Solutions to many environmental challenges now require geoscience expertise, knowledge of global interconnectedness, and an understanding of local cultural nuances, a combination for which geoscientists and our students may not be prepared. The Crow Indian Reservation and its borderlands are a microcosm of these challenges, where geoscience…

Research shows that women are entering the field of physics at a faster rate than the field of chemistry through bachelor's and doctoral degrees. However, STEM studies primarily compare women to men or examine them as a single entity. Therefore, a paucity of research exists that examines what may differentiate women in certain critical and…

Biological evolution still lacks representation in school, especially below high school level. In order to find new implications that could help achieve significant improvement in teaching evolution, twelve expert interviews with both renowned researchers and experienced science teachers were conducted. Results of the comparison between the…

The use of evidence in health promotion has become the gold standard, and obliges rethinking how to increase the (often limited) use of evidence in public health policy. Recently calls have been made to reconceptualise science policy relations as dynamic, interactive and co-constructive practices. Building on a qualitative investigation of an…

In this paper, different schools of thought are discussed and compared to encourage lively classroom discussion and interest in mathematics for high achieving Form 12 students and first (or higher) year university students enrolled in a mathematics degree program. In particular the work and views of two mathematicians, Kurt Godel (1931) and Ian…

Seafloor exploration being done by scientists is an ideal way to introduce students to technology as a tool for inquiry. The same technology that allows scientists to share data in near real time can also provide students the tools to become researchers. NOAA's Ocean Explorer Explorations website is a rich research data bank that can be used by…

Like all learners, undergraduate research interns bring to their research internships a variety of initial ideas, opinions, expectations, beliefs and attitudes about research internships. However, there is little published research on students' preconceptions about research internships and the relationships of these preconceptions to actual…

Despite a recent economic downturn, there is considerable political and industry pressure to retain or even increase the number of scientists in the UK and other developed countries. Claims are made that the supply of scientists (including engineers and mathematicians) is crucial to the economy and the health of the nation, and a large number of…

Psychological need theories offer much explanatory potential for behavioral scientists, but there is considerable disagreement and confusion about what needs are and how they work. A 2-process model of psychological needs is outlined, viewing needs as evolved functional systems that provide both (a) innate psychosocial motives that tend to impel…

This study aimed to elucidate college freshmen science students, secondary science teachers, and scientists' perceptions of "scientific" argument; to compare participants' perceptions with Stephen Toulmin's analytical framework of argument; and to characterize the criteria that participants deployed when assessing the "quality"…

This is the second of two articles that reports aspects of a study that was undertaken to assess the information industry and job market needs that the curriculum of the proposed programme must target. The first article specified the research problem and objectives, reviewed some key definitions and methodologies that were used, and the findings,…

In many countries, colleges and universities are where the majority of innovative research is done; in all cases, they are where future scientists receive both their initial training and their initial introduction to the norms of scientific conduct regardless of their eventual career paths. Thus, institutions of higher education are particularly…

Preparing a generation of citizens to respond to the impacts of climate change will require collaborative interactions between natural scientists, learning scientists, educators and learners. Promoting effective involvement of scientists in climate change education is especially important as climate change science and climate impacts are…

This study describes and tests a model of scientific inquiry as an evolving, organizational phenomenon. Arguments are derived from organizational ecology and evolutionary theory. The empirical subject of study is an "epistemic community" of scientists publishing on a research topic in physics: the string theoretic concept of…

In their article Ruscio et al. (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) present a comparative study of some of the different variants of the "h" index. The study evaluates a total of 22 metrics, including the "h" index and "h"-type indices, as well as other conventional measures. The novelty of their work is to a large extent…