The National Research Council's "Framework for K-12 Science Education" (2011) presents a new vision for science education that calls for the integration of the three dimensions of science learning: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. Unlike previous conceptions of science learning that…

This study explores the factors that contribute to evangelical pastors becoming bioethically confident leaders of their congregation. This basic qualitative study invited twenty-five pastors who have a M.Div. or similar seminary degree to share their experiences of theological education, congregational ministry, and their views of pastoral moral…

In this research, the self-reported fear and disgust toward animals of preservice biology teachers and their willingness to incorporate live animals into their teaching were assessed with a questionnaire. An entire generation of pre-service biology teachers (N = 128) participated in this research. The results show that students are mostly afraid…

In recent decades, several countries have made an effort to increase the enrollment rates and performance of students in science and mathematics by means of mandatory, rigorous course work, which is often referred to as curricular intensification (CI). However, there is a lack of research on intended and unintended effects of CI reforms on…

The Next Generation Science Standards call for the integration of engineering into mainstream science education, yet challenges arise for teachers unfamiliar with engineering-based pedagogy or concepts. The INSPIRES Hemodialysis educative curriculum may address such challenges by explicitly integrating all areas of STEM in an authentic learning…

This study offers curriculum developers, teachers, and science education researchers a fine-grained profile on strengths and weaknesses in specific science domains and topics. The study involved a representative sample of 3844 Norwegian pupils in grade 8. Their responses on 216 TIMSS items in 18 topics from 4 science domains were modelled in a…

The study is designed to examine the predictive power of Saudi-admission criteria for student performance in an introductory biology course. It focuses on the second semester at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. The study addresses whether the General Aptitude test (GAT), the Scholastic Achievement Admission Test (SAAT), and…

This study seeks to examine the importance of sleep health in an Irish urban school context of high poverty. It adopts an action research approach to conduct small-scale research with a non-probability sample of twenty-four sixth class pupils, to ascertain whether a five-week school and home based intervention can improve; sleep behaviours among…

Teachers' beliefs about science teaching vary greatly. To analyze the relationships between teachers' beliefs and other variables related to teaching and learning, researchers can use the following two options: single item belief models or belief scales. In this study, we compared both models in the context of teachers' beliefs regarding teaching…

St. Olaf College recently restructured its Summer Bridge Program (SBP) course for incoming low-income (LI) and first-generation (FG) college students from a non-major biology course, "Issues in Biology," to an interdisciplinary "Explorations in Science" course. Two significant changes were made with the intention of giving…

After decades of rapid evolution and groundbreaking research, the field of early intervention can be understood within a common framework: the Developmental Systems Approach (DSA). Created by a highly influential leader in the field, Michael Guralnick, this evidence-based, relationship-oriented, family-centered framework focuses on strengthening…

Empirical Education Inc. is the independent evaluator of SRI International's 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant called Redesigning Secondary Courses to Improve Academic Outcomes for Adolescents with Disabilities and Other Underperforming Adolescents. The goal of the grant is to develop "Enhanced Units" that combine…

A large body of literature has explored the impact of compassion fatigue on individuals who work within various helping professions. Few studies, however, have sought to understand its impact on educators, more specifically student affairs professionals. As the number of students attending college with diagnosed mental health issues, and…

In this design case, we describe our work to develop a gameful learning design for use in an introductory, undergraduate biology laboratory course for science majors. Our design team included three university-based mathematics and science educators and a biologist responsible for the management of curriculum and instruction in the course under…

An understanding of how genomics information, including information about risk for common, multifactorial disease, can be used to promote personal health (personalized medicine) is becoming increasingly important for the American public. We undertook a quantitative content analysis of commonly used high school textbooks to assess how frequently…