Browsing by Author "Miller, Brant G."

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    Science Teacher Education in Chile: On the Verge of a Turning Point toward STEM-Oriented Science Education
    (Springer International Publishing, 2023) Merino, Cristian; Marzabal Blancafort, Ainoa; Miller, Brant G.; Carrasco, Ximena; Marzabal Blancafort, Ainoa; Facultad de Educación, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
    In this chapter, we discuss how the STEM era is impacting secondary science teacher education in Chile. We begin by framing the Chilean context related to governmental policy associated with science education reforms as it relates to larger STEM era conversations globally. Two Chilean universities are highlighted for their innovative and complementary approaches to teacher education—Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). Both institutions have explicitly sought to effectively prepare secondary science teachers in a way that both embraces and enacts the STEM approach. For PUC that embodies a focus on the development of STEM Pedagogical Content Knowledge; and PUCV focuses on teaching reflection, practice, and action. After a careful review of the two approaches, broader considerations are explored for science education in the STEM era as it relates to the Chilean context.
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    Use of augmented reality in chromatography learning: How is this dynamic visual artifact fostering the visualization capacities of chemistry undergraduate students?
    (FRONTIERS MEDIA SA, 2022) Merino, Cristian; Marzabal, Ainoa; Quiroz, Waldo; Pino, Sonia; Lopez-Cortes, Francisco; Carrasco, Ximena; Miller, Brant G.
    Developing chemistry students' capability to use representations to explain phenomena is a challenging task for educators. To overcome chemistry students' learning difficulties, strategies that favor the development of visualization capabilities have been identified as productive. We are particularly interested in exploring the use of augmented reality in chemistry education to foster the development of those capabilities in undergraduate students. Our research objective was to analyze the contribution of augmented reality to support undergraduate chemistry students' visualization capacities while explaining the physical-kinetic processes of chromatography. Using an exploratory case study approach, we designed and conducted four task teaching and learning sequences, with seven Augmented Reality markers embedded. Thirty-eight undergraduate students, who voluntarily agreed to participate, explained the different elution rates of pigments in a chromatographic column. Their written accounts were analyzed to identify the level of sophistication of their representations. After using Augmented Reality, students' representations progressed from simple macroscopic descriptions of observed phenomena to explanations of processes where scientific ideas and microscopic representations were used as supporting evidence. Our study shows that the use of Augmented Reality has the potential to favor a more sophisticated use of representations when undergraduate students explain chromatographic processes. However, there are still limitations in reaching the highest levels of performance described in the literature.