How can we begin to imagine a post-modern rendering of science education when the disciples of science continue to cling so firmly to a creation myth in which Science, like Botticelli's Venus stepping forth from a clam shell, breaks away from the pre-modern metaphysical commitments of religion, magic and the superstition in a singular event called…

The aim of this study was to validate a new 5-point Likert scale questionnaire that is being developed to assess secondary school science students' beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific inquiry. Following a review of literature, it was found that out of the many existing instruments, most of them were open-ended and none…

This work describes an effective, low cost method to anodize small aluminum objects. The use of a PVC spacer between the anode and cathode significantly reduces the size of the electrochemical cell and electrolyte required for its operation. Students will explore the physical and chemical properties of aluminum and anodized aluminum. They will…

Almost all commercial quadrupole ICP-MS instruments use collision/reaction cells to either attenuate spectral interferences or shift the analyte of interest to an interference-free "m/z" (e.g., by O addition). A laboratory practical was developed to introduce the students to the basic operating principles of ICP-MS using a hands-on…

Science curricula and teaching methods vary greatly, depending in part on which facets of science are emphasized, e.g., core disciplinary ideas or science practices and process skills, and perspectives differ considerably on desirable pedagogies. Given the multi-faceted nature of science and the variety of teaching methods found in practice, it is…

Service-learning (SL) is an active learning approach that connects the knowledge a student acquires in the classroom to an application that benefits the community. Increasingly popular in the chemistry curriculum, service-learning is reported to provide student benefits including improved cognitive goals; increased academic, interpersonal, and…

The present study describes the development and field testing of a simple apparatus-based diagnostic instrument (SABDI) that examines undergraduate students' understanding of the underlying physics principles that explain how simple acoustic apparatuses work. SABDI comprises 13 items. Based on previous research studies and the history of science,…

In classroom science laboratories, unlike a real science laboratory, the teacher can guide students away from potential dead ends and toward data that are most likely to result in accurate conclusions. Sometimes, though, allowing students to pursue dead ends and to collect "bad" data can provide especially rich learning opportunities.…

The purpose of this Executive Position Paper project was to develop educational resources to support the teaching of nature of science topics to undergraduate students at Delaware Technical Community College. The investigation was driven by two exploratory projects and a review of the literature. The first exploratory project examined the…

Using the science practice model in science classes for preservice teachers addresses three important aspects of science teacher preparation: teaching the nonlinear nature of scientific process, using scientific practices rather than the ambiguous term "inquiry-based," and emphasizing the process of metacognition as an important tool in…

While orthoesters are often used by chemists as alkylating, acylating, and formylating agents, they are rarely encountered in introductory organic chemistry curricula. We describe a second-semester organic chemistry laboratory experiment in which students acetylate unknown amine hydrochloride salts with trimethyl orthoacetate (TMOA) in the absence…

There are many lab exercises for upper-level school students and freshman undergraduates to measure the value of the local acceleration due to gravity ("g") near Earth's surface. In these exercises, the value of "g" is usually taken to be constant. The approach is often based on measuring the period of a pendulum that is…

This article reports on an analysis and comparison of three South African Grade 9 (13-14 years) Natural Sciences textbooks for the representation of nature of science (NOS). The analysis was framed by an analytical tool developed and validated by Abd-El-Khalick and a team of researchers in a large-scale study on the high school textbooks in the…

Currently, there is no agreement among scientists and science educators on whether heat should be defined as a "process of energy transfer" or "form of energy." For example, students may conceive of heat as "molecular kinetic energy," but the interpretation of this alternative conception is dependent on educational…

Image modelling is a video-based teaching tool that is a combination of strobe images and video analysis. This tool can enable a qualitative and a quantitative approach to the teaching of physics, in a much more engaging and appealling way than the traditional expositive practice. In a specific scenario shown in this paper, the Ollie trick, we…