Nowadays, the rapid spread of the interdisciplinary approach contributes to the development of disciplines and scientific developments in many ways. Therefore, how the interdisciplinary approach is addressed in the studies carried out is important in terms of guiding other studies. For this purpose, an attempt to determine how 155 doctorate theses…

In response to the need for a scalable, institutionally supported model of educational change, the Science Education Initiative (SEI) was created as an experiment in transforming course materials and faculty practices at two institutions--University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and University of British Columbia. We find that this departmentally…

Relationships with colleagues have the potential to be a source of support for faculty to make meaningful change in how they teach, but the impact of these relationships is poorly understood. We used a mixed-methods approach to investigate the characteristics of faculty who provide colleagues with teaching resources and facilitate change in…

Background/Context: Education scholars have examined how state policy and informal practice can widen or reproduce racial and gender inequalities in graduate education. Just one empirical study, which focused on psychology programs, has identified organizational practice that supports recruitment and retention of graduate students of color. Focus…

Writing-for-publication is a practice that doctoral students should acquire for integration into international research culture. Publication rates and forms of pedagogy supporting the development of publication skills for doctoral students, however, remain inadequate worldwide. Limited data of doctoral student publication from African universities…

Women of color are deeply underrepresented in physics. Between 2002 and 2012, only 1% of graduating physics majors were Black women and another 1% were Latinas; only 61 American Indian women total completed degrees in physics in those years (out of 48,000 physics majors). This isolation can lead to additional obstacles that women of color majoring…

This paper presents the results of a study that examined the effects of using an action research process to explore science teachers' views on science literacy as well as improve collaboration among department members. Data were collected by documenting the action research process and interviewing teachers at a suburban K-12 school in Southern…

The research recounted in this paper was designed primarily to attempt to understand the reasons for the low uptake of the natural sciences beyond compulsory education in England. This has caused widespread concern within governmental quarters, university science departments and the scientific community as a whole. This research explored the…

There has been little research into the work environments of teachers at the subject department level. Understanding and investigating the work environment at this level could provide insight into the type of work environment that might lead teachers to remain in the teaching profession. This article reports the development, validation and use of…

This study focuses on the promotion of scientific literacy within the natural science departments and how faculty within these departments define, incorporate, and evaluate scientific literacy in their courses. The researcher examined data from participant interviews, observations, and archival material from courses taught by the participants. The…

This naturalistic study focused on the perceptions of leadership and student performance in science from campus leaders in three purposefully selected secondary campuses of ninth through twelfth grades. Each school had experienced an improvement in student passing rates on the science TAKS test that exceeded the state's percent improvement in…

This ethnographic case study examined the roles of district and school macro-culture and teacher sub-group micro-culture in influencing the nature and extent of teachers' professional collaboration. Informed by the sociocognitive theory that learning is rooted in social relationships and develops through interpersonal discourse and activity, the…

This paper examines the use and role of the term "hypothesis" in science teacher education as described by teacher students. Data were collected through focus group interviews conducted at seven occasions with 32 students from six well-known Swedish universities. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural and pragmatist perspective on…

This study explores the representation of women in computer science at the tertiary level through data collected about undergraduate computer science education at Kabul University in Afghanistan. Previous studies have theorized reasons for underrepresentation of women in computer science, and while many of these reasons are indeed present in…

Given that the subject department is recognised by subject specialist teachers as the central and immediate unit of organization in secondary schools it is surprising that so little attention has been paid by researchers to the leadership dynamics within science departments. The leadership dynamics within the science departments of two…