Search

This study investigated 8th-grade science students (13-14 years old) in advanced and traditional ability classrooms perceptions of their vocabulary knowledge, learning, and content achievement. This research acknowledges the critical role that developing vocabulary knowledge from reading plays in gaining a deeper content understanding as well as promoting overall science literacy. Data sources included pre- and post-test of students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge, students' perceptions of vocabulary and reading strategies surveys, and a content achievement test. Students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge were compared before and after instruction to see whether students believed they gained knowledge and the ability to explain categories of technical science terms. Students' in both advanced and traditional classroom perceptions of vocabulary knowledge increased as a result of instruction. The participants had favorable views of the vocabulary and reading strategies implemented and believed that the literacy approaches were important for their developing scientific knowledge. Furthermore, students' content achievement was compared for the advanced and traditional groups. Although advanced class classes outperformed traditional courses on the content test, only one of the seven items was statistically significant. Both groups were compared to a national data set that served as a control and had statistically significant higher achievement than the national data set. Most of the inferential measures indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between the two groups. The combination of metacognitive awareness, close reading, and integrative vocabulary helped all students build complex schema surrounding science vocabulary, as evidenced by student's perceptions of knowledge and their content achievement. This study is one of the first to highlight the pivotal role students' perception of vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary and reading strategies plays in science content learning regardless of ability level.

The purposes of this study were to (1) investigate 127 high school students' views about scientific inquiry at different grade levels, and (2) to describe factors such as the teacher's views about scientific inquiry, his teaching, and his curriculum that facilitated or constrained students' views about scientific inquiry. The majority of students held naïve and mixed views for many aspects about scientific inquiry. There were few differences among students' views about scientific inquiry when comparing ninth/tenth graders to eleventh/twelfth graders. Despite the teacher having informed views and implementing aspects of inquiry-oriented teaching, few students held informed views for many aspects. When comparing the findings of the present study to past VASI studies, students had more mixed and informed views for specific VASI items. Based on interviews with the teacher and a review of the teacher's curriculum, these mixed and informed views about scientific inquiry were explicitly addressed in the classroom.

Researchers examined six undergraduate pre-engineering majors' self-regulatory behaviours, ability to self-regulate, self-efficacy beliefs, and intentions to persist using a qualitative methodology. The data collection procedure relied heavily on interviews focusing on participants' engineering interests, beliefs in their abilities to successfully complete an engineering degree, beliefs in their ability to self-regulate, sources of self-efficacy, and self-regulatory behaviour. Through transcription analysis, coding, and cross-coding processes, our findings indicate that the triadic and cyclical nature self-regulation was fundamental to pre-engineering majors' persistence. Students' prior mastery experiences, beliefs in their ability to self-regulate, vicarious experiences, and verbal persuasions contributed to students' self-efficacy beliefs and engineering interests. Time management, prioritising, help-seeking behaviour, knowing professors' expectations, and critical self-evaluation were essential behaviours for pre-engineering students' persistence.

Students come to class with little understanding about torque, angular velocity, and angular acceleration despite the fact that these physical science concepts are frequently observed. For example, torque occurs when car and bicycle tires rotate, the movement of fishing pole when hooking a fish, and when a person uses a hammer to drive in a nail. Interestingly, students also have a plethora of misunderstandings about scientific inquiry. For example, many students believe that all scientific investigations contain an experiment, and that they are all consist of very specific steps comprising the scientific method. In this week long lesson, 9-12 grade students engage in scientific and engineering practices to examine factors that affect the amount of angular acceleration of a catapult arm. Students also reflect on their own understandings of scientific inquiry within the context of the lesson and address misconceptions they might have. Throughout the activities of this lesson, students to engage in discourse, critical thinking, problem solving, reflection, and modification of ideas to design a catapult that will effectively launch a projectile.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) challenges science teachers to think beyond specific content standards when considering how to design and implement curriculum. This lesson, "Windmills by Design," is an insightful lesson in how science teachers can create and implement a cross-cutting lesson to teach the concepts of force, motion, and Bernoulli's principle. This 9-12 lesson requires students to consider the science behind windmill design by engineering windmill blades that can produce the most power in a class competition. The lesson is designed as a 5E lesson incorporating essential features of inquiry-based instruction.

Increasingly, studies are investigating the factors that influence student discourse in science courses, and specifically the mechanisms and discourse processes within small groups, to better understand the learning that takes place as students work together. This paper contributes to a growing body of research by analyzing how students engage in conversation and work together to solve problems in a peer-led small-group setting. This qualitative study evaluates video of Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) sessions in general chemistry, with attention to both the activity structures and the function of discourse as students undertook different types of problems across one semester. Our findings suggest that students talk their way through the problems; practicing a combination of regulative and instructional language to manage the group dynamics of their community of peer learners while developing and using specific disciplinary vocabulary. Additionally, student discourse patterns revealed a focus on the process of complex problem-solving, where students engage in joint decision-making by taking turns, questioning and explaining, and building on one another's ideas. While students in our study engaged in less of the deeper, meaning-making discourse than expected, these observations about the function of language in small-group learning deepens an understanding of how PLTL and other types of small-group learning based on the tenets of social constructivism may lead to improvements in science education, with implications for the structure of small-group learning environments, problem design, and training of peer group leaders to encourage students to engage in more of the most effective discourse in these learning contexts.

This study investigated eighth-grade science students' (13-14-year-olds) perceptions of their vocabulary knowledge, learning, and content achievement. Data sources included pre- and posttest of students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge, students' perceptions of vocabulary and reading strategies surveys, and a content achievement test. Students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge were compared before and after instruction to see whether students believed they gained knowledge and the ability to explain categories of technical science terms. Students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge increased as a result of instruction. The participants had favorable views of the vocabulary and reading strategies implemented and believed the literacy approaches were important for their developing science knowledge. In addition, students' content achievement was compared to a national data set. Students in this study outperformed a national data set on all content knowledge items assessed. Students' perceptions of their knowledge and vocabulary and reading strategies were congruent with their content achievement. This study is one of the first to highlight the pivotal role students' perception of vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary and reading strategies plays in science content learning.

One tried-and-true way to hook students' attention and promote long-lasting understanding is to sequence science instruction in an explore-before-explain instructional sequence. In these lessons for the second through sixth grade band, elementary students investigate the interaction between "cold" and "hot" substances and density to understand how fluids interact in air (some weather phenomenon) and water (ocean currents). The student-based activities are suited to a research-based strategy called the PSOE (predict, share, observe, and explain) sequence of instruction.

The purpose of this teacher research study is to ascertain students' interest in STEM and beliefs about STEM before and after STEM specific instruction, explore possible differences in STEM self-efficacy by gender, and explore differences in STEM self-efficacy by group role. Our primary data sources include a modified attitudinal survey and modified perceptions of collaboration survey. We found differences in gender and students' group roles to be related to self-efficacy, intentions to persist in STEM, perceptions of STEM and interests in STEM. Research on students' self-efficacy and perceptions of group work has the potential to restructure how teachers design activities and teach students about collaboration.

Why does a balloon deflate when it is left in a cold car; or why does one have to pump up his or her bike tires in the spring after leaving them in the garage all winter? To answer these questions, students must understand the relationships among temperature, pressure, and volume of a gas. The purpose of the Predict, Share, Observe, and Explain (PSOE) activity is for students to connect the relationships among temperature, pressure, and the amount of gas. Students have many everyday experiences with these relationships, such as pumping up a basketball, but may have never thought of air in terms of pressure and temperature.

Students love learning about animals: how animals behave, what animals eat, why some animals are more dangerous than others are, and why animals look the way they do. In this 5E lesson, students investigate why some animals look the way they do--specifically, the advantages of camouflage and mimicry. What are an animal's advantages of being camouflaged? How do animals become camouflaged? As the former driving questions suggest, this lesson is intended for third-to-fifth grade students to investigate camouflage and natural selection. Second, this 3-day (three 50-min class periods) lesson addresses why some animals mimic more dangerous organisms.

In this lesson, the teacher begins by reviewing some key energy topics with the students. Next, students are asked to focus closely on nuclear energy as a viable resource by closely reading, highlighting, and annotating an article regarding the future of nuclear energy. The culminating activity and evaluation of students understanding of energy and energy resources is accomplished by collecting and grading students' journals. In addition, students create a poster and write a letter to their senator to either encourage the proliferation of nuclear energy in their state or discourage its use. (Contains 3 figures.)

One proven strategy to help students make sense of abstract concepts is to sequence instruction so students have exploratory opportunities to investigate science before being introduced to new science explanations (Abraham and Renner 1986; Renner, Abraham, and Birnie 1988). To help physical science teachers make sense of how to effectively sequence lessons, this article summarizes our experiences using an exploration-explanation sequence of instruction to teach Bernoulli's principle to prospective middle and secondary science teachers in a science methods course. We use demonstrations during our Bernoulli unit to help students go back and forth between their observations of phenomenon and what occurs on the microscopic level with what we have termed "molecular talk." Students engage in guiding questions, consider their old and new understandings of science, and use evidence to construct new ideas during all stages of the lesson. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

Using an exploration-explanation sequence of science instruction helps teachers unveil students' prior knowledge about circuits and engage them in minds-on science learning. In these lessons, fourth grade students make predictions and test their ideas about circuits in series through hands-on investigations. The teacher helps students make connections between their hands-on experiences collecting data and new terms. This lesson shows how teachers can incorporate formative assessments such as checkpoints, self tests, and exit slips into the explanation phase of instruction so students can evaluate and self-monitor their understanding of circuits in series. These activities meet the National Science Education Standards for active, student-center learning environments that cultivate the critical thinking skills necessary to learn science. (Contains 4 figures.)

This activity targets students' misconceptions about embryonic and adult stem cells while also addressing an important grades 9-12 science content standard. The authors designed the activity to provide students an opportunity to explore differences between embryonic and adult stem cells prior to formal explanation. The overarching goal of this activity is for students to understand stem cells because they will continue to encounter this topic throughout their lives. (Contains 1 table, 10 figures and 1 resource.)

The purposes of this study were to (a) gain an understanding of the views of inquiry held by faculty members involved in undergraduate science teaching and (b) describe the challenges, constraints, and opportunities that they perceived in designing and teaching inquiry-based laboratories. Participants included 19 college professors, representing both life and physical science disciplines, from (a) 2-year community college, (b) small, private nonprofit liberal arts college, (c) public master's granting university, and (d) public doctoral/research extensive university. We collected data through semistructured interviews and applied an iterative data analysis process. College science faculty members held a "full and open inquiry" view, seeing classroom inquiry as time consuming, unstructured, and student directed. They believed that inquiry was more appropriate for upper level science majors than for introductory or nonscience majors. Although faculty members valued inquiry, they perceived limitations of time, class size, student motivation, and student ability. These limitations, coupled with their view of inquiry, constrained them from implementing inquiry-based laboratories. Our proposed inquiry continuum represents a broader view of inquiry that recognizes the interaction between two dimensions of inquiry: (a) the degree of inquiry and (b) the level of student directedness, and provides for a range of inquiry-based classroom activities.

A priority for all biology teachers must be for students to leave the classroom with a broad knowledge and understanding of science. Students need to be critical of science, analyze science, and relate new science knowledge to their daily lives. Unfortunately, many students are not reaching this goal. One strategy for making science laboratories more student-centered and to meet the National Science Education Standards for inquiry is to convert verification activities to inquiry-based investigations. The authors provide teachers with simple strategies to convert a confirmation-type osmosis laboratory into an inquiry investigation.

The article discusses a study investigating prior teacher knowledge of student teachers enrolled in an alternative certification program (ACP) for biology education. The authors note the promotion of ACPs as a way of countering teacher shortages. Participants in the study created lesson plans regarding heritable variation, which were used to evaluate whether previous teaching experience affected teaching methods. Comparison of lesson plans and interviews with student teachers revealed no significant differences between lesson plans created by experienced and inexperienced student teachers and indicated that neither had significant pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

The article offers tips on how the science teachers can integrate the issues about environmental science faced by the society on their teaching. This scheme should start in the local contexts on which students will discuss the science and nonscience related issues using the evidence-based reasoning. Investigating local issues will also provide the students with research and critical-thinking skills, as well as improve their attitudes toward science. The use of the societal issues as the curriculum organizers can give benefits to both the teachers and students.

The article features the importance of project-based science in the U.S. The author mentioned that project-based science offers a way for teachers to design long-term units where students plan and carry out personally relevant investigations. Its essence is that it situates science learning in relevant and significant aspects of child's life in which the driving question is central to the lesson. It also mentioned that project-based science creates the need for methods of assessment that move beyond traditional paper-and-pencil tests. Moreover, it presents some challenges for students and teachers which is advantage in making science learning opportunities motivating and meaningful.

The article focuses several perspectives about cultural diversity among elementary students who study science in the U.S. Cultural perspectives are said to affect the students' ability to learn science, which involve cultural heritage, religious beliefs, and family background. They are believed to challenge students whose experiences are different from the typical ways of learning. However, such students are believed to develop authentic science authentications through hands-on, minds-on nature of inquiry and through diverse approaches to scientific reasoning.

The article presents a question and answer advisory regarding the learning cycle. A question regarding the sufficiency of the hands-on method in learning science was asked. It was stated that hands-on was necessary but not sufficient to help students learn science. To a question regarding the definition of the learning cycle, it was said to be based on three phases of instruction namely, exploration, concept introduction and concept application. The learning cycle approach helps students make sense of scientific ideas, improve their scientific reasoning and increase their engagement in science class.