Most chemistry students struggle with interpreting and understanding NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectra and the general concepts of NMR spectroscopy. NMR spectroscopy seems to be difficult to both teach and learn. Therefore, the corresponding courses should be investigated in more detail. We conducted a survey with N = 39 German university…

The purpose of this study is to examine how students may hold coexisting and competing conceptual ideas and how students' uses of such ideas may evolve during the process of conceptual change by combining two complementary methods including model analysis and the conceptual framework model of knowledge integration. Conceptual change is fundamental…

This study explored the usefulness of the open dialogue strategy to help Saudi Arabian primary teachers teach, and fourth-grade students learn, the key biological concept of classification, which is a significant challenge for students to grasp, especially the concept of humans versus animals. The convenience sample comprised N = 84 Grade four…

Media resources are a central component of families' learning ecologies in the U.S. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the information ecosystem was flooded with content about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and personal protection measures. However, much of the coverage came through channels for adult audiences, and the 'infodemic' added to the…

The idea of "threshold concepts" has been used to identify discipline-based concepts that are critical to that academic area. Threshold concepts are often difficult for students to assimilate in a meaningful way but, once done, can be powerful for the learner. In general, threshold concepts are 1) transformative to learner thinking; 2)…

Both 'collegiality' and 'distributed leadership' have, as terms, occasioned a good deal of debate. Conceptually elastic, they are often used interchangeably, or not appreciated as embodying a range of leadership styles and relationships. Spurred by an unanswered query from a research project, this theoretical article attempts to clarify what the…

Science communication can share liberatory ideas or reproduce dominant narratives, perpetuating marginalization (Freire, 2018). Currently, science communication efforts tend to advantage privileged and dominant groups of people (e.g., white, male, cis, heterosexual, non-disabled, neurotypical, affluent) (Canfield & Menezes, 2020; Medin &…

Social justice and health equity are foundational to community health nursing. Arts-based pedagogy has learning and reflexive value for community and population health education within nursing and health professions curricula. Art has been increasingly used in health care and in promoting health, including in nursing education. However, research…

Understanding human behavior and reasoning is essential for developing successful instruction. Discipline-based education researchers have examined how students learn, informing the development of successful instructional strategies. Researchers have also identified barriers to the successful implementation of such strategies. This work utilizes…

Children vary widely in their number knowledge by the time they enter kindergarten, and this variation is related to their future academic success. Although talk about number predicts children's early understanding of foundational number concepts, we know little about whether interventions can increase this talk nor about the types of number talk…

Using a framework combining Critical Race Theory and Critical Reflection and Generativity for Transformative Praxis, this book examines both how white preservice teachers conceive of race and racism (habits of mind) and how they react when dealing with race and racism in the classroom (patterns of acting). With firm grounding in real-world data,…

An experiment to match five white solids with ascorbic acid, citric acid, potassium hydroxide, sodium chloride, and urea is reported here. This 4 h experiment is an integrated practice of two experimental techniques, calorimetry and titration. Students conduct an extensive literature search on the properties of the five compounds and plan the…

This study investigates whether laypersons can distinguish between creative and non-creative artifacts, identify when creativity emerges, and be aware of the merit to be attributed to those who conceive a creative idea. Study 1 analyzed a creative and a non-creative version of two advertisements. In the creative version, there was an ideational…

We use the framework of cognitive resources to investigate how students construct understanding of a complex physics topic, namely, a photovoltaic cell. By observing students as they learn about how a solar cell functions, we identified over 60 distinct resources that learners may activate while thinking about photovoltaic cells. We classify these…

The question of how individual features affect the development of design expertise has yet to be thoroughly researched. While some works acknowledged the importance of design abilities and creative ideation for design expertise, there is no theoretical framework that explicates their relationships and supports it empirically. The present research…