Carefully scaffolded dynamic visualizations have potential to promote science learning for all students, including English language learners (ELLs) who are often underserved in mainstream science classrooms, but little is known about how to design effective scaffolding to support such diverse students' learning with dynamic visualizations. This…

This article presents the results of exploratory research with community college students from non-dominant linguistic backgrounds (NDLB) in an introductory astronomy class as they collaborated to reconstruct dynamic cosmology visualizations through drawing. Data included student discourse during the drawing activity, post-activity interviews, and…

Although extensive research has shown the educational value of different types of interactive visualizations on students' science learning in general, how such technologies can contribute to English learners' (ELs) understanding of complex scientific concepts has not been sufficiently explored to date. This mixed-methods study investigated how…

Advances in automated scoring technologies have the potential to support student learning during inquiry instruction by providing timely and adaptive guidance on individual students' responses. To identify which forms of automated guidance can be beneficial for inquiry learning, we compared reflective guidance to directive guidance for…

Student construction of models is a strong focus of current research and practice in science education. In order to study in detail the interactions between students' model generation and evaluation and their development of explanatory ideas to account for magnetic phenomena, a multi-session teaching experiment was conducted with a small number of…

Successful STEM learning depends on the interaction of affect, cognition, and application of ideas. Simply put students who are unwilling to persist in STEM based endeavors do not suddenly develop into scientists, mathematicians, engineers or computer scientists, nor do they seek out STEM related courses or STEM based careers. The purpose of this…

This study explores the impact of asking middle school students to generate drawings of their ideas about chemical reactions on integrated understanding. Students explored atomic interactions during hydrogen combustion using a dynamic visualization. The generation group drew their ideas about how the reaction takes place at the molecular level.…

Powerful online visualizations can make unobservable scientific phenomena visible and improve student understanding. Instead, they often confuse or mislead students. To clarify the impact of molecular visualizations for middle school students we explored three design variations implemented in a Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) unit on…

Dynamic visualizations have the potential to make abstract scientific phenomena more accessible and visible to students, but they can also be confusing and difficult to comprehend. This research investigates how dynamic visualizations, compared to static illustrations, can support middle school students in developing an integrated understanding of…

Although scale has been identified as one of four major interdisciplinary themes that cut across the science domains by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1989), we are only beginning to understand how students learn and apply scale concepts. Early research on learning scale tended to focus on perceptions of linear distances,…

The present article discusses the design and impact of computer-based visualization tools for supporting student learning and representational competence in science. Specifically, learning outcomes and student representation use are compared between eight secondary classrooms utilizing The Connected Chemistry Curriculum and eight secondary…

We investigated how student understanding of complex science topics was impacted when 27 teachers switched from typical to inquiry instruction in a delayed cohort comparison design study. For the same set of science topics, the teachers used typical methods of instruction in the first year and online, visualization rich inquiry units in the second…