Students' expectations for their laboratory coursework are theorized to have an impact on their learning experiences and behaviors, such as engagement. Before students' expectations and engagement can be explored in different types of undergraduate chemistry laboratory courses, appropriate measures of these constructs must be identified, and…

A national survey on chemistry instructional laboratories was administered to faculty members at four-year postsecondary institutions in the United States for the purpose of exploring levels of inquiry-based instruction implemented in laboratory courses. Respondents were asked to rate the level of choice their students had in deciding six key…

The results of an earlier four-year longitudinal research study on the development of experimental design skills led to the conclusion that 12-13 year old students probably need more help to design experiments than had been offered to them in that project. This paper reports the findings of the first year of a further four-year empirical research…

Guided inquiry-based learning has been shown to be a promising method for science education; however, despite its advantages it is rarely used in chemistry teaching in Hungary. One of the reasons for this is the lack of tried-and-tested inquiry-based teaching materials with detailed guides that teachers can readily use in their classrooms. As part…

A novel methodology has been developed to capture student interactions and engagement modes by mapping their discourse in Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) physical chemistry courses using graph theory and a modified ICAP ("Interactive," "Constructive," "Active," "Passive") framework. This…

The main purpose of this study is to explore the epistemological problems underlying pre-service chemistry teachers' aims in using practical work, "i.e.," individual or small group object manipulation or observation, in school science. Twenty-two pre-service chemistry teachers participated in this study. Qualitative data collection tools…

The need for shifting the expository laboratory instruction style to inquiry-based approaches is widely acknowledged. Problem-based learning (PBL), one of the inquiry-based approaches, advocates students' self-directed learning. The literature indicates that scaffolding students' independent learning is necessary for a PBL environment. In our…

Pedagogies of engagement (i.e., Peer-Led Teaming Learning, Problem-Based Learning, and Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) are active learning approaches used in postsecondary chemistry courses. In this study, we use data from a national survey of postsecondary chemistry instructors in the United States to estimate use of three pedagogies in…

Today, science education demands preparation of scientifically literate people, emphasizing more the process of working with information than owning it. Such a task requires a deep understanding of pedagogical content knowledge by science teachers. This study focuses on revealing the beliefs of prospective chemistry teachers during their teaching…

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL®) as a collaborative inquiry method has been widely used in teaching chemistry to high school and college students. This paper presents the impact of POGIL on 65 middle school students' understanding about nature of matter. It is a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design study in which…

Many examples exist in the chemical education literature of individual experiments, whole courses or even entire year levels that have been completely renewed under the tenets of context-based, inquiry-based or problem-based learning. The benefits of these changes are well documented and include higher student engagement, broader skill development…

This study investigated the implementation of best teaching practices by science graduate teaching assistants [GTAs] (3 chemists and 2 biologists) in five inquiry-based, interdisciplinary chemistry-biology experiments during a six-week professional development (PD) program, Engage PD. Additionally, we examined GTAs' experiences in implementing…

Introducing Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) topics into school science curricula is considered useful for an in-depth understanding of the content, processes and nature of science and technology, and also for negotiating the social aspects of science. This study examines (a) the development of an inquiry-based Teaching-Learning Sequence (TLS)…

This paper examines the process of high school students' planning investigations in the chemistry laboratory across two consecutive academic years in terms of their actions and their progress. The context is a set of five inquiry-based laboratory tasks in which participants (9th and 10th graders, 14-15 and 15-16 years of age) are required to plan…

This is the start of a road map for the effective introduction of inquiry-based learning in chemistry. Advantages of inquiry-based approaches to the development of scientific literacy are widely discussed in the literature. However, unless chemistry educators take account of teachers' reservations and identified disadvantages such approaches will…