Based on the largest multi-institutional observational study of undergraduate courses in the United States, this article describes exemplar teaching practices in engineering courses as an interdisciplinary science field. The College Educational Quality (CEQ) research project studied 587 courses in nine different U.S. colleges and universities.…

Students come into the classroom with a variety of background knowledge. Therefore, it is imperative that educators are able to help all students, regardless of their familiarity with the content. Since it can be challenging for some large enrollment classes to schedule recitation classes after lectures due to logistical constraints, this study…

This article is prepared as part of a "Practice Teaching in Science" course of a teacher education program aiming for developing prospective science teachers' teaching through inquiry-based instruction involving practices of science and active learning strategies. During the semester, student teachers are required to prepare four…

Gene expression is a highly theoretical concept that requires advanced reasoning skills to comprehend. Often, students receive instruction but fail to replace prior conceptions and thus do not benefit. In order to investigate the reason for this failure, we used a directed inquiry activity that uses concrete analogies in both majors and non-majors…

In this article, the authors report the results of a preliminary study of preservice teachers' ability to transfer their knowledge between their chemistry and Earth science courses. They examined whether they could answer the transfer questions correctly, how they explained their answers, and what information from their coursework they used to…

A recent survey of undergraduates at five schools across the United States indicates that many undergraduates feel that they have learned more about volcanic systems from Hollywood films and the popular media than they learned in the course of their precollegiate formal education. Scores on the Volcanic Concept Survey, an instrument designed to…

The authors teach upper-level science courses in cell biology, genetics, and biochemistry at a public, four-year "community university" that serves a demographically diverse population of traditional and nontraditional students. In this article, they describe some of the issues they have found to be particularly significant at their "community…

Determined effects of including supplementary readings designed to help students (N=233) relate physics to other fields. Both achievement and attitude were measured and significant improvement differences were found for both due to the treatment. Sources for the supplemental readings are cited. (JM)