Purpose: Guided by the cognitive load theory, the purpose of this study was to determine the impacts of cognitive load and school socioeconomic status-related environmental factors on ninth-graders' energy-balanced living knowledge gain. Methods: A stratified random sample of high-school students (N = 150) participated in this study. Data were…

In this article we examine the nature of inter-semiotic and intermodal construction in the exposition of a solution for a geometry rider. In the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology, this case study involved an exploration of the oral discourse and visual texts used in a mathematics lesson. This research was intended to contribute to the…

Recent research on what students know about complex systems shows that they typically have challenges in understanding particular system ideas such as nonlinearity, complex causality, and decentralized control. Yet this research has yet to adopt a systematic approach to learning about complex systems in an ordered way in line with the Next…

This study tests a hypothesized learning progression for the concept of energy. It looks at 14 specific ideas under the categories of (i) Energy Forms and Transformations; (ii) Energy Transfer; (iii) Energy Dissipation and Degradation; and (iv) Energy Conservation. It then examines students' growth of understanding within each of these ideas at…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of two instructional approaches (4C-ID versus conventional) on learners' knowledge-acquisition and learning transfer of the electrical circuits content in Physics. Participants were 129 9th graders from a secondary school in Lisbon, M = 14.3 years, SD = 0.54. The participants were divided in two…

This exploratory study applied a proposed force and motion learning progression (LP) to high-school and university students and to content involving both one- and two-dimensional force and motion situations. The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was adapted, based on a previous content analysis and coding of the questions in the FCI in terms of the…

Up to now, only a few studies in multimedia learning have focused on gender effects. While research has mostly focused on learning success, the effect of gender on instructional efficiency (IE) has not yet been considered. Consequently, we used a quasi-experimental design to examine possible gender differences in the learning success, mental…

Across Canada there is increased attention to the important relationship between the quality of learning environments--particularly effective teaching--and student achievement. "What did you do in school today?" proposes a multi-dimensional framework of student engagement as a core idea for improving the quality of teaching and learning…