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Background: Teaching engineering at a high school level has been a subject of substantial concern during recent curriculum reforms. Many countries are increasingly including engineering-focused subjects in their technology curriculum guidelines. However, technology teachers face challenges regarding the optimal implementation of an engineering-focused curriculum. It is essential to understand technology teachers' perceptions of and behavior in classroom practices when teaching an engineering-focused curriculum. To explore the factors influencing the effective implementation of the curriculum, this study aimed to explore the association between technology teachers' perceptions regarding curriculum guidelines (i.e., perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and beliefs) and their behavioral intentions. In addition, this study explored how these perceptions change for teachers who participated in a professional development program (PDP) for teaching an engineering-focused curriculum compared with those who did not participate in the program (NoPDP). Results In this study, structural equation modeling was used to investigate factors potentially influencing teachers' behavioral intentions, including subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. The results showed that technology teachers' behavioral intentions were influenced by their perceptions of the curriculum's usefulness. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were also significant determinants of behavioral intentions. Moreover, the results differed between the two groups. Perceived usefulness had direct and indirect effects on the behavioral intentions of the PDP and NoPDP groups, respectively. Conclusions: We constructed a model of technology teachers' behavioral intentions to implement an engineering-focused curriculum and identified factors influencing technology teachers' behavioral intentions to implement an engineering-focused curriculum. Our conclusions are as follows: (1) the model was adequate for determining the factors influencing technology teachers' behavioral intentions; (2) in the PDP group, perceived usefulness, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were significantly associated with behavioral intentions; and (3) in the NoPDP group, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were associated with behavioral intentions and self-reported behavior only via the mediating factor of beliefs. The above influencing factors should be taken into account when planning professional development programs for pre- and in-service teachers, as these programs will have implications regarding the successful implementation of an engineering-focused curriculum.

With an increased emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, educators have often adopted engineering projects for integrating interdisciplinary knowledge through engineering design process. However, there is scant research that has empirically documented the relationships among students' understanding of the knowledge and their characteristics on the design product. This study uses structural equation modeling to examine the influence of students' scientific knowledge, design process, and critical thinking on their design product of the engineering project. A theoretical model was constructed to identify the factors that affected the design product. Study data were collected from 613 high school students, aged 16-17 years, regarding their scientific knowledge, design processes, and critical thinking. The results showed that design process played a mediating role in the effects of knowledge and critical thinking on the final design product. Students who could deduce, explain, and evaluate had an increased ability to apply scientific knowledge during the design process. These results indicate that scientific knowledge has an effect on the process and products of engineering projects completed by high school students. This study also suggested that the science and technology education community should consider offering high school students learning opportunities to promote their cognitive skills and facilitate connections between knowledge and practice.

According to policy documents and research studies, one key objective of science education is to develop students' inquiry abilities; however, relatively little is known about the interplay among students' inquiry abilities, the dimensions of their engagement, and their inquiry-related curiosity. The purpose of this study is to explore how four dimensions of engagement (i.e., cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and social) were driven by inquiry-related curiosity and how they affected the students' inquiry abilities. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze data collected from 605 11th graders, including their responses to items in an online questionnaire and their performances on a computer-based assessment of scientific inquiry abilities. The results showed that students' curiosity was associated with their inquiry abilities, and such an association was partially mediated by the four dimensions of engagement in science laboratory classes. Moreover, the results revealed that among the four dimensions of engagement, only cognitive and emotional engagement had significant total effects on students' inquiry abilities and that the influence of behavioral and social engagement on inquiry abilities was completely mediated by cognitive engagement. This study suggests a critical role played by emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, and curiosity in developing students' inquiry abilities.

This study addresses the issue of curiosity-driven inquiry learning by examining the interplay among students' inquiry-related curiosity, laboratory engagement, and inquiry abilities and investigates how their learning experiences would associate with such interplay. We employed structural equation modeling to analyze data collected from 920 eighth graders and 1,090 eleventh graders, including their performances on a multimedia-based assessment of scientific inquiry abilities and their responses to items in an online questionnaire. The results revealed that, for students from both grades, inquiry-related curiosity was associated with their inquiry abilities, and that the association was mediated by their inquiry-related laboratory engagement. Furthermore, the analyses showed that both formal and informal experiences were associated with the laboratory engagement of students from both grades through curiosity. Yet, the results indicated that, although the roles of the two types of experiences varied in the associations, formal science experience had stronger associations with students' inquiry abilities than informal science experience for both graders. Taken together, this study supports the importance of having curiosity-driven engagement and suggests that the science education community should collaboratively offer secondary school students such learning opportunities in formal and informal science learning settings.

The two-year study aimed to explore how students' development of different inquiry abilities actually benefited from the design of technology-infused learning modules. Three learning modules on the topics of seasons, environmental issues and air pollution were developed to facilitate students' inquiry abilities: questioning, planning, analyzing, and modeling. Two classes of seventh graders (13-14 years old) were randomly assigned to an inquiry group (n = 24) and a baseline group (n = 27). The two groups engaged in three technology-infused learning modules and conventional instruction respectively, and took two inquiry ability tests three times throughout two years. The test results showed that the inquiry group performed significantly better than the baseline group with respect to several inquiry sub-abilities. The instructional components of the tasks (i.e., design features) for which students exhibited significant improvements were further analyzed with respect to the task complexity, the function of the prompts, and the types of representations presented in the tasks. These design features identified provided useful insights into future design of technology-infused learning tasks for different inquiry abilities.

Computer-based learning tools include design features to enhance learning but learners may not always perceive the existence of these features and use them in desirable ways. There might be a gap between what the tool features are designed to offer (intended affordance) and what they are actually used (actual affordance). This study thus aims at investigating how the design features of a computer-based tool supported high school students' modeling practices in atmospheric sciences. Twenty-three 10th graders participated in 16 hours of learning activities by using the tool. We conducted a detailed analysis of students' computer activities, their use of the design features, and their building, testing, analyzing, and evaluating practices. The analysis showed that while some design features such as "Variable List" and "Testing Variables" were perceived by students and successfully afforded their enactment of building and analyzing practices, other features including "Screen Shot" and "Edit" were rarely used or not utilized in the desirable ways. Based on the findings, this study suggests that the realization of intended affordances may involve factors of learners' characteristics, the nature of learning activities, and the complexity of tasks, and constructs an affordance analysis scheme to inform the design of computer-based learning tools.

The emphasis on scientific inquiry has increased the importance in developing the fundamental abilities to conduct scientific investigations and urged a need for valid assessments of students' inquiry abilities. We took advantage of the advanced technology to develop a simulation-based assessment of inquiry abilities (SAIA) that allowed students to generate scientific explanations and demonstrate their experimental abilities. This paper describes the validation of the assessment. Data were collected from 48 12th-grade students at a local high school who were categorized into three groups based on their program majors. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were utilized to validate SAIA. The quantitative results showed that SAIA was aligned with a validated reasoning-skill test (criterion-related validity), discriminated variance among different groups (construct validity), and was highly suitable for examining inquiry abilities (content validity). Additionally, we utilized the think-aloud technique in order to identify the performances exhibited by students while they accomplished the SAIA tasks. The protocol analysis indicated that in general, students demonstrated the expected abilities in SAIA and that their SAIA scores accurately reflected their performance levels of inquiry abilities. The results suggested that SAIA was a valid assessment for evaluating the inquiry abilities of high school students. This study also provided systemic strategies for validating simulation-based assessments.

Drawing upon the literature in computational modeling, multivariable reasoning, and causal attribution, this study aims at characterizing multivariable reasoning practices in computational modeling and revealing the nature of understanding about multivariable causality. We recruited two freshmen, two sophomores, two juniors, two seniors, four master's students, and four PhD students in atmospheric sciences as participants. Participants' reasoning practices and understanding of multivariable causality were examined using semistructured interviews and recordings of their computer activities. Analyses show that participants with high expertise tended to take a mechanism approach to predict and identify relationships, focused more on multivariable relationships, and purposefully selected and tested variables. The findings also indicate that understanding about multiple causality involved recognition and identification of the integration rules of multiple effects and the attributes of variables (e.g., interactive and reciprocal) and relationships (e.g., direction and feedback loop). Additionally, this study suggests an interaction between participants' reasoning practices and their understanding of multivariable causality; participants' understanding about the integration rules and the attributes could initiate reasoning practices, and by the enactment of practices, the rules and attributes were confirmed and examined. This study provides insight into the nature of multivariable reasoning and the design of computer-based modeling tools. (Contains 5 tables and 6 figures.)