We reported a redesign of a physical chemistry laboratory course (CHEM 166) for our chemistry majors at the University of Vermont carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. We started to teach this course after a curriculum reform, which split an upper-division undergraduate laboratory course into physical and analytical chemistry laboratories. To…

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is one of two large scale international comparative projects of student assessment that now exert considerable influence upon school science education policy, the other being TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). This paper focuses on PISA, now the most influential…

A sequential exploratory mixed methods approach guided research on the science program infrastructures (SPI) of a sample of 28 high schools representing 1,370 high schools in a large southwestern state. Comparisons of SPI were made between and among schools representing highly successful schools of low (n=9) and high diversity (n=10) with less…

If students are to acquire deep learning in science, they need to know about the nature of science (NOS), particularly not only the cognitive-epistemic but also the social-institutional aspects of NOS. In this paper, we investigate the content of the Norwegian science curriculum in order to establish how NOS is represented, in particular to the…

Comparative studies on science curricula provide insights into educational standards worldwide. Accordingly, in this study, we analysed the intended curricula of mathematics and science subjects of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Slovenia by comparing their lower secondary (ISCED 2) National Curriculum Documents on mathematics, physics,…

This report describes initial findings from a study of middle school science curriculum materials that were designed to promote learning as called for by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). WestEd led an independent randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of the NGSS-designed Amplify Science Middle School (ASMS) curriculum.…

The development of science writing and presentation skills is necessary for a successful science career. Too often these skills are not included in pre- or postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, leading to a disconnect between high schoolers' expectations for college preparedness and the skills needed to…

Teachers' practices and interactions with curriculum materials are influenced by a host of factors, which include their values. The mechanisms of this influence may benefit from elucidation. Here, we describe a case of a teacher enacting an inquiry-based learning unit (LU) as part of a school science enrichment programme. The teacher's…

Fermentation is responsible for the production of myriad products across a variety of industrial sectors. In particular, the biomanufacturing industry requires a labor force proficient in fermentation and its associated technologies to drive the production of recombinant protein therapeutics. This paper describes the development of a course that…

This study uses positional analysis to describe the student interaction networks in four research-based introductory physics curricula. Positional analysis is a technique for simplifying the structure of a network into blocks of actors whose connections are more similar to each other than to the rest of the network. This method describes social…

In science courses in general, but especially in first year chemistry classes, the amount of content that is delivered is often overwhelming and too complex for the student to easily cope with. Students not only have to gain knowledge in a variety of different fields, they also have to learn new laboratory skills and analytical techniques.…

First-year undergraduate curricula and their delivery should assist students in the transition from previous learning experiences to learning in higher education. However, the so-called articulation gap or discontinuity between secondary and higher education has been identified as a key structural curriculum problem for first-year success in South…

Recent science education reforms highlight the importance for teachers to implement effective instructional practices that promote student learning of science and engineering content and their practices. Effective classroom discussion has been shown to support the learning of science, but work is needed to examine teachers' enactment of…

Adopting a sociocultural perspective, we construct a case study exploring how a middle school bilingual science teacher reflected and acted when engaged in dialogue, co-teaching, and a newly designed unit on plate tectonics. Sources of data include video of classroom interaction and audio recordings of daily debriefs between the bilingual science…

We have successfully developed a one-semester general chemistry course that meets the primary learning goals of the traditional two-semester sequence. It is appropriate for physical, life, and earth science majors. Since implementation, 88% of students who start general chemistry complete it, an increase from 72% in our prior traditional…