The purpose of this study was to design a one-hour brain dissection protocol for a medical neuroscience course and evaluate the short and long-term effects of its implementation on medical students. First-year medical students (n = 166) participated in a brain dissection activity that included dissection of the basal nuclei and associated deep…

This study presents an analysis of alternative conceptions (ACs) on acid--base chemistry harbored by grade 9 students in Singapore. The ACs were obtained by the development and validation of a 4-tier diagnostic instrument. It is among the very few studies in the science education literature that have focused on examining results based also on…

Pedagogical practitioners who emphasise active learning in undergraduate chemistry courses widely use the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) instrument to measure students' perceptions of their gains in knowledge and skills in chemistry. Although numerous studies have reported SALG results in support of successful pedagogical…

Agricultural education can take scientific topics to higher levels, emphasize scientific concepts, involve hands-on learning, and develop interrelationships with the other sciences, thus making the living and non-living world around them relevant for students, potentially supporting a STEM curriculum. As such, in 1996, Utah deemed agricultural…

The purpose of this research was to compare the effect of conceptual change texts enriched with metaconceptual processes with the effect of refutational and expository texts on pre-service science teachers' conceptual understanding of heat and temperature. The durability of the effect of the texts on pre-service science teachers' conceptual…

This study explored the relationship between accuracy of and confidence in performance of 114 prospective primary school teachers in answering diagnostic questions on potential difference in parallel electric circuits. The participants were required to indicate their confidence in their answers for each question. Bias and calibration indices were…

The American Chemical Society Examinations Institute (ACS-EI) has recently developed the Exams Data Analysis Spread (EDAS) as a tool to help instructors conduct customizable analyses of their student data from ACS exams. The EDAS calculations allow instructors to analyze their students' performances both at the total score and individual item…

The Teacher Assessment in Primary Science (TAPS) project is a three-year project based at Bath Spa University and funded by the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT). It aims to develop support for a valid, reliable and manageable system of science assessment that will have a positive impact on children's learning. In this article, the author…

A framework is introduced for considering dimensionality assessment procedures for multidimensional item response models. The framework characterizes procedures in terms of their confirmatory or exploratory approach, parametric or nonparametric assumptions, and applicability to dichotomous, polytomous, and missing data. Popular and emerging…

The low enrolment, lack of interest, exacerbated by the general poor performance in physical science in South Africa paints a gloomy picture about the status of physical science in the country. Despite the fact that there might be other factors at play, one factor which cannot be ignored is the discourse about the use of language in the science…

The National Math + Science Initiative (NMSI) is a nonprofit organization committed to improving educational outcomes that traces its roots back to the early 1990s. NMSI's College Readiness Program (CRP) is a long-standing program with the goal of promoting STEM education in high schools to improve students' preparation for college. The three-year…

Digital games can make unique and powerful contributions to K-12 science education, but much of that potential remains unrealized. Research evaluating games for learning still relies primarily on pre- and post-test data, which limits possible insights into more complex interactions between game design features, gameplay, and formal assessment.…

Here we describe a 4-yr course reform and its outcomes. The upper-division neurophysiology course gradually transformed from a traditional lecture in 2004 to a more student-centered course in 2008, through the addition of evidence-based active learning practices, such as deliberate problem-solving practice on homework and peer learning structures,…

This study aimed at determining the effect of recycle materials usage for science practicum on students' basic science process skills of the Open University, Surakarta. Recycle materials are the term used for the obtained materials and equipment from the students' environment by taking back the garbage or secondhand objects into goods or new…

The study investigated the use of Quantum Physics Conceptual Survey (QPCS) in probing student understanding of quantum physics. Altogether 103 Finnish university students responded to QPCS. The mean scores of the student responses were calculated and the test was evaluated using common five indices: Item difficulty index, Item discrimination…