A biochemical molecular modeling project on heme proteins suitable for an introductory Biochemistry I class has been designed with a 2-fold objective: i) to reinforce the correlation between protein three-dimensional structure and function through a discovery oriented project, and ii) to introduce students to the fields of bioinorganic and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the types of questions that students ask during the learning of chemistry; discuss the role of students' questions in the process of constructing knowledge, and investigate the relationship between students' questions, approaches to learning, and learning styles. Design/methodology/approach: The…

This paper describes briefly the development and key features of one of the major context-based courses for upper high school students, Salters Advanced Chemistry. It goes on to consider the research evidence on the impact of the course, focusing on teachers' views, and, in particular, on students' affective and cognitive responses. The research…

In 1986, Lake Nyos, a volcanic lake in Cameroon, released a huge amount of carbon dioxide gas, killing over 1,700 people in the surrounding area. This case study, developed for use in a limnology or aquatic biology course, explores that event, introducing students to concepts relating to lake formation, thermal stratification, and dissolved gases.…

This paper describes the author's experience of designing and teaching an interdisciplinary course titled "Light", in collaboration with a visual artist. The goals of the course, texts used, laboratory work, art studio work, and other course activities are discussed with an emphasis on how light was used as a theme to make connections between…

This article takes Anderson's (1999) "code of the street" as the context for studying science learning in an inner city American public school. It is proposed that a socio-cultural model of mind can help to explain how students in an urban chemistry class negotiate contradictory cultural codes. This analysis includes a consideration of…

First-year chemistry classes typically comprise of a mixture of majors and non-majors. Reports in the literature suggest that students have lower self-efficacy for subjects outside their intending major. Here we report on research that examines changes in chemistry students' chemistry self-efficacy throughout their first year of chemistry study at…

Three experiments assessed the contributions of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and frequency to visual word recognition. Three databases were created from electronic journals in chemistry, psychology and geology in order to identify technical words that are extremely frequent in each discipline but acquired late in life. In Experiment 1, psychologists…

This study investigated associations between teacher-student interaction and students' attitudes towards chemistry among 497 tenth grade students from three independent schools in Singapore. Analyses supported the reliability and validity of a 48-item version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). Statistically significant gender…

This article describes a chemical-processing program at Saginaw Career Complex in Saginaw, Michigan. The program is preparing 42 11th- and 12th-graders to work as chemical-processing operators or technicians by the time they graduate from high school. It was developed in partnership with the Saginaw Career Complex--one of 51 centers in the state…

A research writing course was developed to prepare chemistry majors to conduct and report on their capstone research projects. The course guides students through a multistep process of preparing a literature review and research proposal. Students learn how to identify and avoid plagiarism, critically read and summarize a scientific article,…

A laboratory experiment is presented for the upper-level undergraduate physical chemistry curriculum in which the ternary phase diagram of water, 1-propanol and n-heptane is measured using proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The experiment builds upon basic concepts of NMR spectral analysis, typically taught in the undergraduate…

The kinetics experiments on the ligand-C[subscript 60] exchange reactions on (dihapto-[60]fullerene) pentacarbonyl tungsten(0), ([eta][superscript 2]-C[subscript 60])W(CO)[subscript 5], form an educational activity for the inorganic chemistry laboratory that promotes graphical thinking as well as the understanding of kinetics, mechanisms, and the…

The oil drop experiment is considered an important contribution to the understanding of modern physics and chemistry. The objective of this investigation is to study and contrast the views and understanding with respect to the experiment of physicists or philosophers of science with those of authors of physics or chemistry textbooks and…

The purpose of this research study is to explore year 6, 8 & 11 (13, 15 and 17 years old respectively) Turkish pupils' views about the particulate nature of matter within the context of phase changes. About 300 pupils participated in the study. Questionnaires distributed to year 6, 8 and 11 pupils included 6-item open-ended questions about (a)…