Scientific modeling is a core practice of scientific inquiry. Students' engagement in modeling can be enhanced by attending to epistemic criteria, which in science are standards used to evaluate the validity and accuracy of scientific models. While prior research has focused on students' development and use of epistemic criteria in scientific…

To create general awareness among students and assess their level of chemical safety knowledge and attitudes, an online chemical safety survey was completed by chemistry students at Jai Hind Educational Trust's (JET's), Z. B. Patil College in Dhule, India, and Concord University in Athens, West Virginia, USA during the 2020-2021 academic year. A…

Insects form a highly diverse taxonomic group, which has fundamental ecological functions, but is currently in a process of mass extinction. Here, we present the first cycle of design, implementation, and assessment of a didactic sequence oriented towards improving pre-service teachers' knowledge and appreciation of insect diversity. A…

Evolution is a key feature of undergraduate biology education: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has identified evolution as one of the five core concepts of biology, and it is relevant to a wide array of biology-related careers. If biology instructors want students to use evolution to address scientific challenges…

Socioscientific issues (SSI), important for developing scientific literacy, are controversial issues related to social and scientific information. This study investigated the effect of argumentation about SSI on middle school students' views, attitudes, knowledge about SSI, and their scientific literacy. The study uses a pre-test and post-test…

This study explores the relationship between the self-confidence and content knowledge of undergraduate students in a large enrollment geoscience course following an active-learning think-pair-share (TPS) activity, and whether high confidence necessarily leads to overconfidence. We used a pre-experimental, one group pre-test -- post-test design,…

Interest is key to learning. Video is a promising tool for interest development in education, but professionals in education are in need of more theory-grounded guidance for production, selection, and use of videos. In previous studies, we developed and validated a model on film's interest raising mechanisms in educational contexts, called the…

The United States lags behind other countries in science literacy at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grade levels. Subsequently, this is seen at the higher education level, especially with gateway science courses. BIO 103-General Biology I is a gateway course at Lion University. Passing this course is crucial for students to progress in several science…

Introductory courses are often designed to cover a range of topics with the intent to offer students exposure to the given discipline as preparation to further their study in the same or related disciplines. Unfortunately, students in these courses are often presented with an overwhelming amount of information that may not support their formation…

The formation of chemistry identities among students is closely linked to the norms and practices prevalent in their chemistry learning environments. However, these norms may not be equally accessible or aligned with formal assessment criteria, leading to disparities for students in cultivating a positive chemistry identity. This study…

Board games have been used as instructional tools for a wide array of subjects from primary to secondary levels. The present study aimed to develop and apply a novel board game for the instruction of content relating to mole conversion through dimensional analysis in a grade10 class of 29 students. To assess their knowledge prior to and after…

Students' recognition of the common procedural mistakes in the chemistry laboratory was examined in this study. Data were collected from 49 undergraduates studying Science Teaching. A video in which a student is purposefully making common procedural mistakes was shown to the students, and they were asked to recognize the mistakes. A Written…

The purpose of this study was to, first, examine the potential of lesson plans (LPs) of preservice science teachers (PSTs, N = 631) as a source for gathering rich data on their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and, second, qualitatively describe PSTs' reasons for the level of data richness in their LPs on PCK. PSTs' handwritten LPs were…

A two-year long-term workshop centered around a phenotypic whole-cell screening strategy for integrating cutting-edge knowledge and discovery-based laboratory experiences was developed to serve as a preparatory course for enhancing the teaching quality of the upper-level discovery-based research internship curriculum for pharmacy major…

Organic chemistry is notorious for being difficult to learn. Herein we describe a two-pronged approach to engage students in the ability to afford successful knowledge building. We have drawn on focus group interviews with students to show that the approach is appreciated by the students. The two prongs comprise peer learning in small groups and…