Safety education is absent in the chemistry curriculum. This commentary discusses the consequences of the missing safety education for graduates and institutions that hire them. It suggests and discusses the application of the theory of Normalization of Deviance to explain why safety education is missing. It suggests ways to fix the shortcoming by…

A low-cost and portable colorimeter was constructed featuring a low-voltage programmable color light sensor-to-frequency converter, a CMOS 8-bit microcontroller, and an LCD display. The instrument has successfully facilitated the introduction and application of spectroscopy to groups of middle school, high school, and undergraduate students. A…

This study explored practices that Canadian soil scientists use to educate postsecondary students, K-12 students, and the general public. The most commonly used type of educational activities described by survey respondents, regardless of the settings and the type of target audience, were field-based hands-on activities. The other two commonly…

The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of the engineering design-based teaching process in primary school science course of classroom teacher canditates perceptions about the disciplines of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic). The study, pre-posttest single-group experimental design was used. The study group consisted of…

An ever-changing world of education has led to growing demand for teachers to remain competent educators. For school districts to enhance teacher effectiveness, professional development workshops must be tailored to the specific needs of educators. To further complicate the issue, in-service needs of teachers are ever growing and changing based on…

Introductory-level laboratory courses provide students with hands-on experience using the discipline's tools and theories. These courses often rely on recipe-based experiments due to the constraints of large enrollments, short lab periods, and the desire to minimize complexity. In addition, covering a breadth of topics can lead to a fragmented…

Following the pioneering work of Randy Garrison and colleagues, online teachers in the US and internationally see their discussion boards as communities of inquiry (CoI) which promote sustained communication and higher-level learning. The CoI approach to online discussions is based on John Dewey's conception of education in which teachers and…

Two 20-h modelling-based workshops focused on the explanation of thermally activated phenomena were held at the University of Palermo, Italy, during the Academic Year 2014-2015. One of them was conducted by applying an inquiry-based approach, while the other, still based on laboratory and modelling activities, was not focused on inquiry.…

The purpose of this study was to understand how the use of multiple representations (MR), during a sequence of lessons on the saponification reaction, can help students develop their cognitive structures. We examined (i) the effect of the teaching sequence with MR on the development of the students' cognitive structures and (ii) how, according to…

Background: This article describes the design and the evaluation of a student lab program on the topic of nanoscience and technology (NST), mainly focusing on Nanoscience and its applications. The program was designed for students in grades 8-10 and was part of a larger outreach program of the Collaborative Research Center 'Function by Switching'…

A summer workshop was offered to inner-city high school students to explore the sustainability of their consumer choices using a systems thinking model. Students learned about related environmental or health issues due to the manufacturing, use, or disposal of common household products. Then, in the laboratory, they performed experiments to…

Technical education programs in community colleges prepare students for many science and engineering-based jobs in the United States. An increasing number of technical education programs in community colleges are using online learning tools to teach courses. However, little is currently known about the ways these programs are integrating online…

Over the past 20 years research on reform efforts aimed at the chemistry laboratory has focused on different aspects of students' experiences including increasing content knowledge, improving student attitudes toward chemistry, incorporating inquiry activities, and providing students a hands-on experience related to the chemistry concepts learned…

Local schools are increasingly providing their students who are enrolled in an online course with an on-site facilitator as a means for increasing online pass rates. However, few studies have examined how online teachers and on-site facilitators work in conjunction to support online students. Successful on-site facilitators (n = 12) and online…

A participatory action research study conducted at the Arlitt Child Development Center, a laboratory preschool at the University of Cincinnati, used naturalistic inquiry to create a solution for addressing challenging behaviors within an early childhood developmental and constructivist framework. In focus groups facilitated by a school psychology…