This one-semester, mixed methods study underpinning social cognition and theory of planned behaviour investigated the attitudes, self-efficacy, and experiences of 559 first year undergraduate chemistry students from two cohorts in modified process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) classes. Versions of attitude toward the study of chemistry (ASCI v2), and chemistry attitudes and experiences questionnaire (CAEQ) were adopted, modified, and administered to understand and gauge students’ affective outcomes before (pre) and after (post) POGIL intervention. Students’ post-POGIL perceptions of their attitudes, self-efficacy and experiences were statistically significantly higher. In addition to confirmatory testing of reliability of data obtained from ASCI v2 and CAEQ in an Australian POGIL context, the findings suggest that POGIL intervention provides positive affective experiences to students who are new to chemistry or have limited prior chemistry knowledge.

The study investigated the impact of Pakistani special education teachers’ characteristics like gender, age, background qualification, teaching experience and professional qualification on their self‐efficacy beliefs and job satisfaction. The study employed a quantitative research design comprising 94 female and 24 male teachers from five public schools located in the district of Lahore. The findings from self‐efficacy and job satisfaction measures indicate that teachers’ characteristics like gender, age, academic education and teaching experience had significant influence on self‐efficacy beliefs and job satisfaction. Female teachers exhibited higher level of self‐efficacy beliefs and job satisfaction to teach students with diverse needs as compared with their male counterparts. However, a significant correlation between self‐efficacy and job satisfaction was not found. This study suggests professional training programs tailored to enhance male and female teachers’ self‐efficacy beliefs and job satisfaction while addressing the needs of children with disabilities.

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Pedagogical practitioners who emphasise active learning in undergraduate chemistry courses widely use the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) instrument to measure students' perceptions of their gains in knowledge and skills in chemistry. Although numerous studies have reported SALG results in support of successful pedagogical interventions, a comprehensive construct-verified version measuring students' perceptions of their chemistry learning is lacking. This paper aims to identify latent constructs of the SALG instrument that was administered in Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) classes by using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. When the SALG was administered on two separate occasions with two different groups of students following four weeks of instruction on topics in stereochemistry, the results revealed a four-factor structure consisting of 32 items that included Active Learning, Concept Learning, Resources, and Process Skills. These findings demonstrate an approach to collect evidence to support the match between intended constructs and measured variables in light of a targeted pedagogical intervention.