Articulating the rules, roles, and values that are expected of undergraduate researchers is important as we strive to create a more accessible path into the scientific community. Rules refer to skills required of scientists, roles refer to behaviors consistent with the expectations of a scientist, and values refer to beliefs of the scientific…

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) in science and engineering offer a number of positive outcomes to the students who are able to participate, including increased retention, clarified career goals, and development of problem-solving skills. There have been a number of calls for research that investigates the experiences, identity, and…

In a sample of 455 Taiwanese upper-secondary school students, latent variable structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships between beliefs about knowledge in science, beliefs about justification for knowing in science, and justification of knowledge claims concerning science encountered on the Internet. Results…

Prior research shows that undergraduates tend to identify more strongly with the field of science after participating in scientific research. However, mediators that might account for this association are not well understood. In the current study, we propose that science self-efficacy may serve this mediational function. Specifically, data from a…

One barrier to the adoption of evidenced-based teaching practices may be that faculty do not see teaching as an important part of their identities as professionals. Graduate school is a key time for professional identity development, and currently we know little about how doctoral students develop identities as college teachers. In this…

Preparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non-normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting…

Evolutionary theory is central to biology, and scientifically accurate evolution instruction is promoted within national and state standards documents. Previous literature has identified students' epistemological beliefs as potential predictors of evolution acceptance. The present work seeks to explore more directly how student views of evolution…

A large body of research has examined students' conceptions of evolution and their relationships to acceptance of evolution. Proficiency in statistical and probabilistic reasoning has long been considered to be an essential feature of evolutionary reasoning, yet almost no empirical work has explored these putative connections. The RaPro…

We conducted a mixed-methods study of matriculation issues for African-Americans in the STEM pipeline. The project compares the experiences of students currently majoring in science (N?=?304) with the experiences of those who have succeeded in earning science degrees (N?=?307). Participants were surveyed about their pipeline experiences based on…

The purpose of this mixed-method study was to investigate the changes in high school students' perceptions of fluency with innovative technologies (IT) and the levels of students' scientific inquiry abilities as a result of engaging students in long-term scientific research projects focusing on community-based environmental issues. Over a span of…

The goal of this study is to bring the voices of African American boys front and center in science education research in an effort to strengthen our understandings of their experiences of school and science. Using an interpretivist perspective within a narrative inquiry approach, I focus on the student and science-student identities two African…

In this paper, we utilize a discursive psychological approach to further explore agency and structure in science education research. The aim of our research is to understand how we can provide opportunities for marginalized students in preservice elementary teacher education in an Australian university to become agentic concerning environmental…

Set in the context of today's globalized approaches to curriculum reform, the purpose of this study was to compare the teaching and learning of science in Chinese and Australian Grade 6 classrooms. A conceptual framework based on notions of culture and socioeconomic status informed the research design. Case study participants were three teachers…

This quasi-experimental, mixed methods study examined the transfer of a well-established pedagogical strategy, Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL), to an online workshop environment (cPLTL) in a general chemistry course at a research university in the Midwest. The null hypothesis guiding the study was that no substantive differences would emerge between…

This study uses a new-to-educational-research methodology, based on the legal process, to build a case that U.S. students have been largely ignored in discussion and planning for their own, presumed futures. A variety of evidence, from two large and distinct data bases, is drawn together to show: (1) students perceive their classrooms in ways…