This qualitative case study investigated how computational models can help students engage in scientific practice and influence their emotional, epistemic, and conceptual aspects. Twenty-four sixth-graders were guided to conduct scientific practices as they predicted and modified the computational models on food web using StarLogo Nova. Three…

This research aims to design a sample Arduino-assisted robotics and coding activity in accordance with the 5E instructional model. Also, it aims to set an example for how technology is integrated into science courses, especially in the structuring of abstract and hard-to-understand concepts in science teaching. The activity provides guidance to…

Background: Formative assessments are needed to enable monitoring how student knowledge develops throughout a unit. Constructed response items which require learners to formulate their own free-text responses are well suited for testing their active knowledge. However, assessing such constructed responses in an automated fashion is a complex task…

There has been a longstanding interest in the kinds of scientific knowledge that primary science learners must know and be able to do, which comprise the intellectual demands in this subject. These prescriptions chiefly take guidance from national curriculum documents, especially in the form of their learning outcomes (LO) or learning standards.…

The purpose of the current study is to design and develop an Arduino-assisted robotic and coding activity in compliance with the 5E learning model for middle school students to construct knowledge and realize learning in science teaching. The study was conducted on 6th grade students attending a private middle school in Turkey in the second term…

Researchers examined how an inquiry-based instructional treatment emphasizing interrelated plant processes influenced 210 elementary pre-service teachers' (PTs) conceptions of three plant processes, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and transpiration, and the interrelated nature of these processes. The instructional treatment required PTs to…

Purpose: The rationale behind this study was to investigate how three Grade 5 Natural Sciences teachers in three Western Cape primary schools teach science concepts so as to enable the researcher to gain a deeper understanding and more insightful perception of the ways in which the pedagogical practices of South African primary school teachers…

Mechanistic reasoning is an epistemic practice central within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. Although there has been some work on mechanistic reasoning in the research literature and standards documents, much of this work targets domain-general characterizations of mechanistic reasoning; this study provides…

As learning is a product of the interaction between certain concepts which are already present within an individual's mind, it is becoming increasingly important to determine the cognitive structures in relation to these concepts which are present within the minds of students. It has been said that the word association test, which is a technique…

This study examines how a class of Grade 7 students employed linguistic resources to explain density differences. Drawing from the same data-set as a previous study by, we take a language perspective to investigate the challenges students face in learning the concept of density. Our study thus complements previous research on learning about…

This study examines to what extent students transferred their knowledge from a familiar aquatic ecosystem to an unfamiliar rainforest ecosystem after participating in a technology-rich inquiry curriculum. We coded students' drawings for components of important ecosystems concepts at pre- and posttest. Our analysis examined the extent to which each…

How does deep conceptual change occur when students play well-designed educational games? To answer this question, we present a case study in the form of a microgenetic analysis of a student's processes of knowledge construction as he played a conceptually-integrated digital game (SURGE Next) designed to support learning about Newtonian mechanics.…

We present a new system for automated scoring of graph construction items that address complex science concepts, feature qualitative prompts, and support a range of possible solutions. This system utilizes analysis of spatial features (e.g., slope of a line) to evaluate potential student ideas represented within graphs. Student ideas are then…

We examined the influence of several students' cognitive and motivational factors on 8th graders' science achievement and also gender differences on factors that significantly contribute to the science achievement model. A total of 99 girls and 83 boys responded all the instruments used in this study. Results showed that girls outperformed boys on…

Increased attention to the relationships between affect and learning has led to the development of machine-learned models that are able to identify students' affective states in computerized learning environments. Data for these affect detectors have been collected from multiple modalities including physical sensors, dialogue logs, and logs of…