Organic chemistry is a required course sequence for many STEM students. However, research indicates that organic chemistry reaction mechanisms are especially challenging for students due to a mixture of underlying conceptual difficulties, the process-oriented thinking inherent to the discipline, and the representations commonly used to depict…

Understanding molecular processes and coordinating the various activities across levels of organization in biological systems is a complicated task, yet many curricular guidelines indicate that undergraduate students should master it. Employing mechanistic reasoning can facilitate describing and investigating biological phenomena. Biofilms are an…

Feedback loop reasoning is an essential part of systems thinking, which includes the analysis and description of system behaviour and regulative measures. In feedback loops, every change can simultaneously represent a cause and an effect. Research on reasoning in feedback loops is limited to investigating students' existing mental models. This…

Emphasizing stoichiometry appears to be a norm of introductory chemistry courses. In this longitudinal and mixed-methods study, we examined how the emphasis on stoichiometry in assessments of introductory chemistry impacted educational equity and student learning. Using quantitative methods, we identified mole and stoichiometric conversions as two…

This case study describes how our research team conducted the qualitative think-aloud approach (or cognitive pretesting) to obtaining cognitive validity evidence for a biology inference-making and reasoning measure for undergraduate students. The main goal of our work was to gather high-quality student think-aloud data of reasoning while they were…

A growing body of scholarly work indicates that student performance on physics problems stems from many factors, including relevant conceptual understanding. However, in contexts in which significant conceptual difficulties have been documented via research, it can be difficult to pinpoint and isolate such factors because students' written and…

We review and extend existing frameworks on modeling to develop a new framework that describes model-based reasoning in introductory and upper-division physics laboratories. Constructing and using models are core scientific practices that have gained significant attention within K-12 and higher education. Although modeling is a broadly applicable…

This study describes the possible variations of thought experiments in terms of their nature, purpose, and reasoning resources adopted during the solution of conceptual physics problems. A phenomenographic research approach was adopted for this study. Three groups of participants with varying levels of physics knowledge--low, medium, and high…

Imagistic reasoning appears to be a critical strategy for learning and problem solving in the sciences, particularly chemistry; however, little is known about how students use imagistic reasoning on genuine assessment tasks in chemistry. The present study employed a think-aloud protocol to explore when and how students use imagistic reasoning for…

This study explored the effects of alternative forms of argumentation on undergraduates' physics solutions in introductory calculus-based physics. A two-phase concurrent mixed methods design was employed to investigate relationships between undergraduates' written argumentation abilities, conceptual quality of problem solutions, as well…

In order to understand how students approach multi-variate problems, we report a study on the cues organic chemistry graduate students perceive from mechanism tasks, and the reasoning processes induced by those cues. We used the think-aloud protocol in interviews with sixteen graduate students as they worked on two types of tasks: one, in which…

Background: Scholars and education reformers alike have re-ignited the importance of teaching science in the elementary grades of the public schools of America by disputing the traditional belief that K-4 learners are too young to learn and function within the nature of science learning and experimentation. The consideration rests on the findings…

A qualitative case study was conducted to investigate the understanding of the limiting reagent concept and the strategies used by five Year 11 students when solving four reaction stoichiometry problems. Students' written problem-solving strategies were studied using the think-aloud protocol during problem-solving, and retrospective verbalisations…

This study examined the impact of two epistemic commitments on the quality of college students' scientific reasoning in the domain of hydrostatics. These were the commitment to the consistency of theory with prior knowledge and commitment to the consistency of theory with evidence. Participants were 12 sophomore science majors enrolled in a large…

Subcellular processes like meiosis are frequently problematic for learners because they are complex and, except for the extent that they can be observed under a light microscope, occur outside of our direct experience. More detailed characterization of what underlies various degrees of student understanding of a process is required to more fully…