Collaborative argumentation in education, where students work together to construct and critique arguments, is an important social practice in many disciplines and can also develop conceptual understanding. This article addresses the evolution of my research agenda on collaborative argumentation from just scaffolding the generation of…

The aldol condensation reaction is one of the many synthesis reactions carried out in second semester organic chemistry laboratories. This reaction was integrated into a novel experiment requiring students to synthesize dibenzalace tone derivatives using the crossed-aldol condensation by reacting different types of benzaldehyde derivatives with…

Students often struggle to make interdisciplinary connections and cite a lack of opportunity to make such connections. To address this issue, we are developing activities aligned with the framework of three-dimensional learning that provide students with opportunities to make connections between chemistry concepts and biological phenomena. Here,…

A goal of the New Zealand Curriculum is to equip students with the skills needed to use science critically and responsibly as citizens. One method of achieving this is through the participation in citizen science. Measuring the learning outcomes of citizen science experiences therefore, is important to ensure that development of science learning…

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest challenges faced for a very long time. However, it has also presented educators with novel opportunities for teaching, none more so than in science. There are the obvious links between COVID-19 and the body of scientific knowledge that curriculum designers think educators should help students to…

In this paper, we explored the scientific literacy of a general sample of the Slovak adult population and examined factors that might help or inhibit scientific reasoning, namely the content of the problems. In doing so, we also verified the assumption that when faced with real-life scientific problems, people do not necessarily apply…

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…