A traditional physical science course was transformed into an environmental physical science course to teach physics to non-science majors. The objective of the new course was to improve the learning of basic physics principles by applying them to current issues of interest. A new curriculum was developed with new labs, homework assignments,…

Students need to reflect on the practice of science to fully understand the nature of science (NOS), which is an important component of scientific literacy. In this paper, the authors describe how to implement an explicit and reflective pedagogy in college science laboratories and share examples from their implementation in a multiple-section…

This project aims to investigate how process drama promotes scientific literacy in the context of global warming. Thirty-one lower (n = 24) and upper (n = 7) secondary students of one secondary school in Bangkok, Thailand participated in a seven-day workshop which process drama strategy was implemented. In the workshop, the students were actively…

An Electrical Engineering Summer Academy for Pre-College Students was held at the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, during the summers of 2007 and 2008. The Academy participants included students having just completed 7th to 11th grade and teachers from middle school through high school. The students and teachers participated in team-building,…

Research on conceptual change assumes that students enter a science classroom with prior(mis-)conceptions. When being exposed to instruction, students are supposed to develop or change their conceptions to (more) scientific concepts. As a consequence, instruction typically concentrates on appropriate examples demonstrating that students'…

Although undergraduates have long held a role as teaching assistants for introductory science courses at liberal arts colleges and universities, educational institutions often do not provide these students with opportunities to explore science teaching and pedagogy. At Brandeis University, we designed an internship course to help increase the…

This article summarizes a major e-Learning project recently funded by the National Science Council of Taiwan and envisions some of the future research directions in this area. This project intends to initiate the "Center for excellence in e-Learning Sciences (CeeLS): i[superscript 4] future learning environment" at the National Taiwan…

A SEQUENCE OF STEPS FOR ESTABLISHING LANGUAGE LABORATORIES ARE DELINEATED IN THIS REVISED PAPER. THE ORIGINAL PAPER WAS PRESENTED TO THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK CITY ON THE "LANGUAGE LABORATORY IN HIGH SCHOOLS" (OCTOBER 1960). INCORPORATED IN THE REVISED PAPER ARE MANY SUGGESTIONS MADE BY THE CONFEREES,…

Radiocarbon dating has been central to the construction of archaeological chronologies for over 50 years. The archaeological, scientific and (increasingly) statistical methods for interpreting radiocarbon measurements to produce these chronologies have become ever more sophisticated. The accurate measurement of the radiocarbon content of an…

This qualitative case study investigated the teaching strategies that improve science learning of African American students. This research study further sought the extent the identified teaching strategies that are used to improve African American science learning reflect culturally responsive teaching. Best teaching strategies and culturally…

Electrical stimulation of nerve and muscle tissues is frequently used for teaching core concepts in physiology. It is usually expensive to provide every student group in the laboratory with an individual stimulator. This article presents the design and application of a low-cost [about $100 (U.S.)] isolated stimulator that can be controlled by two…

The purpose of this article is to describe a simple laboratory activity in which students collect a series of measurements and then use graphical analysis to determine the nature of the relationship between an object's mass and the volume of water it displaces. In this activity, students explore the relationships between the mass of a floating…

Responding to the concern from our faculty that undergraduate students do not have robust laboratory skills, we designed and implemented a strategy to individually teach and assess the manipulative skills of students in first-year laboratories. Five core laboratory skills were selected for the course entitled Human Biology, a large, first-year…