All Resources

Journal Article

Favorite Demonstration: Experiencing the Nature of Science—An Interactive, Beginning-of-Semester Activity

Students’ learning about the nature of science (NOS) consists of two related aspects that include their understandings of and ability to apply science processes, and their beliefs about NOS. To help students develop such understandings, the New Soc...

Journal Article

Pedagogical Issues in Teaching Upper-Level Science Courses at a “Community University”

The authors teach upper-level science courses in cell biology, genetics, and biochemistry at a public, four-year “community university” that serves a demographically diverse population of traditional and nontraditional students. In this article, ...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Promoting the Use of Higher-Order Cognitive Skills in Qualitative Problem Solving

A study was conducted to promote higher order cognitive skills (HOCS) in a chemistry class using the GOAL (Gather, Organize, Analyze, and Learn) method. Students were assigned four qualitative problems specifically designed to be solved with the met...

Journal Article

Editorial: Uneasy Lies the Head

Department Chairs are where the rubber meets the road—with all the pressure and friction therein implied. They are bestowed with a remarkable range of responsibilities for the department, including scheduling, budget management, long- and short-ter...

Journal Article

Learning Simple Machines Through Cross-Age Collaborations

In this project, introductory college physics students (noneducation majors) were asked to teach simple machines to a class of second graders. This nontraditional activity proved to be a successful way to encourage college students to think criticall...

Journal Article

Point of View: Death by PowerPoint?

Presentation software is here to stay and, rather than avoid it, the authors recommend its judicious use, particularly for what it does best—provide a simple platform for projecting a rich assortment of images. Although the authors do not consider ...

Journal Article

Inquiry and Connections in Integrated Science Content Courses for Elementary Education Majors

An interdisciplinary team of science and education faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago and several Chicago-area community colleges developed and implemented a series of four integrated, inquiry-based science courses for preservice elemen...

Journal Article

The Energy Retrofit of a Building: A Journey Through Bloom’s Learning Domains

At Colorado College, the energy retrofit of a building is used as a service-learning research project to teach physics and chemistry in a variety of courses. In introductory courses for nonscience majors, the project helps students appreciate the sc...

Journal Article

Development of a Laboratory Course in Nonmajors General Biology for Distance Education

For distance-education students, the requirement for a laboratory course can present a significant hurdle to completing degree requirements. To better serve these nontraditional students, the authors developed a distance version of the laboratory cou...

Journal Article

Scaling Up Education Reform

The SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment for Undergraduate Programs) project was developed to implement reforms designed for small classes into large physics classes. Over 50 schools across the country, ranging from Wake Technic...

Journal Article

Society for College Science Teachers: Trimorphic College Science Professors

In the author’s opinion, there are three significantly different types of science professors. There are professor-instructors, professor-teachers, and professor-researchers. Although the professional practices in each category are very different, i...

Journal Article

A Collaborative Approach to Incorporating Statistics in the Physiology Classroom

Both the National Science Education Standards (NSES) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recommend appropriately incorporating mathematics into other disciplines (NRC 1996; NRC 2003; NCTM 2000). With this in mind, an interdisci...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Promoting Rapid Learning in the Histology Laboratory by Integrating Technology

This paper describes the results of incorporating technology in the histology laboratory by using high-resolution video-imaging equipment (VIE). The study sought to determine if (1) the VIE would allow students to more easily and rapidly find histolo...

Journal Article

Case Study: Sex and Vaccination

This case study is centered upon the recent debate concerning the decision by Texas Governor Rick Perry to mandate the compulsory vaccination of girls in the Texas public school system against the human papillomavirus (HPV) prior to entering the sixt...

Journal Article

Teacher’s Toolkit: Information literacy for science education—Evaluating web-based materials for socioscientific issues

Students who engage in scientific inquiry must be able to evaluate the processes and evidence used to reach conclusions about scientific issues, regardless of whether the process is conducted in the classroom or through an information search on the i...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Environmental stewardship in action

Texas Watch is an environmental stewardship-in-action program that works with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to collect environmental data and to address nonpoint source pollution issues. V...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: Wind at Work

Many children enjoy evaluating products and designing improvements. Activities that promote investigation and product design lend themselves to assessments that demonstrate communication skills, focus on reasoning ability, and illustrate levels of co...

Journal Article

Making Science Relevant

By connecting science learning to important societal issues, teachers can motivate students to both enjoy and engage in relevant science (Bennet, Lubben, and Hogarth 2007). To develop that connection, teachers can help students take an active role in...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: In search of whale food

A middle school science teacher from Texas shares his professional development experience as part of the ARMADA Project, which partners science teachers with field research scientists. He was paired with a group of oceanographers studying the ecology...