Science classes should support students' development of scientific argumentation. While previous studies have analyzed argumentative texts, they have overlooked the ways in which other types of representations, including images, affect the production of such texts. In addition, studies into the use of visual images in science education have…

Over the last 25 years, both research literature and practice-oriented reports have claimed the need for improving the quality of undergraduate science education through linking research and teaching. Two manners of doing this are reported: undergraduate research and research-based courses. Although there are studies reporting benefits of…

Photosynthesis is the most effective cycle and sustainable natural process known in nature. Students who learn the subject of photosynthesis well will also make better sense of other issues such as environmental problems, the state of the atmosphere, greenhouse gases, climate changes, carbon footprints and conservation of forests. The aim of this…

The content of research methods courses in tertiary education, as revealed by popular textbooks, tends to focus largely on procedural aspects of research investigations. Although following proper procedures is essential for reaching valid and reliable outcomes, there is another attribute of good quality research that is often missing from research…

Mediocre science achievement and poor STEM graduation rates have prompted educators to reexamine their traditional focus on factual memorization and seek more effective instructional strategies. One such reform-oriented instructional practice is argumentative discourse. Argumentative discourse is student-driven, reasoned argumentation to promote…

Science education at the postsecondary level is essential to building a foundation for increasing support, participation, and interest in STEM occupations and careers. This current study uses a phenomenological approach to explore the lived experiences and perspectives of eight post-secondary science majors while enrolled in a university 200-level…

The study aimed to investigate pre-service early childhood teachers' (PSTs) collective pedagogical content knowledge (cPCK) and personal pedagogical content knowledge (pPCK) on the knowledge used in scientific process (SP) through the content representation (CoRe) design, interview, and knowledge used in scientific process (KSP) forms. The data…

Chemistry laboratory experiences provide students the opportunity to engage all three domains of learning: psychomotor, cognitive and affective. However, they are often stressful environments where students are expected to quickly learn new laboratory techniques, and collect data in a short amount of time. In principle, providing additional…

Community Service Learning (CSL) is an experiential learning approach that integrates community service into student projects and provides diverse learning opportunities to reduce interdisciplinary barriers. A semester-long chemistry curriculum with an integrated CSL intervention was implemented in a Canadian university to analyze the potential…

Justifications play a central role in argumentation, which is a core topic in school science education. This paper contributes to this field of research by presenting two studies in which we assess students' justifications for supporting or rejecting hypotheses in the physics lab based on self-collected, anomalous experimental data, which are…

Developing and communicating evidence-based explanations are regarded as essential skills in 21st-century learning. These skills are central to the process of scientific argumentation. Hence, teachers must adhere to a student-centered pedagogy that cultivates students' understanding and argumentation skills. This study investigated the effects of…

IUPAC nomenclature competence (INC)--defined as the ability to name chemical structures using IUPAC rules and draw structures from IUPAC names--is considered a foundational skill in the training of professional chemists. For students of non-European language background, the challenge of acquiring INC is often complicated by the fact that IUPAC…

The Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) is a popular instrument that measures the development of students' scientific reasoning skills. The instrument has a two-tier question design, which has led to multiple ways of scoring and interpretation. In this research, a method of pattern analysis was proposed and applied to analyze…

Out-of-school time (OST) science research can be an important part of a student's decision to pursue a career in STEM. This article reports on the findings from a transformative phenomenological study of what secondary students experience while completing OST scientific research. The purpose of this study was to use an emic research lens to better…

Civic engagement that leverages scientific concepts and reasoning is cited as a goal of science education, yet little research has attended to authentic enactments of science-related civic engagement that youth undertake currently. We shed light on this understudied area by investigating youth letters written to the (then unknown) future US…