With the goal of producing scientifically literate citizens who are able to make informed decisions and reason critically when science intersects with their everyday lives, the National Research Council (NRC) has produced two recent documents that call for a new approach to K-12 science education that is based on scientific practices, crosscutting…

Development of skills in bioscience undergraduates is seen as desirable by academic staff, students and employers, and this is reflected across most degree programmes. However, providing the opportunity for students to practise skills may alone be insufficient for their development. With an evident discrepancy between the skills expected of…

The split-root technique produces a plant with two equal root masses. Traditionally, the two root masses of the single plant are cultivated in adjacent pots with or without roots from competitors for the purpose of elucidating habitat preferences. We have tailored this technology for the classroom, adjusting protocols to match resources and time…

Students come to class with diverse experiences and backgrounds, and the author tries to take advantage of that diversity in the plant unit. Every year the author secures the help of the two or three green thumbs or green-thumb wannabes to help take care of the collection of plants she brings from home in the fall. The author also invites students…

This article presents a new instructional model called Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) that can be used in undergraduate college chemistry laboratory courses. ADI is designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop their own method to generate data, to carry out investigations, use data to answer research questions, write, and be more…

These spectroscopic experiments investigate polarity and concentration effects on self-association behavior in N-methylacetamide. Inquiry can be limited to the concentration dependence of hydrogen bonding and estimation of dimerization constant (NMR studies) or to the effect of solvent polarity on extent of hydrogen bonding (IR studies). The…

A five-session laboratory project was designed to familiarize or increase the laboratory proficiency of biology students and others with techniques and instruments commonly used in molecular biology research laboratories and industries. In this project, the EZ-Tn5 transposon is used to generate and screen a large number of cells transformed with…

This activity presents an option for covering biology content while engaging students in an investigation that highlights the spirit of Halloween. Students are engaged in the story line and have fun trying to solve the mystery kidnapping by using science skills to examine the evidence and eliminate some ghoulish suspects. (Contains 1 figure.)

Young people playing "Halo" or "World of Warcraft" might not realize it, but they are working on the prototypes for a future generation of student tests. The increasing popularity of video and computer games may cause concern among parents, who fear their children are spending too much time on them. However, educators and researchers increasingly…

Reactive oxygen species such as singlet oxygen have been a major focus of research in medicine. The effect of singlet oxygen on sterols within biological membranes is becoming increasingly more important. Ergosterol, a vitamin D precursor, is one such sterol. The benzoylation of ergosterol and subsequent reaction with singlet oxygen to form an…

This study was conducted with 98 prospective science teachers, who were composed of 50 prospective teachers that had participated in problem-solving applications and 48 prospective teachers who were taught within a more researcher-oriented teaching method in science laboratories. The first aim of this study was to determine the levels of…

School gardening has become increasingly popular as a context for learning in which children construct new knowledge, learn cultural and societal values related to ecological awareness, and develop and practice authentic or real-world skills (Blair, 2009; Bowker & Tearle, 2007). The present research was a longitudinal case study of children's…

Current educational reform calls for increased integration between science and mathematics to overcome the shortcomings in students' quantitative skills. Data Nuggets (free online resource, http://datanuggets.org) are worksheets that bring data into the classroom, repeatedly guiding students through the scientific method and making claims…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of argument-driven inquiry (ADI) based laboratory instruction on the academic achievement, argumentativeness, science process skills, and argumentation levels of pre-service science teachers in the General Physics Laboratory III class. The study was conducted with 79 pre-service science teachers.…

Video analysis, using the program Tracker (Open Source Physics), in the educational process introduces a new creative method of teaching physics and makes natural sciences more interesting for students. This way of exploring the laws of nature can amaze students because this illustrative and interactive educational software inspires them to think…