This paper is part of the special issue on Teacher Learning and Practice within Organizational Contexts. Shifting instructional practices in elementary schools to include more equitable, reform-based pedagogies is imperative for supporting students' development as science learners. Teachers need high quality professional development (PD) to learn…

Inaccurate sex and gender narratives have saturated the political landscape, resulting in legal restrictions for people with queer genders. Biology educators can correct these false narratives by teaching scientifically accurate and queer gender and intersex inclusive sex and gender curriculum. Here, we interviewed four undergraduate biology…

Heavy content, high volume courses commonly create challenges for undergraduate students. Two such courses at our university are the introductory semesters of anatomy and physiology for first-year nursing students, taught by biology instructors. Despite the vast literature indicating the efficacy of using concept maps as a tool for learning, it is…

In higher education, fostering scientific literacy stands essential, especially in understanding and responding to natural disasters. This research investigates the scientific literacy levels among Physics Education students at State University in Surabaya, Indonesia, focusing on earthquake disaster mitigation. This study uses a qualitative…

This action research case study explored the ability of three high school chemistry students to grow in their understanding of nature of science (NOS) during its explicit-reflective inclusion in two unit chapters on bonding (ionic compounds followed by covalent molecules). Students completed a pre, post and delayed Views of Nature of Science Form…

Climate change is a growing global crisis with short and long-term physical and human impacts. Although climate change is a global occurrence, the impacts of climate change are not felt equally among all locations and all groups of people. Climate justice education is a form of social justice education that invites students to consider how the…

Teachers often rely on curricular materials as support for implementing reform-based science practices and as educative materials to continue developing ways in which they teach and approach science. Therefore, it is important to understand how teachers develop and use curricular materials and how they learn from their experiences. However, we…

We developed a curriculum for an upper-level molecular biology course-based undergraduate research laboratory class funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER grant that focuses on identifying new small proteins in the bacterium, "Escherichia coli." Our CURE class has been continually offered each semester for the last 10 years, with…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

Metacognition, or the monitoring of one's own learning, is an underutilized tool in STEM education. Previous research suggests instructional strategies that attempt to improve student metacognitive skills could increase student resilience and retention in STEM classes. This pilot initiative aimed to improve student metacognitive skills and…

The study aimed to investigate how the knowledge, understanding and skills of secondary science teachers in SC relate to their capacity to deliberately integrate World Class Skills (WCS) into their science classroom instruction through effective planning and pedagogical choices. The study employs the Partnership for 21 Century Learning framework…

Active learning has often been reported to improve student outcomes in STEM courses. However, there are barriers to its implementation, and it is challenging to include this approach in large classrooms with fixed seating. This investigation explores the development of a novel approach in which the class contact time was reallocated for a general…

This article describes the authors' experiences developing and implementing an innovative curriculum connecting mathematics and the biological sciences. It describes the original plan, the modifications that were necessary, and some advice to readers who might want to develop comparable programs.

The BSCS 5E Instructional Model, an elaboration of the well-known and accepted three-part learning cycle, is a five-part approach to incorporating inquiry-based, active learning in the classroom. Developed in 1987 by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, "the 5Es" is a popular K-20 instructional practice, and as such, the Biological…

The modern psychological investigation of passion started with the study by Vallerand et al. (2003). The construct of passion has been applied to sports, gambling, and performing arts. The application of the construct of passion to the field of teaching has been very limited. This study uses Vallerand et al.'s definition of passion to consider the…