This study involved the attitudes towards science of elementary preservice teachers at a large public university in Texas. A version of the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) was used to assess teachers' attitudes before and after completing a teaching methods course. The coursework involved an integrated science curriculum and centered on…

College students may be seen as near-peers to high school students and high school students are often able to see themselves in the college students who are but one step ahead. This nearness in maturity and educational level may place college students in a particularly powerful position when it comes to reaching out to high school students to…

First-year college students in a leadership-themed living-learning community (N= 60) at Texas A&M University were surveyed to examine if participation in the learning community influenced their leadership mindset using hierarchical and systemic thinking preferences. Utilizing a pre-test and post-test methodology, significant differences for…

In various conversations regarding how to teach language and literacy to adolescent English Learners (ELs), students' voices are often lost. This article privileges those voices by surveying ELs in Texas high schools regarding what, why, and how they want to read and write in and out of school. The authors surveyed the students before and after an…

The use of electronic response pads or "clickers" is a popular way to engage students and create an active-learning environment, especially within large chemistry courses. We examined students' perceptions of how the clicker affected their learning, participation, and engagement in the classroom, as well as their overall experience…

In the undergraduate biology laboratory, many freshmen are apathetic towards the content of the course. Curriculum based reader's theater (CRBT) is an instructional method that can increase interest the students in the content of the course while improving student communication, collaboration and understanding. This research is an examination of…

Writing skills are one of the most important skills college graduates need to possess; however, college graduates struggle to complete written communications proficiently in the workforce. Previous researchers have explained that college instructors must understand the students' fears with writing in order to create effective writing curriculum.…

In the veterinary professional curriculum, methods of examination in many courses are transitioning from the traditional paper-based exams to electronic-based exams. Therefore, a controlled trial to evaluate the impact of testing methodology on examination performance in a veterinary physiology course was designed and implemented. Formalized…

Undergraduate students should be able to identify relationships between agricultural and natural resources (ANR) issues to be prepared for ANR sector jobs. The purpose of this study was to determine if communication courses focused on teaching about ANR issues influenced students' understanding of the relational nature of these issues. A…

Understanding methods for effectively instructing STEM education concepts is essential in the current climate of education (Freeman, Marginson, & Tyler 2014). Kolb's experiential learning theory (ELT) outlines four specific modes of learning, based on preferences for grasping and transforming information. This quasi-experimental study was…

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to: (a) evaluate the effectiveness of a required Health-Related Fitness (HRF) course in changing dietary behaviors among community college (CC) students, and (b) explore student perceptions about the effectiveness of HRF curriculum activities in changing behaviors. Methods: Pre- and…

An emphasis on higher-order thinking within the curriculum has been a subject of interest in the chemical and STEM literature due to its ability to promote meaningful, transferable learning in students. The systematic use of learning taxonomies could be a practical way to scaffold student learning in order to achieve this goal. This work proposes…

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." This article presents a pedagogical approach for framing a digital-identity-enhancing ePortfolio that maximizes student engagement and…

Multiple representations, multiple modalities, and technology can be helpful in the understanding of mathematical concepts when used in an appropriate manner (Shah & Freedman, 2003; Goldman, 2003), but this alone does not account for the student benefits of creating and using dynamic models over teacher generated graphs to construct…

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned to two groups. Compared to those in the control condition, those administered brief oral feedback intended to…