JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12
Discover trade books published in 2013 that cover science content, engineering, and design....
Journal Article
Editor's Note: Support for Implementation of NGSS
Science and Children’s editor shares thoughts regarding the current issue....
Journal Article
Teaching Through Trade Books: Let's Talk Trash
This column includes activities inspired by children’s literature. This month’s issue helps students focus on what trash is, which trash can be recycled, and where their trash ends up in the process....
Journal Article
The Early Years: Ecosystems, Up Close and Personal
This column discusses resources and science topics related to students in grades preK to 2. This month’s issue discusses children observing and documenting the growth of a plant from a seed to seed-production and animal interactions with the plant....
Journal Article
Formative Assessment Probes: Habitat Change: Formative Assessment of a Cautionary Word
This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue discusses word usage and learning about habitat....
Journal Article
Science 101: If Energy Is Neither Created Nor Destroyed, What Happens to It?
This column provides background science information for elementary teachers. This month’s issue discusses energy....
Journal Article
Science Shorts: Is This Alive?
This column provides classic classroom activities that emphasize science process skills. This month’s issue uses place-based education to teach students the living and nonliving components of the environment....
Journal Article
Safety First: Ensuring a Safer Outdoor Experience
This column provides best safety practices for the science classroom. This month’s issue discusses safety during field experiences....
Journal Article
Methods and Strategies: Seeding Science in Elementary Schools
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month’s issue descibes a school-university partnership that helps ensure the youngest students experience a rich science curriculum....
Journal Article
Assessment in Online Learning—It's a Matter of Time
This article reviews how students in an online Earth and Space Science course interact with various online assessments....
Journal Article
This article presents the combination of three enhanced educational approaches for training future scientists. These methods incorporate skills generally not introduced in the freshman year: student-led blackboard introductions; the writing of scient...
Journal Article
Using the Draw-a-Scientist Test for Inquiry and Evaluation
This article describes the use of the Draw-a-Scientist Test as both a model for inquiry and as a method of assessing the affective domain....
Journal Article
Examinations That Support Collaborative Learning: The Students' Perspective
The authors used surveys and classroom observations to examine student reactions to two-stage exams, where students first do the exam individually and then redo it collaboratively....
Journal Article
Metacognition: An Effective Tool to Promote Success in College Science Learning
This article describes a case study in which metacognition was introduced to undergraduate science (chemistry) classrooms.The aim of the study was to instruct educators how to incorporate metacognition in college science classrooms, and the improved ...
Journal Article
Explorations in Integrated Science
This article describes a third-year undergraduate course that focuses on multiscale modeling and protein folding and has as its primary goal the encouragement of students to integrate thinking across and beyond disciplinary boundaries....
Journal Article
The Journal of College Science Teaching’s editor shares thoughts regarding the current issue....
Journal Article
Summer research experiences have been identified as important vehicles for fostering the learning, skill development, and retention of undergraduates in the sciences. In the initiative described in this article, community college faculty and students...
Journal Article
Case Study: A Picture Worth a Thousand Words? Making a Case for Video Case Studies
This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This month’s issue discusses video case studies....
Journal Article
The authors describe a study in which an honors biology instructor implemented clickers as a mechanism for students to complete in-class quizzes....
Journal Article
This study documented the means by which STEM educators experienced the mathematics and science associated with understanding lunar phenomena. The article reports how well STEM education graduate students interacted with project-based materials as th...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about series circuits. The probe is designed to determine what students think will happen to the brightness of light bulbs as more light bulbs are added to a circuit. This free sampl...
Book Chapter
Two-dimensional (2D) motion means motion that takes place in two different directions (or coordinates) at the same time. The simplest motion would be an object moving linearly in one dimension. An example of linear movement would be a car moving alon...
Book Chapter
Students have early childhood experiences with basic force concepts well before they encounter the word force in the science classroom. For example, it doesn’t take long for a child to figure out that pushing or pulling on a toy will cause it to mo...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electric forces. It is designed to reveal whether students recognize that electric forces can act at a distance without direct contact. The probe is best used with elementary s...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electric charge when they rub balloons on their hair. It is designed to reveal whether students recognize that objects charged in the same way repel each other. The probe is be...
Book Chapter
Can It Be Electrically Charged?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electric charge. It is designed to reveal students’ thinking about the types of materials that can be electrically charged so it’s not important that they know which types ...
Book Chapter
What Happens When Your Bring a Balloon Near a Wall?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electrical interactions. It is designed to find out how students visually represent electrical interactions. The most common representation used to account for electric interac...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about conductors and insulators of electric charge. It is designed to determine whether students can distinguish between objects that allow the charge to move (conductors) and object...
Book Chapter
Does the Example Provide Evidence?
The purpose of this probe is to elicit students’ ideas about charged objects. It is designed to reveal whether students recognize that one can only make a limited conclusion about charge during an interaction where objects are attracted to each oth...
Book Chapter
Where Can You Find Electric Charge?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electric charge. It is designed to determine whether students recognize that electrically charged particles are found in all matter. Its important students know that sunlight r...
Book Chapter
Where Does the Charge Come From?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electric charge. It is designed to reveal students’ thinking about where charge comes from. The example provided is when sliding down a plastic slide on the playground and a ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about complete circuits. It is designed to reveal whether students recognize how just one wire can be used to make a circular pathway of electricity through the battery, bulb, and wi...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about complete circuits and the structure of a lightbulb. It is designed to reveal how students think a battery and bulb need to be connected in order to complete a circuit. The prob...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about complete circuits. It is designed to reveal how students think current flows in a circuit. The probe is best used with students in grades 3–8. Make sure students are familiar...
Book Chapter
How Do You Think About the Flow of Electric Current Through a Circuit?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electric current. It is designed to identify the mental models students use to explain how electric current flows in a simple circuit. The probe is best used with middle and hi...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about types of circuits—series and parallel. It is designed to reveal students’ thinking about the effect of circuit configuration on bulb brightness. The probe is best used with...
Book Chapter
How Would You Rank the Brightness of the Bulbs?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about different types of circuits. It is designed to find out the reasons students use to rank the brightness of bulbs in three different types of circuits. This ranking task probe i...
Book Chapter
How Does the Current in Each Battery Compare?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about batteries. It is designed to reveal students’ ideas about how the flow of current through a battery is affected by the type of circuit. The probe is best used with middle or ...
Book Chapter
Does It Matter if the Wire Has Knots?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the flow of electric current through a wire. It is designed to reveal the limitations of analogies students use to explain the flow of electricity. The probe is best used with ...
Book Chapter
Does Electricity Leak From an Outlet?
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about electricity. It is designed to reveal students’ ideas about how current leaves a wall socket. The probe is best used with middle and high school students. Point to an outlet ...