There have been multiple calls to incorporate the teaching of scientific practices within science laboratory courses over the past decade. To accomplish this goal, changes must be made to the curriculum standards, instructional programs, and assessment-evaluation systems used in laboratory courses. One instructional program that can used in a…

To succeed in the information age, students need to learn to communicate their understanding of complex topics effectively. This is reflected in both educational standards and standardized tests. To improve their writing ability for highly structured domains like scientific explanations, students need feedback that accurately reflects the…

Research has shown significant relationships between students' epistemological beliefs and their approaches to learning. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between the scientific epistemological beliefs, science learning approaches, and the scientific inquiry skills of undergraduate students who took science courses by expanding the…

Access to authentic research is limited at the 7-12 science education level. At the same time, many local restoration projects would benefit from, but don't have access to a long-term system of monitoring. This project seeks to unite those two needs by developing a protocol for 7-12 classrooms to be able to participate in authentic research…

The study explored science teachers' perceptions of Scientific Investigations (SI) and their classroom practices in South Africa. An explanatory sequential design using qualitative and quantitative approaches was used. Qualitative data were collected first using interviews and classroom observations, followed by quantitative data using a…

This experiment introduces undergraduate organic chemistry students to analysis and interpretation of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra through characterization of postconsumer plastics. Students use FTIR spectra to identify and differentiate the common recyclable polymer resins #1-6: polyethylene terephthalate (PETE), polyethylene (HDPE…

In science education, there has been a sustained focus on supporting the emergence of science practices in K-12 and field-based settings. Recent work has elevated the integral role of emotion in sparking and sustaining such disciplinary practices, deepening the field's understanding of what is entailed in "doing" science. Yet even as we…

Undergraduate laboratory courses are essential to teaching core principles in STEM. This course, Quantitative Biological Methods, provides a unique approach to teaching molecular biology research techniques to students, in a laboratory that is delivered in a sequence that parallels standard biomedical research laboratory protocols. Students attend…

Mechanistic reasoning is a powerful form of reasoning central to scientific explanations. Despite mechanistic reasoning being an important dimension of scientific practice and a central dimension of science curricula, students face difficulties in developing such type of reasoning. Many authors have been proposing tools for supporting its…

The recent introduction of an online undergraduate equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) training workshop incorporating short authentic videos from a diverse range of voices is described. The training was designed to provide students with insights into how they can access support, act as allies, and respect diverse peers, preparing students…

This research was undertaken to improve the science process skills (SPS) and science literacy (SL) of primary school pre-service teachers with different family backgrounds in terms of parental education. It was planned with a quasi-experimental design with pretests and posttests in the framework of quantitative research methodology. Eighty-four…

Science process skills (SPSs) are one of the most important skills possessed by students in conducting scientific activities. Therefore, it is crucial for science teachers to understand and practice these skills. Considering the role of teachers in developing students' SPSs, the focus of this study is on developing pre-service science teachers'…

Students sometimes learn about a model of the "scientific method" that is linear and clear cut. While this approach may have pedagogical advantages, it does not reflect how science is often done in practice. The Experimental Modeling Framework (EMF) describes the complex and iterative process of experimentation in the domain of physics,…

Background Improving scientific reasoning and argumentation are central aims of science education. Because of their complex nature, self-regulation is important for successful scientific reasoning. This study provides a first attempt to investigate how scientific reasoning and self-regulation processes conjointly impact argumentation quality.…

We developed and field-tested an active learning exercise designed to provide biology students with the opportunity to consider key aspects of the nature of science as a method of inquiry, particularly the roles of observation and inference in the development of scientific explanations and how scientists deal with uncertainty. In the activity…