The famous geneticist and co-founder of the modern theory of evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky, published an article in this journal in 1973 with the title "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (Dobzhansky, 1973). In that article he responded to religious attacks on the theory and defended...
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) recommend that science courses engage communities of students in scientific practices that include building accurate conceptual models of phenomena central to the understanding of scientific disciplines. We offer a set of activities, implemented successfully at both the secondary and postsecondary levels,...
Recent reform initiatives in undergraduate biology call for curricula that prepare students for dealing with real-world issues and making important links between science and society. In response to this call, we have developed an issues-based laboratory module that uses guided inquiry to integrate the concepts of animal behavior and population...
We describe an upper-division experiment in thermal physics where students measure the tension
of a rubber band as a function of temperature and length, and use a Maxwell relation to find the
change in internal energy and entropy for an isothermal stretch. This allows students to experimentally check the predictions...
We introduce a series of activities to help students understand the partial derivatives that arise in thermodynamics. Students construct thought experiments that would allow them to measure given partial derivatives. These activities are constructed with a number of learning goals in mind, beginning with helping students to learn to think...
This final evaluation report shares findings from the summative evaluation study of the Connected Science Learning: Linking In-School and Out-ofSchool STEM Learning (CSL) journal as well as themes that emerged across the broader three-year evaluation study. The ongoing study was conducted by researchers at the Center for Research on Lifelong...
The double slit experiment provides a classic example of both interference and the effect of observation in quantum physics. When particles are sent individually through a pair of slits, a wave-like interference pattern develops, but no such interference is found when one observes which “path” the particles take. We present...
Quantitative literacy is essential to biological literacy (and is one of the core concepts in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action; AAAS 2009). Building quantitative literacy is a challenging endeavor for biology instructors. Integrating mathematical skills into biological investigations can help build quantitative literacy. In...
This dissertation consists of a set of three manuscripts exploring features of effective professional development (PD) for science teacher educators. Literature about context-specific PD for science teacher educators is sparse. The first manuscript, a literature review, outlines theoretical lenses through which PD can be understood, the features of effective PD,...