Models that illustrate renal fluid dynamics are scarce within the secondary and postsecondary landscape. This work summarizes the efforts to build a rudimentary model renal corpuscle (MRC) that can be employed in a problem-based learning exercise or demonstration to teach basic principles of renal physiology to secondary students or…

Scientific publications, textbooks, and online educational resources rely on illustrated figures to communicate about molecular structures like genes and chromosomes. Published figures have the potential to shape how learners think about these molecular structures and their functions, so it is important that figures are clear, unambiguous, and…

The "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education" report establishes a set of five core concepts that students should build an understanding of throughout college biology programs. While student conceptual understanding is well studied in 4-year contexts, there are minimal studies in community college contexts. Community…

Textbook anatomy depiction of the hepatobiliary tree is present in 55%-62% of the population. Misidentification of hepatobiliary variants can lead to bile duct injuries in cholecystectomies. A better understanding of variants has been cited as a key area for improvement in anatomy education. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness…

This research investigated the effect of project-based learning (PjBL) on students' conceptual understanding of mechanics. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental research design was conducted with 50 ninth-grade students at Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Kazakhstan. We used the force concept inventory test to measure students' conceptual…

Clearly defining and clarifying crosscutting concepts (CCCs) helps students to apply them as thinking tools or lenses to understand disciplinary core ideas and science and engineering practices. This study identified three characteristics of the sub-concepts of CCCs: conceptual, superordinate, and common across disciplines, and explored a way…

This study investigates undergraduate microwave engineering students' conceptions of electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation using a phenomenographic approach. An in-depth semi-structured interview was used to examine a cohort of 15 students' experience of EM wave propagation in the context of microwave engineering. Result of the study revealed five…

A growing body of empirical studies in the field of early childhood science education suggests play as a dynamic means to engage young children with the natural world and create the conditions for children's learning and development in science. Although our understanding of play in science as an activity deepens, we still do not know much about…

This article is about the pedagogical potentials and challenges of co-drawing in science education. It builds on video data from three primary school classrooms where students worked in pairs to draw some science content on a shared paper. Grounded in a sociomaterialist approach, we analyse how students, drawing tools, paper templates, visual…

In this study, digital storytelling refers to narrating linear stories using multimedia. Specifically, the study focuses on educational digital stories created by combining multimedia elements to understand and interpret a phenomenon related to a specific subject area, such as natural sciences, mathematics, arts, etc. We claim that digital…

Ferrocene is an organometallic compound widely incorporated into undergraduate organic and inorganic chemistry curricula. Traditional laboratory experiments typically involve the Friedel-Crafts acylation of ferrocene to produce acetylferrocene or diacetylferrocene, with a purification method focused on column chromatography. To expand the…

Introduction: The environment, which is the habitat of all living things and contains the natural resources necessary to sustain life, is an issue of vital importance for humanity. Methods: This study was conducted to examine the conceptual structures that form the concept of "environment" in the minds of 8th grade students and to reveal…

To inform strategies for providing effective student support in the early stages of a chemistry degree programme, a longitudinal study of first year chemistry student confidence levels in core topics was conducted at three points over a one-year period. A student-staff team co-created a confidence matrix that was used as the basis of the study.…

The purpose of this case study, informed by a Lakatosian perspective, is to identify how an alternative conception that originates in present learning but is related directly to subsequent learning contexts can be constructed. Before the study, one of the authors found by accident that a student who had learned about Avogadro's principle and…

How anthropomorphic reasoning functions in scientific thinking has been a controversial topic. There is evidence it is problematic as well as evidence it can play productive roles, for scientists and for students. In science education, however, the prevailing view remains that it is an impediment. For this study, we have chosen examples of what we…