceptual learning, learning what it means to do biology and learning what it means to be a biologist. Our hope is that "Teaching Secondary…
Descriptors: Science Instruction, Secondary School Science, Biology, Scientific Concepts
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Zac Patterson; Lin Ding – Physical Review Physics Education Research, 2025
Conceptual approaches to contemporary physics topics pose many learning challenges. One factor influencing knowledge integration is a student's epistemic framing. Epistemic frames provide a context within which a particular situation is perceived, interpreted, and judged. The objective of this study is to explore secondary students' framings…
Descriptors: Secondary School Students, Physics, Science Instruction, Quantum Mechanics
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Constantine Kapetanakis; Samantha Conflitti; Sarah Abdo; L. Kate Wright; Dina L. Newman – Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 2024
Analogies are used to make abstract topics meaningful and more easily comprehensible to learners. Incorporating simple analogies into STEM classrooms is a fairly common practice, but the analogies are typically generated and explained by the instructor for the learners. We hypothesize that challenging learners to create complex, extended analogies…
Descriptors: Critical Thinking, Logical Thinking, Skill Development, Thinking Skills
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