Finding common interests with which to engage learners from different cultural backgrounds can be a challenge in any classroom. It is particularly so in an urban, English/Spanish dual-language immersion school, which draws a socioeconomically and linguistically diverse population of students from a wide geographic area. The curriculum design in…

Western red cedar leaf affords an essential oil characterized by high thujone content. Students in an advanced organic chemistry lab course isolate a single thujone diastereoisomer from commercially available cedar leaf oil. Treatment of crude oil, containing roughly 70% thujone, predominately as [alpha]-thujone (6.5:1), with ethanolic sodium…

Water transport in tall trees is an everyday phenomenon, seldom noticed and not completely understood even by scientists. As a topic of current research in plant physiology it has several advantages for presentation within school physics lectures: it is interdisciplinary and clearly shows the connection between physics and biology; the…

Misconceptions are not simply factual errors or a lack of understanding, but rather explanations that are constructed based on past experiences (Hewson and Hewson 1988). If students' misconceptions are not directly engaged in the learning process, they may persist--even when faced with instruction to the contrary (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking…

"PlantingScience" is an award-winning program recognized for its innovation and use of computer-supported scientist mentoring. Science learners work on inquiry-based experiments in their classrooms and communicate asynchronously with practicing plant scientist-mentors about the projects. The purpose of this study was to identify specific…

The "Intelligences That Plants Can Pass On" is an activity that involves several of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and was designed for demonstrating the practical use of Multiple Intelligences in delivering education programs to all ages of learners. Instructions are provided for how to implement this activity, and the activity is linked to…

Young children need to develop creative problem-solving skills to ensure success in an uncertain future workplace. Although most teachers recognize the importance of creativity, they do not always know how integrate it with content learning. This repeated measures study on animal and plant lifecycles examined student learning of vocabulary and…

We investigate how students connect explanations and arguments from evidence about plant growth and metabolism--two key practices described by the "Next Generation Science Standards". This study reports analyses of interviews with 22 middle and high school students postinstruction, focusing on how their sense-making strategies led them…

In response to the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education initiative, we infused authentic, plant-based research into majors' courses at a public liberal arts university. Faculty members designed a financially sustainable pedagogical approach, utilizing vertically integrated…

Genetics instruction in introductory biology is often confined to Mendelian genetics and avoids the complexities of variation in quantitative traits. Given the driving question "What determines variation in phenotype (Pv)? (Pv=Genotypic variation Gv + environmental variation Ev)," we developed a 4-wk unit for an inquiry-based laboratory…

Copper fungicides and bactericides are often used in tomato cultivation and can cause toxic Cu levels in soils. In order to combat this, organic matter can be applied to induce chelation reactions and form a soluble complex by which much of the Cu can leach out of the soil profile or be taken up safely by plants. Organic acids such as citric,…

AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) is collaborating with BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Study) in the development of a curriculum unit for eighth grade students that connects fundamental chemistry and biology concepts to better prepare them for high school biology. Recognizing that teachers play an influential role in…

Virtual Forest is a web-based, open-access learning environment about forests designed for primary-school pupils between the ages of 10 and 13 years. It is pedagogically designed to develop an understanding of ecology, to enhance conceptual development and to give a holistic view of forest ecosystems. Various learning tools, such as concept maps,…

In this paper, we aim to contribute to ongoing work to uncover the ways in which settler colonialism is entrenched and reified in educational environments and explore lessons learned from an urban Indigenous land-based education project. In this project, we worked to re-center our perceptual habits in Indigenous cosmologies, or land-based…

The ocean is home to some of Earth's most important producers. Single-celled organisms in the ocean are responsible for more than half of Earth's productivity, as well as most of its oxygen. Phytoplankton are single-celled, plantlike organisms. That is, they have chloroplasts and perform photosynthesis, but are not true plants, which are typically…