Environmental scientists are increasing their capitalization on advancements in technology, computation, and data management. However, the extent of that capitalization is unknown. We analyzed the survey responses of 434 graduate students to evaluate the understanding and use of such advances in the environmental sciences. Two-thirds of the…

The process of photosynthesis is central to science curriculum at all levels. This article describes an inquiry-based laboratory investigation developed to explore the impact of light quality on photosynthesis and to connect this process to current research on harvesting solar energy, including bioenergy, artificial photosynthesis, and solar…

This paper reports on an attempt to investigate Turkish primary school students' interest in science by using their self-generated questions. We investigated students' interest in science by analyzing 1704 self-generated science-related questions. Among them, 826 questions were submitted to a popular science magazine called Science and Children.…

Retention of majors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a national problem that continues to be the focus of bridging and first-year experience programs. This article presents an innovative course, Scientific Thought and Methods, that targets students with low math placement scores. These students are not eligible for…

Background: In this era of rapid technical advancement, there are growing debates around the idea of nanotechnology, which are both timely and controversial. Nanotechnology materials are being utilized in our daily lives in many ways, often without consumer knowledge. Due to the explosion of nanotechnology applications, there is a necessity to…

Children's everyday ideas form critical foundations for science learning yet little research has been conducted to understand and legitimize these ideas, particularly from an international perspective. This paper explores children's everyday ideas about the environment across the US, Singapore and China to understand what they reveal about…

Through a qualitative research design, this article investigates the impacts of differentiated laboratory instructional materials on English language learners' (ELLs) laboratory task comprehension. The factors affecting ELLs' science learning experiences are further explored. Data analysis reveals a greater degree of laboratory task comprehension…

The instructor of an integrated science course for nonscience majors embedded content-related video segments from YouTube and other similar internet sources into lecture. Through this study, the instructor wanted to know students' perceptions of how video use engaged them and increased their interest and understanding of science. Written survey…

We respond to Hwang and Kim and Yeo's critiques of the conceptual continuity framework in science education. First, we address the criticism that their analysis fails to recognize the situated perspective of learning by denying the dichotomy of the formal and informal knowledge as a starting point in the learning process. Second, we address the…

What does it mean to understand science? This commentary extends Brown and Kloser's argument on the role of native language for science learning by exploring the meaning of understanding in school science and discusses the extent that science educators could tolerate adulterated forms of scientific knowledge. Taking the perspective of social…

Connected Chemistry (named CC1 to denote Connected Chemistry Chapter 1) is a computer-based environment for learning the topics of gas laws and kinetic molecular theory in chemistry. It views chemistry from an "emergent" perspective, how macroscopic phenomena result from the interaction of many submicroscopic particles. Connected Chemistry employs…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Grade 10 Thai students about their understanding on inter- and intramolecular forces. Sixty four students were elicited by administered open-ended questions after finishing normal instruction on chemical bonding topics. The instrument was in a set of open-ended questions which contained a number of…

Existing studies on single-sex schooling suffer from biases due to student selection to schools and single-sex schools being better in unmeasured ways. In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm allowing one to address self-selection bias and cleanly estimate an upper-bound single-sex school effect. The…

Two separate writing-to-learn activities in which students wrote to authentic audiences outside of the instructor were used in a college integrated science course, Science of Water. For the first task, students were asked to write to fourth-grade students, and for the second, students were asked to write to their academic advisor. An overview of…

The past 20 years or so have seen ongoing concern for the nature of science education in the Anglophone developed world. A particular focus of this concern has been the need to find new ways to frame science curricula that will engage students, yet it is proving difficult to achieve this goal. In this article I argue that the impact on science…