Community driven science has emerged as a way to engage participants in learning about science while giving them a deeper understanding of what it means to do science and identify as one who does science. This multi-method case study investigated how secondary science preservice teachers experienced a community driven science project within the…

Purpose: Scientific inquiry is a leading methodology that promotes science process skills to acquire scientific knowledge. There is evidence that primary school teachers have difficulties introducing inquiry-based activities in their classrooms. Hence, adequate teacher instruction in inquiry methodology is important to apply inquiry-based…

Many science departments encourage students to gain experience conducting research. However, finding ecological research projects that allow students to test a hypothesis in the field, over the relatively short time span of a semester, can be challenging. This article describes an inquiry-based research activity examining the influence that urban…

The first educational goal within scientific subjects is to acquire a sense of scientific literacy. In science lessons, methods of scientific inquiry provide the tools to achieve this. In this study, we based scientific inquiry on the SDDS-Model according to Klahr (2002). It is divided into three subareas: Search Hypothesis Space, Test Hypothesis,…

The purpose of this study is to examine the pre-service science teachers' views about learning science. Learning science means to use specialized conceptual language in reading and writing, reasoning and problem solving, daily life, and leading practical actions in the laboratory. This study was designed using Q-method. Ten pre-service science…

By focusing on food and a pervasive contaminant, this experiment engages student interest and effort while providing essential instruction and experience. As institutions are challenged by existing and emerging budgetary constraints, this experiment offers a determination approach employing commonly available instrumentation, the graphite furnace…

The ability to predict macroscopic properties using a compound's chemical structure is an essential idea for chemistry as well as other disciplines such as biology. In this study we investigate how different levels of interventions impact the components of students' explanations (claims, evidence, and reasoning) of structure-property…

Current research suggests that students often fail to focus equally on the three aspects of scientific argumentation (cognitive, epistemic, and social) when they are given an opportunity to engage in argumentation. This study examined student argumentation within a two-semester general chemistry laboratory sequence at East Carolina University to…

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of social network environment supported use of inquiry-based activities developed for the general chemistry laboratory course. Throughout the research, Attitude Towards General Chemistry Laboratory Scale and Science Process Skills Perception Scale were used as quantitative data gathering means and…

Many school practical activities focus on scientific methods such as hypothesis testing. Yet science is more than hypothesis testing: it includes other methods. This article presents a framework called 'Brandon's Matrix' that illustrates the diversity of scientific methods. The matrix has been used as part of Project Calibrate based at the…

Problem solving is a critical skill in many disciplines but is often a challenge for students to learn. To examine the processes both students and experts undertake to solve constructed-response problems in genetics, we collected the written step-by-step procedures individuals used to solve problems in four different content areas. We developed a…

Despite rapid changes in education, science classrooms will remain central forums where fragmented pieces of information are brought together to construct coherent knowledge as concepts and explanatory scientific storylines. There is limited work stressing the importance of the interplay between how content is communicated through pedagogical…

Agreement has become widespread that students' peer-to-peer argumentation should play a central role in science classrooms. Coordinating evidence with claims lies at the heart of a skilled argument. Yet evidence takes numerous forms that pose different interpretational challenges. Might cognitive limitations on the part of the individual student…

As green chemistry and engineering are being integrated into chemical processes in academia and industry, it becomes equally important to equip students with the relevant tools in the fields of sustainable chemistry and processes. In this context, continuous flow technology has been identified as one of the promising strategies. Herein, we…

The Bee the CURE is a novel course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that engages introductory biology students in DNA barcoding (DNA extraction, amplification, and bioinformatics) in partnership with the Tucson Bee Collaborative and the University of Arizona. The first iteration of this CURE taught at Pima Community College (PCC)…