A widespread call has been made to develop and support more integrated approaches to STEM education. The first law of thermodynamics serves as a guiding principle for the crosscutting concept of energy and matter. A qualitative interview study was undertaken to support integrated approaches to STEM education by exploring how chemistry, physics,…

In this longitudinal study, we investigate how demographic, cognitive and meta-cognitive variables affect students' success in chemistry and physics exams in two Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics undergraduate courses, biology and engineering. Independent variables include high school final examination performance, chemistry and physics…

Evaluating and improving instructional quality is important in pre-service teacher education, given it is a crucial factor for students' learning gains. This process is complex and involves multiple classroom events with various interpretations. Criteria for instructional quality are rarely applied systematically in teacher education, leading to…

This mixed methods study explores college biology students' perceptions of the utility of evolution knowledge. In Phase I, 14 college biology students from an upper-level Evolution course were interviewed about their evolution acceptance and perceptions of the utility of evolutionary knowledge. In Phase II, findings from Phase I were used to…

Making decisions, reasoning, and constructing arguments with scientific evidence are essential skills for all members of society, especially in a world facing complex socioscientific issues such as climate change and pandemics. Argumentation is a complex linguistic practice but little is known about how students from diverse language backgrounds…

Across science disciplines, light is a common tool for measuring, characterizing, and catalysing molecules and molecular processes. Despite the ubiquity of light-based tools, little research has been done to investigate how students understand light and light-matter interactions (LMI). This topic is typically first introduced in first-year…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of pre-service chemistry teachers' (PCTs') argumentation skills in a laboratory course throughout a semester. A case study design was utilised. A total of six PCTs participated in the study. To investigate the development of PCTs' argumentation skills, the laboratory reports that were in…

The learning process of scientific concepts has been investigated and discussed in several studies in recent decades. However, the understanding of this process may be different depending on the psycho-pedagogical approach adopted. From the perspective of the conceptual profile, the same concept can present more than one mode of thinking and way…

General chemistry are key gateway courses for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. To improve student outcomes, it is critical both to identify at-risk students and implement evidence-based instructional strategies and interventions. These remain active areas of investigation, with recent literature showing that…

Recently, the chemistry education community has focused considerable effort on incorporating systems thinking into chemistry education as a means to address global challenges such as sustainability. In this project, a series of exploratory workshops was held with secondary educators (N = 12) and tertiary educators and researchers (N = 16),…

The need to develop clean-energy storage systems, harvesting technologies, and new functional materials are but a few of the many contemporary challenges in the domain of science today. To address these challenges, problem solving has become a key skill of the 21st century. It is generally documented, however, that experts and students differ in…

This study explores prospective primary school teachers' misconceptions concerning basic concepts in chemistry. The data was gathered during the years 2012-2016 among first-year primary school teachers in Finland (N = 389). The results show that every year, as many as 40%-80% of teachers share the same kinds of misconceptions as children ages 5-12…

Research has shown that achieving gender equality in science goes beyond equal gender ratios in the classroom. Female students in science disciplines with relatively higher female participation rates (e.g. biology and chemistry) still experience similar gender issues as students in male-dominated science disciplines (e.g. physics and mathematics).…

Light is used ubiquitously across science and engineering to explore, characterise, understand matter, and catalyse processes. Relative to its utility in science and engineering, very little research has been conducted on how students develop an understanding of light-matter interactions, especially at the quantum level, which is necessary to…

This study aimed at investigating the issue of domain specificity of motivation across specific science disciplines (chemistry and physics) in combination with influencing factors related with students' academic major and gender. A clustered sampling was used to select 281 participants who were undergraduate students (105 males and 176 females)…