Scott Kreher
Dominican University, IL·Education Research
Biology rests on evidence from controlled experiments, so graduates should understand how a good experiment is designed. Research from cognitive psychology and education points to a further idea: people who understand experimental design may use the same reasoning in everyday life, a key part of scientific literacy.
- Fields
Education Research
Biology
Psychology
- Topics
biology education research
discipline-based education research
experimental design
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Characterize how beginning students, experienced students and expert faculty understand controlled experiments, using interviews to inform new assessment and teaching tools.
- Measure baseline experimental design and scientific literacy skills across all introductory biology lecture and lab students, using standard written-scenario instruments.
- Test whether an intervention that builds metacognitive skills across lecture and lab improves experimental design skills and transfers to scientific literacy, using two years of course data and multiple linear regression.
More about the research
This project develops and tests better ways to teach and assess experimental design in introductory college biology.
Why it matters
Many students finish college biology without a firm grasp of how controlled experiments work or how to apply that reasoning outside class. Adaptable teaching methods and assessments could help biology instructors at many institutions, and possibly teachers in other sciences and in K–12 schools, strengthen students' experimental reasoning and scientific literacy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
Dominican University: 1 labs on PI Pages.
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