Integrating generative AI into STEM education: enhancing conceptual understanding, addressing misconceptions, and assessing student acceptance
Published in Computational Sciences and Education
Why This Research Was Conducted?
Thermodynamics presents persistent challenges for students due to its abstract concepts and common misconceptions. Traditional teaching methods often fall short in effectively addressing these difficulties. With the emergence of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, we identified a promising opportunity to enhance instruction through real-time, personalized support. This study investigates whether integrating ChatGPT within a constructivist inquiry-based framework can improve students’ conceptual understanding of thermodynamic principles, reduce misconceptions, and foster greater acceptance of AI-assisted learning in STEM classrooms.
What did we find?
✅ Greater Conceptual Understanding: The experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in post-test scores, demonstrating improved understanding of core thermodynamic concepts—particularly entropy and internal energy.
✅ Reduction in Qualitative Misconceptions: Students receiving ChatGPT-assisted instruction showed a clear decline in conceptual errors, especially in qualitative reasoning tasks.
✅ Positive Student Perceptions: Participants reported high satisfaction with ChatGPT’s usability and instructional support, reinforcing its value as a pedagogical tool.
⚠️ Limitations in Quantitative Reasoning: Some quantitative misconceptions remained unresolved, highlighting ChatGPT’s current limitations in advanced problem-solving and numerical calculations.
📊 Strategic Use Was Most Effective: Students who engaged with ChatGPT in a targeted and purposeful way—rather than relying on it excessively—achieved the most substantial learning gains.
Read and download the full paper here:
https://diser.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43031-025-00125-z
Follow the Topic
-
Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research
This journal promotes scholarship and best practices in education within and across science disciplines.
Related Collections
With Collections, you can get published faster and increase your visibility.
Socio-scientific Issues in Science Education
The Journal of Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research (DISER) announces a special issue related to socio-scientific issues (SSI) in science education. SSI are complex societal challenges with conceptual, procedural, and/or methodological connections to science. Issues such as climate change, viral pandemics, food insecurity, and new applications of biotechnology for healthcare represent some of the many SSI that can be positioned as issues-based opportunities for teaching and learning. The purpose of this special issue is to bring together cutting-edge research and theory focused on the latest developments and insights for SSI education.
The Journal of Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research (DISER) announces a special issue related to socio-scientific issues (SSI) in science education. SSI are complex societal challenges with conceptual, procedural, and/or methodological connections to science. Issues such as climate change, viral pandemics, food insecurity, and new applications of biotechnology for healthcare represent some of the many SSI that can be positioned as issues-based opportunities for teaching and learning. Whereas science educators have likely leveraged SSI in some form for many decades, the SSI research movement can be traced back 25 years to the beginning of the twenty first century (Zeidler, Walker, Ackett & Simmons, 2002). Since this time, the field has advanced significantly in multiple directions. For example, researchers have explored learning associated with SSI teaching, discourse and argumentation about complex issues, teacher perspectives and practices, SSI curriculum development processes, and assessment approaches that align with SSI. This work has led to the generation of research-informed frameworks for conceptualizing SSI in education and using SSI to teach science.
The purpose of this special issue is to bring together cutting-edge research and theory focused on the latest developments and insights for SSI education. As a part of this effort, we encourage submission of empirical studies, critical syntheses of research, and research-informed theory or frameworks. Within these broad categories, we are interested in receiving original research that employs a wide range of inquiry approaches including (but not limited to) quantitative analyses, case studies, policy analyses, design studies, and so forth. Analyses of existing research in the form of systematic literature review, meta-analyses, bibliometric analyses, and targeted scoping reviews are also encouraged. Research on any topics directly related to SSI for science education will be considered.
Topics that are particularly relevant for the modern SSI research community include (but are not limited to) the following:
•Strategies for navigating barriers to the uptake and spread of SSI education.
•The interaction of SSI and the modern information environment.
•Learner engagement in science practices such as modeling and argumentation for the negotiation of SSI.
•Leveraging artificial intelligence for enhancing SSI education.
•Design, development, and testing of innovative SSI curriculum.
•Facilitating interdisciplinary learning demanded by complex SSI within science education settings.
•SSI teaching and learning within informal science education spaces.
•Fostering productive discourse about controversial issues.
•Educator ideas about and capacities for SSI teaching.
•Novel approaches for assessing student learning in the context of SSI.
•Ways in which artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies can be leveraged for SSI teaching and learning.
•Using SSI for justice-centered teaching.
Scholars interested in the special issue should submit a five-page proposal (single-spaced, including references, author affiliation, and contact information) by October 1, 2025. The guest editors, Dr. Jing Lin, from Beijing Normal University, Dr. Troy D. Sadler, from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dr. Rebecca R. Lesnefsky, from State University of New York at Cortland, will review proposals. The editorial team for the special issue will select up to 10 proposals to develop into full papers.
Authors will be notified whether their proposals are accepted by October 15, 2025. The publication timeline is found in the Submission Guidelines.
Publication Timelines:
•June 1, 2025: Call for special issue papers is released
•October 1, 2025: Deadline for proposal submission
•October 15, 2025: Invitations for full manuscript submissions
•January 1, 2026: Deadline for full manuscript submissions
•March 1, 2026: Initial manuscript decisions
•June 1, 2026: Deadline for submission of revised manuscripts
•August 1, 2026: Second round of manuscript decisions
•September 1, 2026: Deadline for submission of final manuscripts
•November 1, 2026: Publication of the special issue
Submission Guidelines:
Proposals should be submitted to bnukxts@126.com and accompanied by a cover letter indicating that the manuscript is a “Special Issue” submission. Authors must follow DISER manuscript guidelines to prepare and submit full papers to the DISER journal website.
Publishing Model: Open Access
Deadline: Jan 01, 2026
Please sign in or register for FREE
If you are a registered user on Research Communities by Springer Nature, please sign in