With the rapidly increasing demand for STEM skills, many scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technology professionals encourage students to pursue STEM careers. However, communicating science to lay audiences is challenging due to complex scientific terminology. This qualitative research aimed to demonstrate how an exemplary scientist, Dr.…

Chemical reasoning, and in particular structure--property reasoning, is an important goal of chemistry education. Johnstone's triangle (1982, 1991) is often used to explicate this type of reasoning. This triangle describes the multilevel thought chemical reasoning requires and shows why students find chemistry so difficult. However, this model…

Through the Sediment, Ice, & Learning on the Tanana (SILT) project, a team of university scientists engaged two middle school student groups in testing innovative environmental research technologies to measure sediment flowing underneath river ice. The culturally responsive, place-based pilot program tests these technologies as a strategy to…

Microorganisms are ubiquitous in nature and are central to human, animal, environmental, and planetary health. They play a particularly important role in the food chain and the production of high-quality, safe, and health-promoting foods, especially fermented foods. This important role is not always apparent to members of the public. Here, we…

This mixed-methods study reports the results of a survey completed by a sample of Puerto Rican social and natural scientists (STEM-S) regarding their perceptions of the intersectionalities of racism, colorism, colonialism, and the culture of science. Most participants ranked themselves as light-skinned and were familiar with the racist stereotypes…

Background: Science history is a discipline that teaches the development of scientific thought and the discoveries of scientists. However, these topics can sometimes be abstract and difficult to understand. The use of technology can make the teaching of the history of science more effective, engaging, and accessible. By providing students with…

The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate students' conceptions of Earth scientists, using drawing as a tool, during introductory Earth science courses. We explored two research questions: 1) What student conceptions are evident in undergraduate students' drawings of Earth scientists? and 2) How do undergraduate students'…

This lesson used the correspondence of Charles Darwin as an exploration of nature of science (NOS) in a historical context. Specifically, we used his original correspondence about his "provisional hypothesis" of pangenesis as a novel way to explore a scientist's social community. Darwin's community of friends and colleagues in the…

Enabling students to learn about science is essential for science education. Students are expected to not only gain scientific knowledge but also need to develop a deep understanding of science. One approach to equipping students with a sense of science is to present science as a living collective human enterprise. As essential educational…

The under-representation of women in undergraduate science courses is well-documented. One significant challenge is that women may both perceive and receive less recognition from their science peers about their abilities as scientists than men. Here we investigate the presence and nature of such gender biases in peer recognition in the discipline…

As science educators, we have an important opportunity to influence perceptions of who does science, and we can work to empower students to make our disciplines more accessible to people of all backgrounds. This goal was explicitly built into an introductory college astronomy course through the theme of "Who Speaks for Earth?"…

Featuring scientists in classroom materials provides opportunities for students to relate to scientists as role models and see themselves in science. However, it is unclear what information students find most relatable when encountering scientists throughout their education. In this study, we manipulated the amount and type of information provided…

Visual displays are important components of scientists' public outreach about climate change, yet little is known about how and why scientists choose visual displays. This descriptive, exploratory study sought insight to understand the factors that drive scientists' decisions about their choice of visual displays for public outreach and education.…

In this paper, we use the "Family Resemblance Approach" (FRA) as a framework to characterize how scientists view the nature of science (NOS). FRA presents NOS as a "system" that includes clusters or categories of ideas about the cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional aspects of science. For example, the…

Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics or the institution it is presented in. To better integrate computational thinking in introductory physics, we need to understand what physicists find important about computational thinking in introductory physics. We…