This study aimed to establish a fully 3D modeled immersive virtual reality (IVR) system for primary school students learning about plants and evaluate teachers' perceptions of the usage of the system and pupils' flow experiences and learning attitudes. There were 5 teachers with expertise in science and IVR experience who were first interviewed to…

A purposive sampling was conducted with 109 students from Anding elementary school, Taiwan. First, we found perceived ease of learning, enjoyment, self-efficacy, social interaction and learning attitude have significant differences between integrated teaching approach and Spoon-feeding instruction in this study. Second, the research framework has…

Native plants are not typically the kinds of plants that are used in elementary classroom studies of plant biology. More commonly, students sprout beans or investigate with fast plants. At the time the authors started their plant unit (November), the school-yard garden had an abundance of native plants that had just started seeding, including…

Against a backdrop of advocacy for interdisciplinary STEM curricula, this paper explores the design principles underpinning a three-year longitudinal research project that develops and evaluates interdisciplinary mathematics and science learning sequences involving multiple teachers and student cohorts across the primary school years. The research…

Photosynthesis is one of the fundamental processes on Earth and it ranks among the most demanding science concepts for students, associated with a number of misconceptions. For improving students' understanding and learning outcomes the constructivist approach has proven to be one of the most effective. In this research the constructivist teaching…

Guiding students to generate testable scientific questions is essential in the inquiry classroom, but it is not easy. The purpose of the BDC ("Big Idea, Divergent Thinking, and Convergent Thinking") instructional model is to to scaffold students' inquiry learning. We illustrate the use of this model with an example lesson, designed…

This paper reports on one preservice teacher's use of the Inquiry-Application Instructional Model (I-AIM) to plan and teach an instructional sequence on photosynthesis to 5th-grade students. Analysis of the preservice teacher's planned and enacted instructional sequences and interviews shows that the preservice teacher was successful in leveraging…

This study examines whether and how tapping into students' everyday language in a web-based learning environment can improve all students' science learning in linguistically heterogeneous classrooms. A total of 220 fifth-grade English Language Learners (ELLs) and their non-ELL peers were assigned to either an everyday English approach…

This study examines the impact of "Disaggregate Instruction" on students' science learning. "Disaggregate Instruction" is the idea that science teaching and learning can be separated into conceptual and discursive components. Using randomly assigned experimental and control groups, 49 fifth-grade students received web-based…

This article describes a collaborative effort that included a botany professor, an art teacher, and a science teacher, called,"Plants, Pots, and Paints." This interdisciplinary project was successful in connecting content across disciplines (science to art) and for motivating fourth-and fifth-grade students to create something beautiful both they…