The transition from elementary to secondary school presents challenges for students, including the shift from a streamed to a destreamed mathematics curriculum. This paper explores the Ontario context, where all students began taking the same grade 9 mathematics course in 2021-2022. The Grade 9 Mathematics Research Project investigated current…

Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…

Nitrogen- or phosphorus-based fertilizers, used in agriculture, can run off into nearby waterways during periods of heavy rain or high flow and cause harmful blooms (Paerl et al. 2016), low oxygen (Joyce 2000), and decreased biodiversity (Sebens 1994). Studies of the effects wetlands can have on water and habitat quality (Verhoeven and Meuleman…

This study investigated the influences of social constructivist approaches on history teachers' opinions of social science education. The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of social constructivist approaches and explore the views and practices of teachers in their current use of teaching approaches in social science education.…

Many students struggle with decoding and implementing feedback given to them on writing assignments. Researchers and instructors have used various technologies and strategies to improve students' uptake of feedback given on written assignments, one of which is a form of video feedback called screencasting. Research has been conducted on students'…

Resources, resource efficiency and sustainability are one of the most important socio-political issues of today. We here present a best practice example for project-based learning aiming to change student's understanding and attitude towards sustainability at school level. In this project forty-two Year 9 students explored by themselves the link…

This paper reports the first results of an experimental research, carried out in a private school with 9th grade students, where the 4C/ID-model was used for teaching and learning electric circuits. The authors describe the principles and features of the instructional model, that is suitability for the teaching and learning of complex knowledge…

This study explored how Technology teachers in medium- and well-resourced schools use commercially prepared textbooks in their classrooms. A qualitative-interpretive design was used with a purposively selected sample of four schools from a city in the Gauteng province, South Africa. Data were analysed according to the conceptual framework of…

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of Brazilian elementary schools on the chances of their students achieving at different levels of mathematics proficiency. Since student proficiency is classified at three levels--Insufficient, Basic and Proficient--the chosen model of analysis was the hierarchical multinomial model. The…

Engaging middle school students in science continues to be a challenge in Australian schools. One initiative that has been tried in the senior years but is a more recent development in the middle years is the context-based approach. In this ethnographic study, we researched the teaching and learning transactions that occurred in one ninth grade…

This article describes an activity in which ninth graders explore a plan to strip-mine coal in Wyoming and Montana, send it by train to the Northwest, then ship it to Asia to be burned. Students' questions ranged from "Why are we mining for more coal if it's the biggest contributor to global warming" and "How can adults doom our…

In this article, the author describes the "Be your own groundhog" project in her grades 9-12 Earth and environmental sciences courses, in which students use citizen science databases to research the physical changes that signal the arrival of spring. This project starts with a simple question, "When will spring spring?" This goes beyond the…

The aim of the studies reported in this paper is to gain classroom based empirical evidence on the learning effectiveness of learning objects used in two types of study settings: Collaborative and individual. A total of 127 seventh and ninth grade students participated in the experiments. They were assigned into one of the study modes and worked…

In this article the authors illustrate an instructional unit based on a Common Core grades 9-10 illustrative text--Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" from "The Joy Luck Club." They demonstrate how teachers can meet the new standards "and" respond to students' 21st-century needs by using this modern classic along with other traditional and new media resources.…

In 2003, Chicago schools required students entering ninth grade with below-average math scores to take two periods of algebra. This led to higher test scores for students with both above- and below-average skills, yet failure rates increased for above-average students. We examine the mechanisms behind these surprising results. Sorting by incoming…