The purpose of this qualitative study was to use an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach to discover generative instructional and assessment practices of teachers in the language arts classroom at a 5th and 6th grade low socioeconomic public school campus in Texas that earned five distinctions or three consecutive years. The study sought to design a…

This research explores learning in science museums through the most common activity in a science museum--interaction with exhibits. The goal of this study was to characterize the learning behaviors exhibited by students as they engage with interactive exhibits in order to draw insight regarding the design of the exhibits. In order to do so, we…

This article looks at the development of mathematisation in a primary school mathematics teacher's classroom. The teacher was a volunteer in a professional development programme that promoted didactisation principles for mathematics teacher development. At the heart of didactisation lies the principle of mathematisation. Mathematisation as a…

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…

This paper describes the 5E+I/A inquiry model and reports a case study of one curricular enactment by a US fifth-grade classroom. A literature review establishes the model's conceptual adequacy with respect to longstanding research related to both the 5E inquiry model and multiple, incremental innovations of it. As a collective line of research,…

The purpose of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES) was to identify teaching activities and classroom conditions that foster student learning in elementary schools. The study focused on instruction in reading and mathematics at grades two and five. During the multi-year series of substudies comprising BTES, a variety of issues were…

This paper is based on two studies conducted in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2008 and in Kampala, Uganda, in 2014. The basic research question addressed in both studies was: "What are the experiences in the lives of upper elementary-aged children that foster an intrinsic motivation to seek information?" The secondary question was:…

Systematic incorporation of digital games in schools is largely unexplored. This case study explored the ecological conditions necessary for implementing a game-based learning course by examining the interaction between three domains (the innovator, the innovation, and the context). From January-April 2012, one in-service teacher learned and…

In an effort to better understand aggregate patterns in the way elementary school students are assigned to classes, we conduct a careful analysis of observed classroom assignment outcomes in the 5th grade in North Carolina elementary schools. First, we model the probability that a pair of students are classmates as a function of the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which sustained teacher professional development in science education affects the classroom instruction of elementary school teachers in third through sixth grade over a 3-year period. The teachers in the study were all elementary endorsed and prepared to be generalists in the content areas.…

Teaching young students to think critically has always been important, however, as the United States transitions to a national set of learning standards which emphasizes higher-order thinking, it becomes essential. In this quasi-experimental study we evaluate the effects of exposure to the Journeys and Destinations (J&D) unit from the William…

This study examined classroom practices of effective versus less effective teachers (based on student achievement gain scores in reading and mathematics). In Phase I of the study, hierarchical linear modeling was used to assess the teacher effectiveness of 307 fifth-grade teachers in terms of student learning gains. In Phase II, 32 teachers (17…

Preparing teachers to implement a new curriculum presents a significant but important challenge. While formal professional development programs can assist in this preparation, finding prescribed experiences that meet the needs of all teachers can be formidable and indeed may not always be the best option for promoting change in practice. Decisions…

This article reports a subset of findings from a larger study centered on designing a series of six digital learning objects to help Grade 5 (age 10-12) students begin to consider the nature of models (understood as the physical or mental representation of objects, phenomena, or processes), the particle nature of matter, and the behavior of…

We examined whether the bystanders' behaviors in bullying situations influence vulnerable students' risk for victimization. The sample consisted of 6,980 primary school children from Grades 3-5, who were nested within 378 classrooms in 77 schools. These students filled out Internet-based questionnaires in their schools' computer labs. The results…